Chapter Three #2
Miss Whitcombe passed him a blank sheet of paper and a brush with the efficiency of someone who had decided not to give him time to reconsider. "Do you have any experience with watercolours, Your Grace?"
"Some. My mother painted." The words came out before he could stop them, and he felt his shoulders tense in automatic response. He did not talk about his mother. He did not talk about anything personal. And yet here he was, offering information like a man who had forgotten how to guard his tongue.
"Then you know the basic technique," Miss Whitcombe said, as though he had said nothing unusual. "Start with something simple; a shape, a colour study. The discipline is in the restraint."
"The restraint?"
"Watercolour rewards a light hand. If you try to force it, the colours become muddy and overworked.
But if you can learn to let the medium guide you.
.." She demonstrated, her brush moving across her own paper in soft, fluid strokes.
"You see? The water does the work. You simply provide the direction. "
Daniel watched her hands, capable, unhesitating, slightly paint-stained, and found himself momentarily unable to speak. There was something about the way she moved, the easy confidence of her gestures, that made it difficult to look away.
"The discipline is in the restraint," he repeated slowly.
"Yes." She looked up, meeting his gaze, and he had the sudden, disorienting sense that they were no longer talking about painting at all. "Though I suspect that particular lesson requires no instruction from me."
The words were mild, her tone perfectly pleasant. But there was something beneath them, something knowing, something almost gentle, that made Daniel's chest tighten.
She sees too much, he thought. She sees far too much.
He looked away, focusing on the blank paper before him with an intensity that was almost certainly excessive.
"I shall attempt a simple study," he said. "As you suggest."
"A wise choice."
"Do not patronise me, Miss Whitcombe."
"I would not dream of it, Your Grace."
Her voice carried that same hint of buried amusement that had so unsettled him at the fair; the sense that she was watching him struggle with something obvious and finding it faintly entertaining.
He did not look at her again. He focused on the paper, on the brush, on the careful application of color to the blank white surface. He painted a single flower, a wildflower from a vase on the windowsill, with painstaking attention to each petal, each leaf, each shadow and highlight.
When he finished, the result was…….Adequate. Competent. Technically correct in every respect.
It was also, he realized with a sinking sensation, utterly lifeless.
"Very precise," Miss Whitcombe said, leaning over to examine his work. She was close enough that he could smell her, something light and floral, like the gardens after rain, and his hands tightened involuntarily on the brush.
"That is not a compliment."
"It is an observation. The technique is excellent." She tilted her head, considering. "But the flower itself seems... restrained."
"Flowers do not have personalities."
"Do they not?" She smiled, and it was a different smile than the ones she had given him before; warmer, more genuine, as though he had amused her despite herself. "I have always thought they do. Some are bold. Some are shy. Some reach toward the sun as though they cannot help themselves."
"That is botany, not personality."
"Perhaps the distinction is less clear than you think."
Daniel looked at his painting, the carefully rendered petals, the precisely executed shadows, and then at the actual flower in the vase.
Miss Whitcombe was right, he realized reluctantly.
The real flower had a kind of presence that his painting utterly lacked.
A sense of reaching, of wanting, of being alive in a way that defied mere technical accuracy.
Some reach toward the sun as though they cannot help themselves.
The words echoed in his mind, and he pushed them away before they could take root.
"I should return to my work," he said, setting down his brush. "The drainage report will not write itself."
"Of course." Miss Whitcombe's voice was perfectly polite, perfectly neutral. She gave no indication that she noticed his abrupt retreat, or if she noticed, that she cared.
And yet, as he rose from his chair, he could have sworn he saw something flicker across her face. Something that looked almost like disappointment.
He told himself he had imagined it.
***
After Daniel left, abruptly, as seemed to be his habit, Lillian turned her attention back to Rosanne's painting and tried very hard not to think about the way he had looked at her when she mentioned the sun. Apparently she failed because that was all she could think about.
"He watched you the entire time, you know."
Lillian's brush slipped, leaving a streak of blue where it did not belong. She corrected it with more force than necessary. "I beg your pardon?"
"Daniel." Rosanne's voice was carefully casual, but there was something knowing in her expression. "He did not watch his painting. He watched you."
