Chapter 14 #2
She traced his knuckles with her fingertips. “Well, he clearly idealized her, whoever she was. No woman could live up to those expectations.”
Bringing their joined fingers to his lips, he brushed the air above the back of her hand with a reverent kiss. “Some women could.”
She laughed, a brittle little sound, and slipped her hand from his.
“It reminds me of something absurd Papa used to say, more than once, I hasten to add. When I was around twelve, he hired a governess, poor woman, who tried desperately to teach me all the proper lady’s accomplishments.
Painting, pianoforte, poetry recitation… Oh, I was abysmal!”
“I doubt that.”
“Oh no,” she insisted. “I assure you, I was. Truly! My sketches looked penned by a foxed squirrel!”
He smiled where she expected him to laugh, but he did not interrupt, not when he recognized the wound beneath the humor.
“Whenever I showed Papa my progress,” she continued, forcing merriment into her words, though her voice turned faint, “he would laugh and tell me not to fret about my failings. None of that mattered. My only real asset was my beauty, and I ought to learn to wield that instead of bothering with refinements I could never master. And he was quite right, you know! The governess was dismissed before long, and Papa took up my education. Men only ever want beauty or money, and for a time, I could offer both.” Her smile crumpled.
Graeme’s expression hardened. “That is untrue, as well as cruel.”
With a lift of a single shoulder, she shrugged, as though her father’s verdict weighed nothing at all.
The ghost of a smile haunted as she looked up at him with glistening eyes.
He read in them the hurt she tried to hide: her longing to be valued, her fear she never would be, her brave armor of brash humor.
Desperately, he wanted to reclaim her hand. He restrained.
To steady her mood, he offered, “Since you paint like a squirrel, and I have never held a brush in earnest, perhaps we should disgrace ourselves together. Tomorrow?”
“Painting?”
Feigning solemnity, he nodded. “It is what people of quality do, I believe.”
With a burst of laughter, returning more to herself, she insisted, “Neither of us is quality!”
“You know a marchioness,” he countered. “This is more quality than I can boast; therefore, you are far more a person of quality than I, and so, I wish to learn vicariously through you what it takes to become such a learned personage.”
Scoffing at his absurdities, she argued, “I hardly count the Marchioness of Pickering as quality. She was once my maid!” Mortified, she covered her mouth with her hand.
Graeme’s curiosity sparked. “Was she indeed?” Then, with a roguish grin, he said, “Ah! So that is why you wish to meet the new earl. You fear Miss Greeley will steal him.”
Just as he wished, she dissolved into helpless laughter, clutching his sleeve for balance. Once she regained herself with a dab of her kerchief to the corners of her eyes, her gaze drifted to meet his, and her hand slipped from his arm with palpable reluctance.
He caught it again, his thumb brushing her knuckles. “If you’d prefer a picnic instead…”
Thunder rolled an amused reply.
With a rueful smile, she teased, “And with my luck, sit in the mud?”
“Painting, then?”
“Painting.”
Their hands lingered. He listened as her breath quickened, his pulse answering in kind.
The taper’s flame flared.
Graeme leaned closer until he felt her breath against his cheek.
“The hour grows late,” he said, huskier than intended, every fiber in him willing her to stay.
They rose together, fingers entwined, the hem of her gown whispering against his stockinged feet. The flame dipped, quivering, bowing beneath the weight of the moment. His gaze fell fleetingly, treacherously, to her parted lips.
He released her hand.
She stepped back.
“Goodnight, Phoebe.”
A hitched breath.
“Goodnight…”
“Graeme.”
“Goodnight, Graeme.”
After two hesitations and three backwards glances over her shoulder, she slipped out the door, taking with her the candlestick and the last of his composure.
Dew jeweled every blade of grass as the sun crept through thinning clouds.
The air smelled of earth and new beginnings, fresh, green, and alive.
Phoebe paused at the path’s bend, pressing a hand to her fluttering stomach.
It is only painting, she told herself. Painting and Mr. Ellison.
Two harmless things. Three, perhaps, if one counts his smile.
He stood beneath the linden tree ahead, sleeves rolled, coat draped over a bench, hair slightly tussled from the breeze, so reminiscent of last evening, her breath caught in her throat.
A pair of easels waited beside him, along with brushes, small pots of pigment, porcelain palettes, and paper so pristine it seemed a crime she would soon ruin it.
