Read Online Wonders of the Invisible World by Patricia A. McKillip - Free Book Online

has already answered you.”
    He started to speak, did not, only held her eyes and she felt the warmth of the smile on his lips like a phantom kiss.
    She scarcely slept after the party had broken up in the early hours of the morning, and the house finally quieted. It was difficult, she discovered, to smile and sleep at the same time. When she heard the housekeeper stirring, she rose and dressed, went into the kitchen to ask for a cup of tea.
    “You’re up early, Miss,” Nelly said.
    “I thought I would do some unpacking, rid our lives of a few more crates.”
    “It will be nice not to have to walk around them. I’ll give you a hand as soon as I tidy up from the party.”
    Mrs. Dyce produced Scotch eggs and cold ham and toast; after breakfast they worked so hard that when Marianne Cameron rang the bell at noon, most of the books had been unpacked and shelved, and Adrian’s collection of oddities and props had found places to reside that were not the floor or his bed. He had come out of his room at midmorning, helped them pile empty crates and hang paintings. By the time Miss Bunce came to pose and he began to paint, there was an empty island of polished floorboards around his easel.
    “I’ll get the door,” Emma told Nelly, whose arms were full of costumes out of a crate that needed to be folded and put away. “It’ll be Miss Cameron, come for me.”
    But, opening the door, she found Bram Wilding instead.
    Surprised, she glanced behind him down the hall, hearing bells striking noon all through the city.
    “Good day, Miss Slade,” he said. “I have good news. I was able to persuade Miss Cameron to let me paint you first.”
    She stared at him, still bewildered by the unwelcome sight of his face instead of the one she expected.
    “How?” she asked incredulously.
    “I offered to speak to a gallery owner who exhibits my work about doing an exhibit of work by the women’s studio. Miss Cameron found my suggestion irresistible.”
    Emma found his suggestion awoke a childish impulse in her to stamp her foot at him. “I wished,” she said coldly, “to pose for her.”
    “And I wish you to pose for me.”
    “Do you always get your wishes, Mr. Wilding?”
    “In this case, I believe I do. I don’t see why I should bother to persuade the gallery owner to hang an exhibit of little-known, though possibly talented, women painters if you do not pose for me.”
    She opened her mouth, stood wordless a moment, too astonished to speak. Then her eyes narrowed. “Mr. Wilding,” she said softly, “I believe this is what they call blackmail.”
    “Do they?” he said indifferently. “Well, no matter, as long as I can have my Boudicca. I’ll just step in and let Adrian know where you’re going. Join me when you’re ready.”
     
    Ned painted feverishly all day in his own comfortable studio on the top floor of his house. He had enlarged and added windows on all sides of the studio; he could see the river to the east, city to the north and south, and the park to the west, where, when the sun came to roost like a great genial bird on the top branches of the trees, he intended to be strolling with Miss Emma Sophronia Slade. Or, as would be as soon as respectably possible, Mrs. Emma Bonham.
    He whistled while he tinkered with a painting that he never seemed to get right. He had been working on it for several years, shutting it away in exasperation when he got tired of reaching his limitations. The subject was along the lines of Linley Coombe’s poem: a man lost in a wood and glimpsing in a fall of sunlight the Fairy Queen and her court riding toward him. The figures emerging through the light could barely be seen; some of them he conceived as only half human, figures of twig and bark on horseback, with faces of animals, perhaps, or exotic birds. The look on the man’s face, of astonishment tinged with dawning horror as he realized he had walked out of the world, never seemed convincing. Most of the time he looked simply