"I am sure you are mistaken."
"I am not." Rosanne set down her own brush, abandoning all pretense of artistic endeavor.
"I have known my brother for seventeen years, Lillian.
I have seen him at dozens of social events, surrounded by dozens of beautiful women who would dearly love to catch his attention.
He does not watch people. He endures their presence with barely concealed impatience and retreats at the earliest opportunity. "
"He retreated just now."
"Yes, but not before sitting with us for..."Rosanne glanced at the clock, "forty-three minutes. That is forty-two minutes longer than I have ever seen him voluntarily remain in any social situation."
Lillian felt her cheeks warm slightly, which was ridiculous. She was not a blushing schoolgirl. She was a sensible woman of three-and-twenty who did not flutter over ducal attention.
"He was being polite," she said firmly. "You asked him to stay."
"I have asked him to stay at hundreds of gatherings. He has never once obliged me." Rosanne leaned forward, her eyes bright with barely suppressed excitement. "He likes you, Lillian. I am certain of it."
"He does not like me. He finds me irritating."
"Is there a difference?"
Lillian opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again. The question was more complicated than it appeared.
She thought of the duke's expression when she had spoken of restraint; that flicker of something vulnerable beneath his carefully constructed walls.
She thought of the way his hands had tightened on his brush when she leaned close to examine his painting.
She thought of the precision of his work, the lifelessness of it, and the way he had looked at the real flower as though seeing it for the first time.
The discipline is in the restraint.
She had meant it as an observation about watercolors. But he had heard something else, something deeper, and for just a moment, his mask had slipped.
"I do not know what your brother feels," she said finally. "I suspect he does not know either."
Rosanne's expression softened. "No. He probably does not. Daniel has spent so long not-feeling that I think he has forgotten how." She reached out and touched Lillian's hand; a brief, grateful gesture. "But he feels something when you are near. I see it in him. A kind of... disturbance."
"Disturbance is not necessarily positive."
"No. But it is not nothing, either." Rosanne smiled; a small, hopeful smile. "And that, for my brother, is practically a declaration of devotion."
Lillian laughed despite herself. "You are incorrigible."
"I am observant. There is a difference."
"A distinction without a practical divergence, I suspect."
Rosanne's smile widened, and Lillian felt her own lips curve in response.
It was difficult to remain stern in the face of such transparent delight, and really, what was the harm?
Rosanne was young and romantic and clearly invested in seeing her forbidding brother brought low by the forces of love. It was a harmless fantasy.
Harmless, Lillian told herself. Entirely harmless.
But she did not quite believe it.
***
Later that evening, after Lillian had returned to Hartfield and the house had settled into its customary quiet, Rosanne sat at her writing desk and opened her sketchbook.
She had not meant to draw anything in particular.
She had simply wanted to occupy her hands while her mind wandered; a habit she had developed in childhood, during the worst of her parents' arguments, when she had needed something to focus on that was not the sound of raised voices through the walls.
But when she looked down at the page, after she had finished, she found that she had drawn two figures: a man and a woman, standing close together but not quite touching.
The man was tall and dark and rigid with restraint.
The woman was smaller, calmer, with a kind of quiet strength in the set of her shoulders.
They were looking at each other as though neither quite knew what to do with what they saw.
Rosanne studied the drawing for a long moment, then carefully wrote beneath it in her tidiest handwriting:
Lillian Wynthorpe, Duchess of Wyntham?
She stared at the words, feeling her cheeks flush with embarrassment at her own foolishness. It was a foolish, childish thing to do; the kind of romantic speculation she would never dare voice aloud.
And yet.
She had seen the way Daniel looked at Lillian. She had seen the way Lillian looked back—not with the desperate hunger of a woman seeking a title, but with something more dangerous: genuine interest. Genuine curiosity. A desire to understand.
If anyone could reach her brother, Rosanne thought, it might be Lillian Whitcombe.
And if Lillian could reach him, if she could somehow breach those walls he had spent a lifetime constructing, then perhaps this cold, careful, suffocating house might finally begin to feel like a home.
She closed the sketchbook and tucked it safely in her desk drawer.
It was a foolish, childish hope.
But hope, she had learned, was often the only thing that kept one going.