Chapter 10 #2
“Yes,” she said, her skin glowing as much with exertion as embarrassment.
She flashed him a determined look, the effect undermined by the fact she was breathing heavily—something he couldn’t help but note given the shabby muslin gown she was wearing for the task, an old one she seemed rather to have grown out of.
He pulled his eyes from the ridiculously luscious expanse the dress’s neckline left exposed and waved the women away from the desk.
“Perhaps you can manage, but you oughtn’t have to.
George and I’ll do the heavy lifting.” He pushed the desk against the wall, turning to look at the chaos in the room.
The air was thick with the unfamiliar scents of oil paints and artist’s chemicals.
For such a small, quiet person, Min was certainly making her presence felt.
“What else? This rug?” He shrugged out of his coat. “Help me roll it up, George.”
Min inevitably made some further protests, but Caroline took her from the room, promising they would return with refreshments in their wake.
It didn’t take long, but neither did clearing the centre of the room.
Jack was beginning to look through some of the boxes when the ladies returned.
“I’ve no idea what half this stuff is, Min, or where to put it. You’ll have to tell me.”
“Yes, you do that, Lucy,” said Caroline. “Make sure you keep an eye on him or your whole studio will end up back to front. But I simply must take George—he’s been desperate to see this new set of arias.”
“Have I?” said George, puzzled. But a look from Caroline seemed to jog his memory. “Oh! Yes. The arias. You know how I love an aria.”
They left the room, leaving Jack and Min alone.
“Well, my little Minnow,” he said with a grin, leaning back against the desk he’d moved and folding his arms—a position much more comfortable without a coat. “Now that you’ve managed to slip away from us Ortons, how have you enjoyed your first day as Miss Sedgewick’s guest?”
Min looked from him to the box in her hands. “She is very kind.” It appeared to be full of tiny glass jars. She flipped the lid closed, finger running over the brass clasp. “She…she took me shopping. And we went to an art shop. And I met Mr Thornton there. Mr Philip Thornton, the portrait painter.”
Jack chuckled. “Then you’ve had a perfect day, I see. Art and art and art.” He swept a hand around the room. “Look at all this! Is this what you’ve been doing the last seven years? Painting all day long in that lonely house and getting wonderfully accomplished?”
She appeared to speak to the box, only peeking at him once. “I would not call it accomplished.”
“Don’t be modest, Min. By the look of all this you’re no amateur.”
“That is what I mean. I hope it is more than a mere accomplishment. It is…it is my life. And one day, I hope, my profession.”
Jack frowned. “Profession? You mean to work as an artist?”
“I believe I might be good enough.”
“That’s not… You have to understand… It’s hardly genteel. Your father might not have left you any money, but he was very much a gentleman and—”
Her brows drew together in the disapproving frown he remembered so well. Yes—she still got the little line between the curve of those dark arches.
“If you think I care for that, you don’t know me at all.”
“You must care a little, Min. Everyone cares about that. And you’re…you’re largely friendless, and poor, and you’re not a child running barefoot in the woods anymore. You…you’re of an age to be married, and your name and your reputation matter now.”
She gave him a look somewhere between disgust and disappointment.
“Thank you, Jack. But I do understand how society works. I know exactly what I’m doing.
” She put the box down, though her hand stayed on top of it.
She wore no gloves, and her skin now looked as healthy as the rest of her, the pale pink shell of a fingertip stroking back and forth over the varnished lid of the box.
“And Miss Sedgewick thinks it’s a wonderful idea.
She knows all sorts of artists. And it doesn’t seem that you criticise her. Quite the opposite.”
He pulled a face. As though that was relevant! “It’s entirely different.”
“How so?”
“She doesn’t mean to work as an artist. And she’s…older. Experienced. She understands the world. But you’re only just entering society, your reputation is unformed. To immediately become known as…as an eccentric, when you’ve little enough to recommend yourself to any man seeking a wife—”
“Seeking a wife! I did not come to London with the intention of finding a husband! No matter what you or your sisters or anyone else believes, I am here for art and art alone.”
In her anger, she turned away from the box, took a random step or two, then halted, her arms folded. Indignation made her chest rise sharply, the fold of her arms amplifying everything.
Which was also not relevant. He looked studiously across the room.
“I’m sorry, Min. I didn’t mean to insult you. But surely you can see why this plan worries me?”
“You have no need to worry about me. I can take care of myself. Just because we were friends a long time ago doesn’t mean you need to feel any…any responsibility towards me.”
He straightened from where he’d been leaning against the desk. Of all the ridiculous things to say! “What kind of talk is that?”
“We were children.”
