Chapter 26 #2
In those last years of their friendship, when she was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, she’d lived in terror of him discovering it. Maybe it hadn’t been wholly his fault their friendship halted when she left. In a small way, buried under the grieving loss, she’d been relieved.
Her secret was safe.
Now, in her confusion, she picked up her pencil from where it lay on her dressing table by her sketchbook. She picked up the sketchbook too.
Was she an artist? Or was she a blushing schoolgirl?
Would a single one of those men at Thornton’s have turned away from this opportunity?
Besides, drawing Jack, hiding behind the page, seemed a sanctuary compared to where this conversation might lead.
She could have made him go away, of course.
He would leave if she insisted. But the words, sensible as they might be, stayed lodged inside her.
Instead, as though watching someone else, she found herself getting her dressing table chair and pulling it closer to the bed.
She sat down with her sketchbook on her knee.
It was for art. She was purely professional.
But she sat stiffly with the pad on her lap, twisting her pencil between her fingers.
She could smell the fresh tang of the cedarwood from where she’d last sharpened it, though the dusty grey graphite had darkened the pale pink wood.
It got on her fingers too. One day, she would buy herself a set with pure Borrowdale cores.
“Where did you go, Jack?” she asked. “Where have you been these last weeks? You left town so suddenly.”
He fidgeted some more with his rolled-up sleeve, tucking it tighter. “Oh…some business. The estates.”
Lucy frowned. The vague, evasive answer didn’t quite cure her suspicion that she and George had played a part in forcing his flight from town.
“It might help,” Jack teased, “if you actually looked at my hand.”
She glanced up, scowling, and met the laughter in his eyes. He only grinned, giving her a small wave with the fingers of his model hand.
So she looked at it, two feet away on her own pillow.
It was hardly the first time she’d looked at Jack’s hands.
She already knew they were as unfairly attractive as the rest of him.
Broad and strong but still elegant. They looked capable of doing a great amount of work, though they likely never had.
But she hadn’t seen the strength of his wrist before—not this man’s wrist, with its sinews visible.
That had always been covered by his cuff.
And she had never seen this man’s arm, thickened from the lean youth’s she’d known.
A complex hillscape of taut muscles and veins and tendons, dark hair cresting the highs and further defining the furrows.
Subtle curves and lean lines. Thick, tight strength.
And above, the bulge of a larger muscle just visible below his rolled sleeve.
It was wrong to think of food. The bite of an apple. Tongues licking and teeth grazing and tasting salt.
She stood up, chair scraping on the floor. Neck so rigid it might snap, she got another candle from her drawer.
“The light is terrible.”
Jack watched her, silent.
Sitting back down, she again picked up her sketchbook and put pencil to paper. She was going to draw. And ignore the insistent throb of impure thoughts. Art, she reminded herself, was not lewd or licentious. Everyone had a body. Women would not be ruined at the mere sight of an unclothed man.
Of course…it depended on the man.
Scratch, scratch… Every scrape of the lead sounded enormous in the room, but she made herself continue.
A hand took shape on the page. Then another.
“Turn your hand over, please. Palm up.”
Jack obeyed, and she shifted closer, studying each pad of flesh, every line of his palm. She could see the whorls of his fingerprints. She was close enough to smell him. Clean linen and soap and warm, masculine skin. Her eyes flicked up and found his intent upon hers.
If either of them breathed, she didn’t notice it. No time passed. Everything hung suspended.
There were shadows under his eyes. She’d not noticed them until now, looking closely in the light of her second candle.
There was the redness of exhaustion in his whites.
His lashes were thick enough to look like a faint bruise at the base.
And his expression…his expression was almost that of their waltz.
No, it was worse. Warmer, softer, ardent…
Now he took a breath. She couldn’t miss that.
The sound of it scraped over her own skin, right down beneath her stays.
Once more, she stood.
“I must get a knife. The pencil needs sharpening.”
It was true enough. The fine details were impossible to capture with a blunt pencil. But there was a knife in her drawer. She didn’t need to walk down these cool and silent stairs to the studio below.
But she did need a respite from the close quiet of the room. From Jack.
She would ask him to leave… Her mind was hot and jangling… Tonight was enough, tonight was a mistake… She would ask him to leave.
