Chapter Ten #2
“Three.” She shrugged lightly. “My parents despaired. My mother repeatedly suggested that I attempt being less… myself. But I could never see the point. What use was attracting a husband who would not like me once he discovered who I actually was?”
“None at all.”
Christian set down his charcoal and regarded the paper before him.
“I think,” he said slowly, “it is finished.”
Fiona felt her heart give a small, uncertain leap. “May I see?”
He hesitated. “It has been many years since I last attempted a portrait. My technique is no longer what it once was—”
“Christian. Let me see.”
He rose and crossed the room, turning the page so she could view it.
Fiona looked at herself.
Or rather, she looked at herself as Christian saw her.
The woman on the paper appeared softer than she expected, more luminous. Her eyes were bright with amusement, her mouth curved in a half-smile, her hair escaping its pins in unruly curls.
She looked—Fiona thought with sudden astonishment—like someone worth knowing.
Someone worth loving.
“Is that truly how you see me?” she asked quietly.
“That is how you are.” He crouched beside her chair, studying her expression. “Do you not like it? I can attempt another—”
“I love it.” Her fingers hovered lightly over the page, careful not to smudge the charcoal. “I love it, Christian. It is beautiful.”
“You are beautiful,” he said simply. “I only recorded what was there.”
She looked at him then—this man who saw beauty in her so easily and could not yet recognise it in himself.
“My turn,” she said.
***
He was a terrible sitter.
Where Fiona had relaxed into the process, Christian sat rigid with tension—shoulders tight, jaw set.
He shifted repeatedly, adjusting his collar, running a hand through his hair.
Every few minutes, he suggested she draw him in profile, or asked whether the birthmark might be easier to omit entirely.
“Hold still,” Fiona said for the fourth time. “And stop touching your collar.”
“It is habit.”
“It is avoidance.” She looked at him over the edge of the paper. “You are trying to hide. Even now—especially from me—you are trying to hide.”
He stilled.
“I am not—”
“You are. Each time your hand goes to your collar, you are checking that the mark is covered. Each time you turn your head, you angle it so I see less of it.” She set down the charcoal.
“Christian. I have kissed that birthmark. I have traced it with my hands. I have memorised it. Why would you try to hide it from me now?”
He said nothing for several moments. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough.
“Because seeing it on paper makes it permanent. Real.” His gaze fell to the floor. “It is one thing for you to love me despite it—”
“Not despite,” she said quietly. “Because.”
“But to draw it—to make it exist outside this moment…” He swallowed. “What if you draw it and suddenly see what everyone else sees? What if your own hand reveals how ugly it truly is?”
Fiona rose and crossed to him. She knelt before the settee, taking his face gently between her hands and lifting his gaze to hers.
“I am going to draw you,” she said. “All of you. And when I am finished, you will look at that drawing and see what I see—a man who is strong, and beautiful, and entirely worthy of love.”
His eyes shone.
“And if you cannot see it,” she continued, “then I will draw you again. And again. As many times as it takes.”
“Fiona—”
“Hush.” She laid a finger lightly against his lips. “No more arguments. Sit there. Let me look at you the way you looked at me.”
She returned to her chair.
Picked up the charcoal.
And began to draw.
***
She was not, as it turned out, a natural artist.
Her lines were uncertain, her proportions slightly uneven, her shading hesitant. The Christian emerging on the page was a rougher, less polished likeness of the man before her—his features a little exaggerated, his expression harder to capture.
But the birthmark—she drew that with care.
She spent nearly half an hour on it alone, studying the portion visible above his collar: the way the colour deepened in some places and softened in others, the way it followed the line of his throat.
She drew it not as a flaw to be minimised, but as something integral—as central to the portrait as his eyes or his mouth.
Christian watched her work. She could feel his gaze on her, steady and intent, yet she did not look up. She was too absorbed, too determined to do it justice.
At last, she set down the charcoal. Her fingers were dark with dust, and her shoulders ached from bending over the paper.
“It’s finished,” she said.
Christian rose and came to stand beside her chair, his movements slow, almost cautious. He looked down at the drawing resting in her lap.
Fiona watched his face as he studied it.
Surprise flickered there first. Then uncertainty. And then something softer—something very like wonder.
“You made it…” He hesitated. “You made it look…”
“Beautiful?” she suggested gently.
“Important,” he said at last, his voice scarcely above a whisper. “You made it look as though it belongs there. As though it matters.”
“It does matter.” She rose, holding the page between them. “It is part of you. And you are the subject of the portrait.”
He looked at the drawing again.
“This is how I see you, Christian,” she continued quietly. “Not in spite of it. With it. Whole, and exactly as you are meant to be.”
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then he reached out and took the paper from her hands, holding it with surprising care, as though it were something fragile.
“I don’t…” He stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “I have never seen myself like this. In all my life, no one has ever…” He shook his head faintly. “I did not know it could look...”
He did not finish the thought. He did not need to.
Fiona stepped forward and slipped her arms around him. He kept the drawing carefully to one side as his other arm came around her, his face resting briefly against her hair.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you, Fiona.”
“You needn’t thank me,” she said softly. “I only drew what I saw.”
“That is precisely why I am thanking you.”
He drew back just enough to look at her. His eyes were bright, though there was no attempt to hide it.
“For seeing me,” he said. “Truly seeing me.”
She kissed him then—gently, with quiet certainty.
“Always,” she murmured. “I shall always see you, Christian.”
***
Later—much later—they hung the drawings in his study.
Hers was placed above his desk, where it would be the first thing he saw whenever he sat down to work.
“A reminder,” she said lightly, “of what I think of you.”
His portrait of her was hung on the opposite wall, where it would greet her whenever she entered the room.
“Now we can see each other,” she said, surveying their work. “Even when we’re apart.”
“I do not intend for us to be apart very often.”
“Neither do I. But the world has its claims.”
He slipped an arm around her, drawing her closer.
“Then the world will have to wait its turn.”
“Even so,” she said, glancing once more at the portraits, “it is nice to have a reminder.”
“I agree,” he murmured.
Outside, the rain continued its steady fall.
Inside, two people who had found one another against long habit and old wounds stood together, surrounded by quiet evidence of the love between them.
Fiona watched the firelight catch on the charcoal lines of his portrait and felt a small, steady warmth settle in her chest.
It had been, she thought, a very fine rainy day.
And there would be others.