Chapter Ten
The rain returned on their fifth day of bliss.
It came softly at first—a gentle patter against the windows, a greying of the morning light—and then with increasing determination, until the world beyond Thornwick’s walls dissolved into a curtain of silver and mist. The gardens vanished.
The cliffs disappeared. Even the sea, usually so insistent in its presence, faded to a distant murmur beneath the steady drumming of rain.
Fiona stood at the window of the yellow parlour, a cup of tea cooling between her hands, and watched the water thread down the glass.
“We could go for a walk anyway,” she said, though her tone suggested she did not entirely mean it.
“We could.” Christian’s voice came from somewhere behind her. “Or we could remain where it is warm and dry and discover other ways to occupy ourselves.”
“What sort of ways?”
“I have a few ideas.”
She turned.
He sat upon the settee with deliberate composure, one arm resting along its back, long legs stretched before him. There was something different in the ease of his posture, in the quiet confidence of his gaze.
Not long ago, he would have held himself more rigidly, as though the weight of the world sat squarely upon his shoulders. Now the tension had softened. The armour remained—but it no longer seemed welded to him.
She wondered if she had anything to do with that.
Or perhaps she had merely given him permission to lay some of it aside.
“What sort of ideas?” she asked, crossing the room and settling beside him.
“Well.” He shifted slightly on the settee, considering her. “I thought I might sketch you.”
Fiona blinked. “Sketch me?”
“I used to draw when I was younger. Before I persuaded myself it was a frivolous pursuit unworthy of a duke.” His tone remained light, though she caught the thread of uncertainty beneath it. “My tutors once claimed I possessed a little talent. I thought I might discover whether any of it remains.”
“You wish to draw me?”
“I do.” His gaze lingered on her face with quiet attentiveness. “I should like to capture you on paper, so that I may look at you even when you are not sitting across from me. Is that terribly sentimental?”
“It is extremely sentimental.” She smiled. “I approve entirely.”
“Then you will sit for me?”
“On one condition.”
His eyebrow lifted. “Which is?”
“When you are finished, I shall draw you in return.”
A flicker crossed his expression—uncertainty, perhaps, or the old instinctive hesitation. She understood immediately: he was thinking of the birthmark, of how it might appear rendered in charcoal, of seeing himself through her eyes.
“You need not—” he began.
“I want to.” She reached across the small table between them and briefly touched his hand. “I want to draw you, Christian. All of you. Will you allow it?”
He was quiet for a moment.
Then, slowly, he inclined his head.
“Very well. Though I reserve the right to burn the result if it proves truly horrifying.”
“I promise nothing about quality,” she said lightly. “Only enthusiasm.”
His laughter—warm and genuine—filled the room as he rose to fetch his supplies.
***
The sketching materials had been tucked away in a cabinet in Christian’s study, apparently untouched for years.
Fiona watched as he laid them out upon the table in the parlour: sticks of charcoal in varying thicknesses, pencils worn nearly to the wood, sheets of paper yellowed at the edges but still usable.
There was something almost reverent in the way he handled them, as though greeting old companions after a long separation.
“When did you stop?” she asked.
“Drawing?” He considered. “I cannot say exactly. It happened gradually—a day missed here, a week there—until I realised I had not picked up a pencil in months. Months became years.” He gave a small shrug.
“I told myself I had outgrown it. That a grown man—particularly a duke—had no business indulging in childish pursuits.”
“That is nonsense.”
“I know that now.” He turned a stick of charcoal thoughtfully between his fingers. “I know a great many things now that I did not know before you arrived.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the fact that happiness is not childish. That pleasure is not frivolous. That allowing myself to enjoy something does not make me weak.” His gaze lifted to hers, warm and unguarded. “You have taught me a great deal, Fiona Hart.”
“I have taught you nothing,” she said gently. “I have merely reminded you of things you already knew.”
“Perhaps.”
He gestured toward the armchair beside the window.
“Sit there, if you please. The light is best from that angle.”
She arranged herself in the chair, suddenly aware of every movement. “How should I pose? Should I look at you or away? Should I smile? Look thoughtful?”
“Simply be yourself.” He settled onto the settee opposite, paper balanced on a board across his knees. “Talk to me. Forget I am drawing. I want to capture you as you are—not as you imagine you ought to be.”