She closed the studio door behind her and closed her eyes too, still holding the handle as she let out a long breath.
The familiar scent of paints and spirits was a tonic, sharp and pungent, as good as smelling salts.
She breathed deep. Again. Again. Then took a very, very long time to find her knife.
On the landing, pausing to steel herself, she jumped at the sound of a mouse scratching behind the wall.
This was ridiculous! Sneaking around at night, a man in her bedroom, a knife in her hand… How very like Jack! Only he ever got her into these situations.
It made her smile. She would tease him about it the moment the door was safely shut behind her. Laughter might defuse the awful tension. Laughter was what friends did. Laughter was normal between them.
But she stopped dead when she entered her room.
Jack was asleep.
It didn’t look very comfortable. He’d fallen asleep where he sat, slumped to the side with his feet still on the floor and his head on the pillow where his arm had lain.
Lucy quietly closed the door and put the knife down on her dressing table, wincing at the rattle it made.
But why bother being quiet? She had to wake him, surely? He couldn’t spend the night here. Dawn was only a few hours away.
Still, she trod softly to the bed.
“Jack.”
He didn’t stir at her whisper. And how very like Jack this was too, putting her in such an awkward position while he slumbered, unconcerned.
And how very like Jack to risk his neck climbing to her window.
How very like Jack to suddenly announce he’d happily strip naked as though it meant nothing at all.
How very like Jack to be here, in her room…
and how natural it seemed, after all her awkwardness.
Jack here. Jack asleep. Jack in her bed.
She’d had many a dream that started like this.
Instinct told her to sit on the bed near him. She would’ve touched his hair, his cheek. She might have dared to steal a kiss—Jack always slept like the dead. But it would be wrong. He wouldn’t take such liberties with her.
Instead, she stepped closer, leant over him, and pushed gently on his shoulder. “Jack. Wake up, Jack.”
He stirred, giving a sleepy hum. And curse her heart for warming at it. But she pushed his shoulder again, not letting herself be soft, and his eyes cracked open.
For a moment he stared up at her. He smiled, and the hand she’d been drawing came up to touch her cheek. “Dearest Min.”
“You’re dreaming, Jack.” That soft, ardent look was back. Her voice was unsteady. She took his hand from her cheek and squeezed it. “Wake up, you lump. You have to go before the servants get up.” But really, he just had to go.
His eyes opened properly, and she stepped back as he sat up.
“Good Lord.” His voice was croaky. He coughed to clear it. “I’m so sorry. Did I really fall asleep?” He rubbed a hand over his face then the back of his neck. It was stiff, no doubt. He moved rigidly when he stood, as though he’d been asleep for hours.
“Is it safe to climb back down the way you came up?” She couldn’t, wouldn’t, feel guilty at hurrying him away, no matter how exhausted he looked. It would be unthinkable to have him found here.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? You look half asleep still.”
He gave her a weak smile. “I could do it in my sleep. Besides, I didn’t come here only to get you in more trouble than Thornton.”
He went to the window and pulled back the drape. Lucy blew out her extra candle and shielded the other with her hand. The smell of the smoking wick was thick in the air.
It was still very dark out, and for all Lucy’s earlier thoughts about how Jack being here seemed natural, now, with her heart racing as he pulled up the window and the cold air blew in, it seemed anything but.
Jack in her room! And all the things he had said… It would seem like a dream in the morning.
He paused, one knee on the windowsill. “I’ll be here tomorrow, with my mother, my sisters. And I’ll be here tomorrow night, if you want it.”
He waited for an answer, but her throat closed, cowardly, the guttering candle hot behind her cupped hand. What she wanted had never been wise. And it was still as impossible as it had ever been.
If Jack was being gentler with her… If Jack sometimes now seemed to realise she was a woman…
It only made their friendship harder. She was still poor.
She was still a no one, and, if she stayed on her current path, she would be worse than that.
She’d be a social outcast. Reviled. No rich lady artist dabbling for her own amusement, but a professional painter.
A viscount would sooner marry a shopkeeper’s daughter.
“Take care,” was all she said.
He gave her one last smile before his head disappeared from sight, rueful and strangely serious. “I’m trying to. For the first time in my life, I’m trying to.”