“You do not see much, I’m afraid.” She spit her words between gritted teeth.
Lockham’s face pulled into a frown. “Pardon me?”
“How can you say those men and women in London do not deserve to see your art?”
“Because the poor and working classes do not need beauty, Lady Maggie. What time do they have for it? And because of this, they do not care for it. If I gave a factory worker or a farmer a painting, he’d scratch his head and walk away. He doesn’t have the intellect or education to understand what he’s looking at.” He turned to his companion. “Don’t you agree, Pellham?”
Marcus shook his head and backed away. “I’ll leave you to debate this sensitive subject with our host’s daughter. It’s too deep for me in my, ahem”—he raised his almost empty wine glass—“current state. This is the fourth, you know. Besides, many of my readers are starting to come from the working classes. Some of them can read, you know.” He stumbled as he retreated into the crowd.
“Coward,” Lockham called after him. “Scared to debate a mere slip of a girl.”
Maggie’s arms stiffened at her sides. Marcus was a coward, and possibly unwilling to marry her now that she’d stood her ground. But his radical ideas about art and his readership spoke well for him. She’d remember that.
“Whoa there, Mags,” Tobias whispered in her ear. “You’re about to combust.”
“Mr. Blake!” She jerked toward him. How had he gotten across the room so quickly?
“If you don’t lower your voice,” Tobias warned, “the entire room will know you think Lockham an ass, if they don’t already.”
“And what of it?” She turned back toward Lockham. “You arewrong. You have said so many untruths, I find myself at a loss for which of them to tackle first.”
Tobias chuckled. “I say the one that makes you most angry. So you don’t explode keeping it in. Hold a second. Don’t explode yet. Let me find a glass of wine. I’d like to enjoy this set down.” He left her side, presumably in search of a libation.
He could miss her set down, then. She approached Mr. Lockham until they stood toe-to-toe. She had to crane her neck to look him in the eye. “First, I’ve met many a farmer smarter than you. They know beauty innately because they live in nature. They live surrounded by beauty all their lives. They work it and nurture it and it is a part of them. And second, how many blankets or gowns have you gifted to newborn children in your home village?”
Tobias quietly reappeared at her side, a glass of red wine in each hand. He lifted one slightly. “One for me and one for you. You’ll want it later.”
Lockham’s eyes rolled back in their sockets before settling on Maggie with disdain. “I’ve gifted none. I hardly see how baby blankets have any place in a conversation about art.”
Tobias took a long, leisurely sip of his wine then considered Lockham over the rim of his glass. “I hardly see how anyone can exchange more than two sentences with you without punching you in the face.”
Tobias had a point. But so did Maggie, and she’d say it before Tobias pulled back his fist and planted Lockham with a facer. She squared her shoulders and forced the painter to meet her gaze. “Every time I bring a blanket with bright colors and a beautiful design, expertly crafted, to a new mother, her eyes sparkle. Her fingers run across the patterns in reverence. Do you know what she says?”
Lockham’s gaze skittered away from hers.
“She says she can’t accept it. It’s too fine. Too beautiful. Not for the likes of her. And I have to do my best to convince her she’s wrong. That something of beautyisfor her and her baby. And when I leave, the babe is wrapped tight and mother’s eyes are bright and proud. Those of us privileged to live surrounded by art do not know the power it holds. It signals our wealth.” Until it drains that very wealth and becomes all you have left. “It signals how much idle time we have. It tells the world we are special. But I think farmers and their wives and children are special. Why should only the ruling classes have access to beauty and to the leisure time to appreciate such things?”
Lockham’s nostrils flared. “Because iftheydon’t work,wecannot create, Lady Maggie. Your leisure depends on their labor.”
“Then perhaps it’s timeIlabored forthem.”
“You’re a radical.” Lockham and Tobias spoke the same words at the same time but with completely different tones. Lockham spit the words and Tobias crooned them.
Tobias raised his glass in the air. “Bravo, Lady Maggie!”
Maggie stepped closer to his side.
Lockham took a step toward them, looming over her with his tall, lanky frame. “The laboring classes are naturally deficient. They can neither appreciate nor create the finer things in life. And art is the finest thing of all.”
“If you think them all so terrible,” Maggie said, “then give them art for its improving qualities. Surely you can agree with that.”
“You want art to fix their souls and minds? That is not art’s purpose, my lady.”
Tobias pulled Maggie back and away from the other man, his fingers wrapping protectively around her elbow. “What then, is art’s purpose, Lockham?”
“To exist. That is all. It does not need a purpose.”
“Are you a complete nodcock?” Tobias inquired in his most polite tones.
