After the Wedding (The Worth Saga #2)(63)
And he wanted to tell her.
He pulled away. “Well, I should show you the plates. I would go on forever, and it would make more sense if you were looking at something first, don’t you think?”
They had been laid out in a row on the sideboard.
“Here,” he said, gesturing her forward. “They tell a story. We’ll start from the beginning.”
She didn’t need to tell him how she felt—not when she already proclaimed it with every smile, with every little blush.
He didn’t need to tell her, either. Not when there were the plates, after all.
She came to stand beside him.
His heart beat heavily.
“Here,” he said, pointing. “This is the first one. You’ll notice that faint green patterned background, redolent of leaves and bamboo? That’s the underglaze painting.”
She had frozen in place, her eyes trained on the plate. “Adrian.”
“The way we get that light green underglaze is a family secret.” He smiled. “As is the orange in the enamel—that’s these colors here, you see, the stripes—”
“Adrian. It’s a tiger and her cubs.”
He felt a lump in his throat. “Well. So. It is.”
“What’s she chasing, that one cub? Is she headed to the river?”
He didn’t object to her pronoun. Now that the plate had been glazed, that little stylized dream looked like a glistening star. They’d specially made a paint for it, a mix of blues and greens so light that you could only see the color when the plate tilted into the light. Gold flecks—real gold—gave it a luminous look.
“I don’t know,” Adrian said. “Maybe it’s a star. Maybe it’s a dream. You decide.”
“It’s lovely. What’s the next one?”
He gestured her on.
On this plate, the underglaze was the cobalt blue of traditional china pottery, painted in waves and roils depicting a raging river.
The tiger kitten, caught in the current, tossed and turned, one paw still outstretched to that stylized star as if to catch it even in the midst of drowning.
Alongside the riverbank, her mother ran, desperate to catch her.
“Adrian, is that a waterfall ahead?”
“Um…yes?”
“You’re sending a kitten into a waterfall?”
“Maybe?”
She turned to the next plate. The tiger cub stood on a riverbank, looking up a sheer cliff down which the waterfall thundered. At the very top, small in the distance, were the faces of the mother tiger and her other cubs.
“You separated them?” Camilla stood in place, looking at the scene. She set a hand over her heart. “That’s not right.”
A fourth plate showed the cub sitting at the base of the cliff. Claw marks marked her attempt to climb back up, futilely. The kitten looked almost despondent—but just to the side, leading away from the cliff, that dream glittered.
In the fifth plate, the cub, slightly older, traversed a swamp, nervously avoiding being caught by some ugly sharp-toothed reptile.
In the sixth, the cub, now juvenile, padded through a dark forest inhabited by fantastical looking birds—drawn forward, forever in pursuit of that glittering dream.
In the seventh, the tiger stalked the stars themselves, a thousand dreams flashing around her paws.
In the final plate, fully grown, she descended a mountain, crowned in stars, to the valley where her mother awaited.
Camilla set the final plate down and looked at Adrian. “I don’t know a thing about art. I couldn’t give you any advice at all.” Her eyes shimmered.
“Did you like it?”
“It gave me feelings.” She tapped her chest. “Here.”
“That’s always a good sign.”
She swallowed and turned to him. “It’s…it’s about a tiger.”
“Yes?”
Her eyes found his. “You tell me I’m a tiger sometimes.”
“Well.” He put his hands in his pockets, the better not to touch her with them. “Yes. I do.”
Her eyes were so wide, so bright with hope. “Are these about me? The tiger cub, lost from home so young? Searching for years as she grows, going from place to place?”
“Never giving up?” he added. “Looking forward, always forward?”
She made a little sound in her throat.
“Really,” he said, “I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. It’s about all of us. Mr. Alabi left his home at twelve, when war came to his home city. Mrs. Song came to Britain in search of a child who had been impressed in the pig trade.”
She looked away. “Oh.”
“As for me,” Adrian said, “my family left me in England during the rebellion. We were reunited afterward, but I lost three of my brothers. That’s why at the end, some tigers are missing.”
She turned to him. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. And here I’ve been complaining to you. I should never have done it.”
He looked away. “I don’t talk much about it. I’m the lucky one. I didn’t die. I didn’t even have to go to war. There are untold millions who will never have what I have. There’s no point asking for sympathy for me when so many have less.”