Chapter Fourteen
It feels like I’m doing something wrong.
Every day I expect Claude to seem happier. Better. He loves painting, so surely it will lighten his mood. But instead, it seems to sink lower each day. He makes my breakfast, drinks from me, and passes at least an hour in the studio while I sit in silence.
But every evening, his expression seems more troubled, his shoulders drooping lower. He is slower to smile, less prone to conversation. During our session at the end of the first week, he doesn’t say anything, just sets down his paintbrush, shakes his head, and walks away.
I’m so tempted to steal a peek at the canvas. It’s right there, taunting me… but I respect his wishes. It’s the least I can do when he’s treating me like royalty. And I feel helpless to do anything else for him, as much as I try to think of ideas.
One evening, as he sits across from me at breakfast looking particularly forlorn, he says, “It occurs to me that you still haven’t told me what you didn’t like about my last painting.”
I blink at him, taken aback. I thought he had given up on that line of inquiry from the ball.
“Why do you care so much?” I ask. He just looks at me, awaiting a response, and I sigh.
I think back to that painting, and my reaction to it, trying to remember exactly what it was that made me speak out about it.
I can still recall some of his other paintings with a striking clarity—the interplay between light and darkness, beauty and ugly truth—but the last one is just a vague blur in my memory.
It was a vase of flowers, I think. Just flowers.
“There wasn’t anything wrong with the painting, Claude.
It just… seemed to lack something that your other work had,” I say.
“It wasn’t bad. It just didn’t feel like you. ”
He looks away, his expression unreadable.
“But I hardly know you,” I say. “You shouldn’t care what I think.”
“You’re right,” he says. “You barely know me at all. That’s what bothers me.
” He rakes a hand through his curls, leaving them messy.
“You barely know me, but you alone…” He shakes his head.
“I hate that painting too. But most people think it’s my best.” His gaze slowly drifts back to me.
“And the house. Ambrose had it built for me. I was grateful because he expected me to be. But you… you knew this wasn’t the sort of place that suited me.
How? How do you see these things so clearly? ”
I stare at him, taken aback.
“And you, the one person who seems to understand me so well, cannot stand me,” he says quietly.
My stomach twists with guilt. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t lie to me now, after all of your brutal honesty,” he says. “You were the one who first insisted upon no intimacy between us.”
“That wasn’t about you,” I say, then hesitate. “Well, it wasn’t just about you. It was about me, my future, what I wanted from our arrangement.”
“And what is it that you want, Nora?” he asks. His gaze climbs up the curve of my neck, to my lips, to my eyes. His gaze is arresting.
I swallow, and force myself to be honest. “I want to finish this year and move on to the future I’ve planned for myself,” I say. “I want… I want to be able to walk away without a broken heart.”
He smiles, though there’s a sadness in it. “You think I’ll break your heart?”
“No,” I say, “because I won’t let you.”
“Mm.” His gaze drifts downward again, lingering on my mouth, my neck, before dropping away. “Maybe you don’t understand me as well as I thought. You were never in any danger of that from me.”
I’m not sure if he’s a liar or just oblivious.
Even now, with all of my effort to hold myself back, it feels like he’s reached into my chest and is squeezing hard.
“I understand perfectly well,” I say, my throat tight.
“I understand how people like you love, and I want none of it.” I think of my mother, of how it felt to be in the spotlight of her affection—so intense it’s blinding, and then gone just as quickly.
Brief warmth that only made me realize how cold I was the rest of the time.
It would be better not to experience it at all.
Claude studies me in the silence. “People like me?”
“You’re an artist,” I mutter, poking at the remains of my breakfast though my appetite is gone. “Your art will always be what you love the most.”
“Mm.” He shifts in his seat, still watching me. “My art is my raison d’être, I’ll not deny that, but… I’m not sure love is an appropriate word. To love one’s own art so much would be a form of narcissism, would it not?”
A flash of memory: my mother waving away my question without ever turning her gaze from her sketchbook. Me, all of six years old, standing with a dented can of soup I couldn’t figure out how to open on my own.
Narcissism. I can’t manage anything more than a tiny nod of a response.
“All that is to say…” Claude leans forward. “I’m sorry for whoever made you feel that way, but I’m not them.”