“That is rather a great deal of pressure.”
“Then let me relieve it.” The charcoal moved across the page in quick, confident strokes. “Tell me about your childhood. The happy parts. What made you laugh before you learned to be sensible?”
She watched his hand move, trying not to dwell on what he was seeing—what he was translating into line and shadow.
“Adelaide,” she said at last. “My cousin. She made me laugh more than anyone.”
“The fairy hoax?”
“Among other things.” Fiona smiled faintly.
“She believed everything I told her, no matter how improbable. I convinced her the cat could speak, but chose not to. That eating vegetables would eventually grant her the power of flight. And that our great-aunt was secretly a witch cursed to appear as a perfectly ordinary old woman.”
“And how did your great-aunt feel about that?”
“She never knew. Adelaide was terrified of her for years—left offerings of biscuits outside her door in hopes of appeasing her—and I lacked the courage to confess.”
Christian laughed, his charcoal never pausing.
“You were a menace.”
“I was… imaginative. There’s a difference.”
“I am not certain there is.”
She watched him work, fascinated by the quiet intensity of his concentration. His brow was drawn, his lower lip caught lightly between his teeth, every part of him absorbed in the act.
He looked—she thought—strangely free.
As though drawing allowed him, for a moment, to set aside the weight he usually carried.
“What about you?” she asked. “What made you laugh as a child?”
The charcoal paused briefly.
Then resumed.
“Not very much,” he admitted. “My childhood was not… abundant in laughter. But there were moments.”
Another pause.
“There was a footman, when I was very young—Arthur, I believe. He used to make shadow puppets upon the nursery wall. Rabbits, dogs, dragons. I thought it was magic.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“It was.” His voice remained even. “Until my father discovered it and dismissed him. He said it was inappropriate for a servant to entertain the heir in such a frivolous manner.”
Fiona felt the old ache of it.
“I cried for a week,” he added quietly.
“Christian—”
“Do not.” He looked up at her, meeting her gaze. “Do not pity me. That is not why I told you. I told you because you asked—and because I want you to know all of me. Even the sad parts. Especially those.”
“I do not pity you.” Her voice softened. “I ache for the child you were. That is not the same thing.”
“Is it not?”
“No. Pity is reserved for those we consider lesser.” She held his gaze steadily. “What I feel for that boy is love—for who he was, and for who he became despite everything.”
His throat tightened. He dropped his gaze back to the paper.
“You make concentration exceedingly difficult,” he said roughly.
“Good. You were becoming far too absorbed. I was beginning to feel like a bowl of fruit.”
He laughed—genuinely startled—and the tension eased.
“A bowl of fruit?” he repeated.
“Something placed there to be looked at, though not expected to be particularly lively.”
“My sincerest apologies,” he said. “I shall endeavour to restore your sense of animation.”
“Please do.”
They exchanged a smile, the warmth between them as tangible as the fire in the hearth.
***
An hour passed. Then two.
The rain continued its steady percussion against the windows, and the light in the parlour faded from grey to greyer, yet neither suggested stopping.
Christian worked with quiet intensity, occasionally asking Fiona to turn her head or shift her posture.
She obliged, filling the silence with stories, observations, and the easy conversation of two people who had become—without quite noticing it—each other’s closest companions.
She told him about her failed Season—the year she had been presented to society and had failed, quite spectacularly, to attract a single serious suitor.
“It was not entirely my fault,” she said. “I simply did not know how to be what they wanted. I was too opinionated. Too quick with my tongue. I made the mistake of actually engaging gentlemen in conversation rather than smiling sweetly and agreeing with everything they said.”
“How shocking of you.”
“I know. Quite disgraceful behaviour.” She shifted slightly in the chair, stretching muscles that had grown stiff.
“There was one gentleman—Lord Crawley, I believe—who spent an entire dance speaking of nothing but his horses. His horses, Christian. In exhaustive detail. Their breeding, their training, the cost of their upkeep. And when I asked whether he had any other interests, he looked at me as though I had suggested he might enjoy eating children.”
“And what did you do?”
“I suggested that perhaps his horses might benefit from a broader education.” She smiled faintly. “He did not request another dance.”
Christian’s laughter filled the room.
“You are a terror.”
“I am discerning. Again, there is a difference.”
“A difference that left you unmarried for how many Seasons?”