Page 52 of Rivals at Ashmore Castle

Wentworth turned from his desk. ‘We begin,’ he said.

Alice concentrated on her work, helped by the marble indifference of Miss Partridge, who appeared to be thinking of something far removed, perhaps composing a laundry list in her head. Wentworth arranged her into different poses, handling her limbs and altering the angle of her head as if she was a wooden dummy, a proceeding she did not appear to resent. After half a dozen poses, Wentworth pulled the fabric away from her legs, exposing the nearer one entirely from where it joined the trunk, and with his pointer ran over the curve, talking to Alice about muscles and shading. The angle evidently did not please him, for he took hold of the leg in both hands and changed it. He stood back and looked, then undid the clasp on the model’s shoulder and pulled the fabric down, exposing the left breast.

Alice had looked at plenty of paintings of naked women in the last few weeks, but a live model was different. A living woman’s actual bare breast caused the heat to rise behind her face again – not a blush, but a prickling sensation of something like shock or shame. She forced herself to look, telling herself, in Wentworth’s voice, that she had to free herself from the shackles of convention.

And found him gazing at her. ‘Is there a problem, Miss Tallant?’

Her mouth was dry. ‘No,’ she croaked.

‘A breast, Miss Tallant, is merely a handful of flesh. A curve, no different from the curve of the cheek.’ He ran the pointer down Miss Partridge’s face, and Alice was impressed that she didn’t flinch as the sharp end came close to her eye. ‘Over the ages we have mythologised it, we have forced on it a significance that, if we use our common sense, we see it cannot bear.’

‘Yes,’ Alice said, feeling something was required of her.

‘And yet,’ he said, ‘it is different from all other handfuls. It is the seat of beauty, the source of life, literally and figuratively, the lovely poitrine, which nourishes man from his first breath. And continues to hold sway over his mind into adulthood.’

She frowned at his contradictory rhetoric, and he smiled. ‘Draw, Miss Tallant. Look, and draw. Especially look. It is novelty that makes you blush. Accustomedness is all.’

He was right, of course. The effort of concentration and control needed to represent the figure on the paper soon made it as ordinary as a table lamp or a bowl of oranges. Even when, later, he unfastened the chiton completely and Alice had to draw the figure naked, apart from the remaining fold of fabric across the lap, she had no further difficulties.

Giles was angry on Richard’s behalf, but he couldn’t hide his relief when Richard said he wanted no retaliation against Shacklock.

‘The man’s mad,’ Richard said. ‘Taking him to court would serve no purpose. He probably won’t even remember the incident.’

‘It would be awkward,’ Giles offered cautiously, ‘given that he’s our next neighbour. And our father never got any satisfaction from the law. But I don’t like the idea that he thinks he can behave like that. There ought to be consequences.’

‘I’ll take care to avoid him in future,’ Richard said. The fine cut down his cheek, left by the lash, was healing quickly. Dr Arbogast opined that his collar-bone was cracked, but there was nothing to be done about that. It would mend on its own in a few weeks, as long as he avoided strenuous movement. Giles had offered to confront Shacklock, or to get Lord Bexley, the local magistrate, to do so, but Richard could not help feeling he had cut a less than heroic figure, and told Giles he would sooner forget all about it.

To change the subject, he reverted to that of the milk scheme. ‘I’ve been thinking that the time has come to open an office. The administration is taking up more time—’

‘Which is why you wanted Woodrow to take over the day-to-day running,’ Giles said.

‘Yes – and it’s no longer quite convenient to have the paperwork spread about the library here.’

‘It’s not quite convenient to me, certainly,’ Giles said. ‘I have enough trouble with my own without getting it mixed up with yours. An office where?’

‘In the village. There’s that empty house, Mortons, in the high street, just past the Crown.’

‘Yes, I know it.’

‘It’s about the right size, it’s sound, and it has thirty years left on the lease. Nice and central so everyone knows where to find us, handy for the railway station and the yard where we keep the lorries. Some suitable furniture, and the telephone laid in – it shouldn’t take much to prepare it.’

‘Like a real business,’ Giles said.

‘It is a real business,’ Richard said, with an arch look. ‘Did you doubt it?’

Giles smiled. ‘I’ve become used to thinking of it as something you do to keep yourself amused.’

‘Not any longer. I shall need to take on office staff – a secretary and a book-keeper to begin with. Probably more later. I’ll have to ask around and see if there’s anyone suitable in the village. I’d sooner that than go to an agency. It would be a good start for some bright young chaps just out of school. Catch them before they’ve developed bad habits, mould ’em to my ways.’

‘Is this really my brother speaking?’

‘And I’ll have some stationery printed with our letterhead.’

‘I didn’t know we had one.’

‘I haven’t designed it yet. The Ash Valley Milk Company, directors G. Tallant and R. Tallant.’

‘Can we afford all this?’