When he saw her, his expression softened into something intimate, a private smile meant only for her.
“Good morning….” He drew out the greeting with long, flirty vowels.
“Good morning,” her pulse skipped to add, “Graeme. I hope I have not kept you waiting.”
“Not at all. I arrived only moments ago.” The corners of his eyes crinkled. “I’m not too proud to admit I am relieved you came.”
She felt the truth of it, settling like sunlight inside her chest. He offered her the better of the two brushes. She accepted it gingerly, glancing at the pigment pots.
“So,” she began, “do we paint the garden? The manor? One another?”
“Let us begin modestly,” he said gravely. “With… that leaf.”
She squinted at the tree and its myriad leaves. “That one?”
“That one. I believe in challenging ourselves with a focus on detail.”
In answer to his serious tone, she cast him a look of theatrical dread before preparing her brush for the first tentative stroke. At least she remembered enough of her instruction to know what to do with the brush and paint, even if the end result would be laughable at best.
True to form, after much concentration, much dipping of the brush, and much tongue wagging—literally in her case—what emerged upon her watercolor paper bore only the faintest resemblance to vegetation. More like something that had… well… perhaps fallen off a startled hedgehog rather than a tree.
Mr. Ellison, or Graeme, rather, tucked his twitching smile behind an expression of critical austerity. “It has… personality.”
“Sir,” she said, choking on laughter at both his reaction and her attempt at art, “it has ailments.”
Unable to hide his own laughter any longer, he let it spill into the morning air. So low, warm, and utterly delightful, she felt herself lean towards him, drawn as a blossom seeks the sun.
“Shall we add a branch?” she asked with a flutter of lashes.
“Splendid notion. Let us not leave this lonely leaf alone on the page. A branch with brethren leaves to offer solidarity.”
A glimpse of his watercolor inspired a smidge more confidence in her hedgehog-spined leaf. That was, until she attempted her next brushstroke. The handle slipped. Paint splashed across the paper with enthusiastic blots. She squeaked, trying not to drop the brush on her gown.
In a heartbeat, his hand closed around hers, rescuing the brush and steadying her nerves.
Their fingers laced as he slid his smooth palm over the back of her hand to free her of the brush and set it with the paints until she could recover herself, mostly from laughter than from disaster, although after the feel of his caress, she rather thought she needed to recover from his proximity.
They shared a breath before he withdrew back to his easel.
Phoebe clasped her hands, struggling to keep them from trembling. With patience she did not think she had, she waited for her cheeks to return to a believable shade of pale and for him to return his attention to his watercolor sheet.
And then, she blurted out, “I enjoy this. Being with you. You’re the only person who has ever looked at me and seen… me. Not my father’s daughter.”
His brush stilled. Then, in a quiet but sure voice: “The feeling is mutual.”
So much for pale cheeks.
He meant it. She could feel he meant it. No flattery. No calculation. Just truth. But then she had to wonder, if she were the only one to see him as he saw her, what did other people see him as, and how were they too near-sighted not to see him?
With renewed focus, she dipped her brush again.
One minute passed. Then two. Soon ten. And finally…
The result of her branch with brethren leaves was, somehow… worse than before.
“Oh dear.” She fought a grin. “Papa was right. I’d best stick to being decorative.”
His brows rose in objection.
“No need to look at me like that. I did warn you. I have but the one asset, and I should be wielding it rather than this brush.” Tossing the stick with the paints in an overdramatized flourish, she posed prettily for her audience, giving her curls a little flounce and her brows a flirty waggle.
“Paint me instead. Let the leaf envy my beauty.”
Graeme—oh, how delicious to think of him as Graeme, which suited him far and away better than Mr. Ellison, a name that never fit him well, she did not think—coughed a laugh but was torn between scolding her with those pursed brows and admiring her with his roaming eyes.
She let him stay in that delicious conflict as his gaze swept over her.
“I will never deny your beauty, dear Phoebe. I am but a man, and you know as well as I how captivating you are. Any man who would deny that fact is blind, a fool, or a liar. But on one point I must contest: you possess far more assets than beauty.” He raised a staying hand.
“Don’t object, at least not until I’ve established credibility.
For, you see, if you were only beautiful, my head would not be so easily turned. ”
“Oh, I do see.” She harrumphed. “Having turned your head is a grand prize, then. Any other man would only want me for my raven curls and coquettish doe eyes.”
“Coy. I would describe them as coy.”