“No,” I say. “I know.” He’s so much worse, because I could see myself falling for it—falling for him. And that’s not something I can allow myself.
* * *
The next evening, Claude seems particularly distant. He brings me my coffee just how I like it, and a breakfast as decadent as always, but then he paces beside the table instead of sitting. As I eat, he stares off into space, fiddling with the rings on his fingers, without saying a word.
“Claude?” I venture after a few moments. “Is everything okay?”
“Of course,” he says, without looking at me.
I smooth over my napkin, just to give my hands something to do. Watching his antsy behavior is making me anxious. “We could try something else today, if you want,” I suggest. “Maybe you could use a break?”
He turns and looks at me, puzzled for a moment, as if he’s trying to figure out what I’m talking about. Then he shakes his head. “Oh, no. Er, yes, I mean. It will be a break, I suppose.”
“…Huh?”
“I mean to say, we won’t be painting today. My sire is coming for a visit.”
“Oh.” My pulse quickens at the memory of Lord Ambrose at the ball, the hard look in his eyes when he studied me, the knee-locking power he exuded. “Should I—”
“You’re to stay in your room,” Claude says before I can even finish the question.
My mouth clicks shut. I raise my eyebrows at him, shocked at the way he just spoke to me, but Claude is avoiding my gaze. “But… why?” I ask. “I thought everything was fine. You said he knew about our arrangement…”
“Of course he does. Of course it’s fine. I just need some privacy with him. He’ll be here any minute.” When I still stand, unmoving, Claude finally looks at me. “I don’t have time for this right now. Please, Nora, just do this for me.”
I press my lips together. It’s obvious he’s not telling me something, and I remember Benjamin’s worry that there was something off about Ambrose from the start, but his please is enough to make me relent, for now. “We’re going to talk about this afterward,” I warn him, heading for the door.
He waves a hand at me. When I glance back from the doorway, he’s pacing the room, running his hands through his hair, his jaw a tense line.
* * *
As I shut the door to my bedroom behind me, I stare around, uncertain what to do with myself. The walls feel restrictive, the time unfathomably long. What am I supposed to do with a full day of nothing?
There’s also a nagging anxiety in the back of my mind. Claude is a mercurial man, but his behavior today felt especially off. I can’t stop thinking about what Benjamin said.
After debating about it for a few minutes, I take out my phone and text him: Did you ever find out more about Lord Ambrose? He’s coming to visit today.
His response comes quicker than expected. Nothing. Please keep me updated. I can come immediately if you feel unsafe.
Unsafe? I chew my lip. I’m nervous for a reason I can’t quite put my finger on, but I have no reason to question my safety. I send Benjamin my assurances and tell him I’ll text him after the visit to let him know my read on the situation.
I do feel better knowing Benjamin is just a text away.
I’m not used to having someone so reliable in my life.
So unlike my mother, who still hasn’t responded to my anxious stream of texts from before this whole valentine situation.
It reminds me that it’s early enough in the evening to contact my friends.
I flop onto my bed, open a video app, and call.
Sophie picks up immediately, her phone an inch from her face, giving me a lovely view up her nose. “Queen of my heart,” she says. “Are you finally calling me to let me know you’ve fallen madly in love with your vampire beau?”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t even start. You haven’t even met the man, Sophie.
” Though I know it would only be worse if she did.
Both of my roomies would probably be swooning over Claude.
His pretty face, the occasional smile that doesn’t reach his sad eyes, his long artist’s fingers…
I grimace and shake the thought away. I cannot be thinking of him like that.
“And whose fault is that?” Sophie asks. “Anyway, you best believe I looked him up the second I heard his name. Not a lot of photos on the internet, but those paintings would have me dropping my panties.”
“Sophie,” I groan. “Please stop.”
“Oh, right,” she says. “I’m probably making you jealous, because you’ve already fallen madly in love with him.”
I take a breath and count to five in my head. Before I trust myself to speak, Elaine joins the call.
“Hey,” she says. “I’m in the bathroom at work. What’s up?”
“Oh, just catching up! You can get back to work.”
“No, thank you. How’s the lifestyle of the rich and famous going?”