“Min! But we’re still friends now. Of course we are.”
“I have not heard from you in seven years.”
He paused, puzzled. “How could you? Our paths never crossed.”
“There are letters, Jack.”
As he stared, hardly any less puzzled, she turned away and began stiffly rearranging the contents of that complicated-looking box, all the glass jars clinking.
“How could I write to you? A young man write to a young lady? You know how that would’ve seemed.”
“I wrote to your sisters. You could have included something. I know men are not always the best correspondents, and I never supposed you would make a great one, but men sometimes write to their friends, I am sure.”
“Terrible scrawled things about horses and what tavern and what odds on which race. That’s not the sort of letter you would’ve wanted.”
Clink, clink, the thick glass of the small bottles sounded dull as pebbles against a horse’s hoof. “Anything would have been better than nothing,” she said.
It was quiet enough he could have pretended not to hear the anger.
If he hadn’t cared, he could have pretended to be that stupid.
She closed the lid of the box and flicked the catch shut with a resolute snap.
“But your sisters stopped replying to my letters a few months after I had left. So it does not matter. It is all in the past.”
“Min…”
There was a hidden bruise here, old and long-standing. How had he never suspected it? Never imagined it? In sympathy, it crept inside his own heart and pressed deeply with a punishing thumb.
“Min, I…”
When she’d left… He thought back to that time, to himself, a young, lanky youth of much more fashion than sense, desperate to sample every excitement and enticement the world had to offer.
Even Oxford might as well have been London after the quiet of the Herefordshire countryside.
And it hadn’t been long before he was using his allowance to convey himself directly into the midst of all that capital’s follies too.
There was endless vice to be discovered when you were young and rich and stupid.
“I suppose I did think about writing,” he admitted, “once or twice. I certainly thought about you quite often after you left. But a letter… I don’t know what I would’ve said.
I think I felt… I felt like you were gone forever, entirely out of reach, whilst also feeling as though you’d be back for a visit at any moment because how could it be possible that I wouldn’t see you tomorrow, or the next day, or the next?
And then somehow months went by, and years, and now… Well. Here we are. All grown up.”
“Yes.” She gave a resolute nod, hands still resting on top of the box, eyes focused there too. “We are.”
But she glanced up when he said nothing, her silver-grey eyes very cool, very distant. A familiar landmark seen from a great way, like a church spire far in the mist.
“What’s happened?” He was asking himself the question. “We never used to argue.”
She gave him an incredulous look. “We always argued. Don’t you remember?”
“No. Not really.” He’d thought he remembered it all.
He’d once, not long after she’d left for her aunt’s, lain awake in his hard, uncomfortable bed at Oxford and managed to recall the placement of every freckle on her face.
But she was right. That had been a very long time ago.
“I mostly remember laughter, Min. That’s what I remember. ”
“Yes. Laughing at me.”
The aggrieved tone made him smile. Now that was something he remembered. “Laugh at you? Surely not.”
“Yes, Jack. Every single day.”
“What a wretch I must’ve been.”
“You were,” she said firmly, refusing to smile back. “You are.”
“Was I…horrible even?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“No.”
“Go on, Min. Please. Tell me I’m a horrible boy. You’ve no idea how I’ve longed to hear it.”
“I will not!” She stomped off across the room, and the sight of that familiar angry step made his heart lift even higher. Of course they were still friends. They’d always be friends. Everything about her was written into his flesh and bone, the way birds were born knowing how to fly.
“I am not saying it,” she said, her back to him as she sorted irritably through a pile of parchments, entirely unaware how widely he smiled, “because it was a childish thing to say, and I am no longer a child. Even if you might still be.”
She turned back to him at that point, a martial light in her eyes. For once, she wasn’t shy at all, but stood and glared, every freckle aimed his way like the tip of an arrow.
He crossed the room and finally did what he’d been wanting to do since he first saw her at Almack’s. He gathered her into his arms, ignoring her squeak of surprise, and after a moment, her angry breath hissed out, her shoulders dropped, and she put her face against his chest.
“There,” he said, because this felt right. He was warm all over. “That’s where you ought to be. We’ll be friends forever, you and me, no matter what.”
She said nothing. He suspected her eyes were shut, though he couldn’t see her face.
With her head bowed to his chest, it was her neck he could see, a little bit of the ridge of her spine, dark curls against freckled skin.
He had an urge to touch those freckles, to draw lines between them.
He wondered if she’d be amused to discover his mind had apparently mistook the artist for the canvas.
But she let out a breath just as he began to smile at the thought, and she pushed him away, her voice small and shaky, but making him grin.
“Horrible boy.”