She frowned, looking at those sheep. She moved closer and looked again. She glanced at the windows on the opposite wall. They looked out on a grey Scottish day in late autumn, all soft muted colors; slate gray, lilac, grey-green. She looked again at the shepherdess standing in bright sunshine in a colorful flower-dotted meadow. It didn't make sense. Apart from the very unScottish scene, this window was facing the wrong way—inward.
"Trompe l'oeil," Charles Sinclair said. "Do you like it? I painted it myself."
"You painted this?" Jeannie moved closer, and saw that it was indeed a painting. "But it looks so real. I'd heard you painted, but I had no idea . . ."
She examined the tiny figures, the illusion of lace on the shepherdess's dress, small exquisite details such as the tiny flowers growing in the grass and a bird pulling a worm from the earth. Everything looked so real until you were a few inches away from it and saw the texture of the paint.
"It's wonderful. I've never seen anything like it." Things that close up seemed like random blobs and smears, when you stepped a few feet away they turned into lifelike images.
"It's an old technique," Charles Sinclair said carelessly, though it was clear he was delighted by her praise. "Been around since the Romans."
"You're very talented." Jeannie glanced around the suite of rooms. "And these rooms are extraordinary—so different from any other part of the castle."
He gave a very French shrug that managed to combine modesty with smugness. "One craves some semblance of civilization in these grim gray surrounds. If one cannot be in Versailles . . . " He pouted. "I would have transformed the whole castle thusly, had my nephew not rushed off so intemperately and—" He broke off, remembering who he was talking to. "But where are my manners? Please be seated. Gustave, tea for madame." He snapped his fingers and his manservant brought forward a silver tray bearing a dainty tea service, and a plate of pretty cakes and biscuits.
Jeannie seated herself on a spindly, gilt-trimmed, crimson-cushioned chair and received her cup from the manservant.
Charles Sinclair sipped his tea. "I had planned to enliven that big barren hall with silk hangings from Paris, made to my own design, but it is not to be. My nephew cancelled the order and that was that."
"Yes, he mentioned the hangings," Jeannie murmured.
He sniffed. "I suppose he was gloating."
"Not at all. But he intimated that money was scarce and he had more urgent matters to attend to," she said diplomatically.
Charles Sinclair sniffed again. "Roofs. For peasants."
She sipped her tea and said nothing. She agreed with her husband's priorities, but there was no point in arguing.
"My hangings would have made all the difference in the world to that great gloomy barn downstairs." He put his teacup down. "Would you care to see my designs for them?" He didn't wait for her response, but snapped his fingers at Gustave and rapped out an order in French.
A moment later the manservant brought out a folio and laid it out for Jeannie to view. Charles Sinclair leaned forward. "Well? What do you think?"
"They're very elegant and very beautiful," she said. "Very French."
He sat back, pleased with her response.
It wasn't flattery. The designs were beautiful. But the hangings would have looked quite out of place in the hall, she decided, a bit like a bird of paradise in a flock of grouse. They were dainty and pretty. The hall was a little grim, but it was also magnificent. It called for something more dramatic and . . . and Scottish. But she didn't say so.
She'd dreaded this meeting with her husband's uncle, and had come braced for hostility. Instead she'd found a man very much out of his element, a lonely, cultured man who felt unappreciated. She nibbled on a cake and tried to think of something to say.
"You have an eye for art," he said. "I admit to some surprise, given your background."
She stifled a sigh. No doubt she'd always be described as the shepherdess bride who was hauled from a bog. "I don't know much about it, but my father had several friends who were artists."
He raised a brow. "Your father, was he an artist too?"
"No, he was a poet."
He frowned. "His name?"
"Alexander McLeay."
He gave her an arrested look, then snapped his fingers at his manservant. "The slender blue volume on the third shelf."
Gustave fetched the book and made to hand it to his master, who waved him away. "To the lady, imbécile."
Jeannie took the little book, a pretty thing bound in blue leather. She opened it. "Oh! It's Da's book! Imagine you having it." She examined it carefully, marveling at seeing it here, of all places.
