ignite in his hand. The man stared at the folded paper a few seconds before he slipped it out of sight in his pants pocket.
“That’s mighty generous of you, Mr. Sir.” He flipped his eyes up to Adam’s face and then back at his feet. “You makin’ a promise to old Redmon, I’ll be makin’ one back. Seein’ as how you ain’t on familiar terms with the good Lord, I’ll do some prayin’ for you. Just in case things start goin’ bad.”
“Thank you, Redmon. A man would be foolish to turn down a believing man’s prayers.” Adam smiled and took the reins to his horse. “And you say Mr. Gilbey’s over at the Shaker village. Can you point the way?”
The sunshine was warm on Adam’s shoulders as he rode along the road past cattle grazing on the spring grass in the rolling pastures. In the plowed fields, black men with hoes walked in an up-and-down wave across the smooth dirt, planting seeds. In the distance the redbud blooms brightened up the tree line of woods. All in all, a day to make a man glad to be out riding a horse down a sunny Kentucky road.
A dozen times, Adam wanted to stop and get out his sketchpad. But the morning was speeding past and he’d told Selena Vance he’d be back to work on her portrait that afternoon. For the hundredth time he wished he hadn’t let Phoebe talk him into such a tiresome task. The woman was not a pleasure to paint. Full of vanities and not the least interested in a portrait that revealed her nature. She wanted something pretty. Her comfortable image of herself. He could do it, but it was tedious, uninteresting brushstrokes to paint flattering poses that he had no pleasure signing his name to. He liked stripping away a person’s pretenses and drawing the stark lines of truth. But there was nothing for it but to make her as beautiful as artistically possible and move on to more interesting subjects. Like Redmon or the senator’s cook. Or perhaps the senator’s lovely redheaded daughter.
He’d like to try to capture the spark in those green eyes. He’d never known a girl quite like her, although he did have to admit a quick kiss in the garden was hardly enough to claim knowing her. But sometimes he could watch a person and guess much about them. His artist eye, his grandmother told him. She’d had an artistic bent. As a young lady she had tried her hand at painting delicate wildflowers, which she told Adam was one of the few acceptable subjects a young lady might try to capture with brushstrokes.
Later she taught art to inept young ladies to supplement the income of Adam’s grandfather, headmaster of a school that touted itself as preparing the best young gentlemen for Harvard and Yale. A respectable profession and one that supplied their needs, but few extras. Especially after Adam’s father left to seek their fortune in California and was never heard from again. Adam’s mother had no choice but to take her three sons and daughter and move back in with her parents.
While she had been greatly relieved to be back in the urbane society of Boston instead of stuck in the uncivilized area of Louisville where Adam’s father had run a store, there was always a shortage of funds to keep up proper appearances. Satisfying her need for the luxuries of life was probably the primary reason his father had been lured away from his family by the siren of gold panned from creeks. If she could have been satisfied with a storekeeper’s clerk as a husband, then all of their lives might have been different. But she had been raised on the cusp of society in the East and wanted her children to climb up to a higher rung on the social ladder.
Phoebe, Adam’s elder by three years, had grabbed the higher rung with great enthusiasm and married well some years back before producing an appropriate number of offspring for her contented husband. Adam, on the other hand, cared nothing for social standing. That had been knocked out of him in his grandfather’s private school where all the
“That’s mighty generous of you, Mr. Sir.” He flipped his eyes up to Adam’s face and then back at his feet. “You makin’ a promise to old Redmon, I’ll be makin’ one back. Seein’ as how you ain’t on familiar terms with the good Lord, I’ll do some prayin’ for you. Just in case things start goin’ bad.”
“Thank you, Redmon. A man would be foolish to turn down a believing man’s prayers.” Adam smiled and took the reins to his horse. “And you say Mr. Gilbey’s over at the Shaker village. Can you point the way?”
The sunshine was warm on Adam’s shoulders as he rode along the road past cattle grazing on the spring grass in the rolling pastures. In the plowed fields, black men with hoes walked in an up-and-down wave across the smooth dirt, planting seeds. In the distance the redbud blooms brightened up the tree line of woods. All in all, a day to make a man glad to be out riding a horse down a sunny Kentucky road.
A dozen times, Adam wanted to stop and get out his sketchpad. But the morning was speeding past and he’d told Selena Vance he’d be back to work on her portrait that afternoon. For the hundredth time he wished he hadn’t let Phoebe talk him into such a tiresome task. The woman was not a pleasure to paint. Full of vanities and not the least interested in a portrait that revealed her nature. She wanted something pretty. Her comfortable image of herself. He could do it, but it was tedious, uninteresting brushstrokes to paint flattering poses that he had no pleasure signing his name to. He liked stripping away a person’s pretenses and drawing the stark lines of truth. But there was nothing for it but to make her as beautiful as artistically possible and move on to more interesting subjects. Like Redmon or the senator’s cook. Or perhaps the senator’s lovely redheaded daughter.
He’d like to try to capture the spark in those green eyes. He’d never known a girl quite like her, although he did have to admit a quick kiss in the garden was hardly enough to claim knowing her. But sometimes he could watch a person and guess much about them. His artist eye, his grandmother told him. She’d had an artistic bent. As a young lady she had tried her hand at painting delicate wildflowers, which she told Adam was one of the few acceptable subjects a young lady might try to capture with brushstrokes.
Later she taught art to inept young ladies to supplement the income of Adam’s grandfather, headmaster of a school that touted itself as preparing the best young gentlemen for Harvard and Yale. A respectable profession and one that supplied their needs, but few extras. Especially after Adam’s father left to seek their fortune in California and was never heard from again. Adam’s mother had no choice but to take her three sons and daughter and move back in with her parents.
While she had been greatly relieved to be back in the urbane society of Boston instead of stuck in the uncivilized area of Louisville where Adam’s father had run a store, there was always a shortage of funds to keep up proper appearances. Satisfying her need for the luxuries of life was probably the primary reason his father had been lured away from his family by the siren of gold panned from creeks. If she could have been satisfied with a storekeeper’s clerk as a husband, then all of their lives might have been different. But she had been raised on the cusp of society in the East and wanted her children to climb up to a higher rung on the social ladder.
Phoebe, Adam’s elder by three years, had grabbed the higher rung with great enthusiasm and married well some years back before producing an appropriate number of offspring for her contented husband. Adam, on the other hand, cared nothing for social standing. That had been knocked out of him in his grandfather’s private school where all the
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