Of Moths and Butterflies by V. R. Christensen

shortly after I was born. She died in giving me life.”
    She blinked then, as if his pain were hers to bear.
    He was strangely touched. “It’s all right,” he said. “I never knew her. I could not have missed her.”
    “Are you quite sure?”
    The question stopped him, made him think. “How do you miss someone you’ve never known?”
    “How do you help missing someone who ought to have loved you but never had the chance?”
    He was stunned by her understanding of that which he had felt but had never been able to form into words. And if he had, he would never have dared utter them.
    “I’m very sorry for you,” she said again, and just as sincerely.
    Speechless for the moment, he turned from her. He found it necessary to wander the room.
    “Have I said something I should not have?” she asked eventually.
    “No. No, of course not.”
    “If it has caused you pain to speak of it…”
    He shook his head in answer, unable to offer any verbal reply.
    At length she went on with her work, but after several minutes spent in silence, she stopped again and turned to him.
    “Does it bother you to have these rooms prepared for Mrs. Barton?”
    “Why should it?”
    She did not answer this, but dipped and wrung out a rag to wipe the dust from the wall. “I’m sorry. I spoke out of turn.”
    He ran one hand through his hair. “I’ve just told you my life’s history and you want to apologise for speaking out of turn?” He laughed then and found he could not stop.
    “You’re laughing at me.”
    “No,” he said. “Not at all.”
    “And you have not told it all. Only of your mother. What of your father?”
    “Ah. Well now you do presume, for you would not tell me of yours, so I have no incentive whatever to speak of mine. I think I’ll keep that a secret.”
    She blushed in response to his mock chastisement.
    “For the present.”
    She offered no reply to this. At least she made no objection, and he found himself hoping for such an opportunity to speak with her again on subjects both personal and familiar. As he considered this most welcome possibility, wandering the room as he did, she continued with her task.
    “There,” she said at last and stepped away.
    Archer returned to her side to examine her work, and what it should reveal. But he stopped again quite suddenly, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.
    It was indeed a landscape, expertly rendered and concealed beneath a single, shallow layer of paint. Interrupting the scene, emerging on horseback from the protection of a wooded glade, were two figures, a man and a woman. The sun’s rays, shining through autumn leaves, illuminated the woman in an ethereal glow made all the more remarkable by the manner in which her companion gave chase, following her as doggedly as a looming shadow. Yet it did not seem to fit there, the man. It was as though he had been added later. An afterthought. An omission rectified long after the fact.
    “I don’t understand,” he said.
    “What do you see?” he heard her ask. And then he heard the footsteps. He turned to her.
    “What is it?” she asked him.
    “That would be my uncle, I believe.”
    Her eyes were suddenly very wide. “You can’t be here.”
    “I’m afraid it’s you who are going to have to go.” Unceremoniously, though not roughly, he took her arm and led her into the adjacent room, by which she was to exit through the other door. These were the instructions he gave her, returning just in time to greet his uncle.
    *   *   *
    Imogen understood the dilemma but was helpless to remedy it in the manner Mr. Hamilton had suggested. He had given her his instructions, but she had been given others. She had been instructed by Sir Edmund to return to this room and to remain here. Likely he would be displeased whatever she did, but she would not disobey, and she felt certain nothing could be gained by deception. If Becky had seen her here with Mr. Hamilton, it was entirely likely that others had subsequently