Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
“Come in.” Penelope didn’t look up at who had knocked as she spoke.
The gray paint she’d mixed was sitting wrong on the porcelain palette. Too much Prussian blue, a cold, bruising color that felt like a winter shadow rather than the soft, filtered light of the orchard.
It was a stubborn, difficult hue, and the struggle to correct it felt important enough to hold her entire attention through the sharp rap at the door.
Mr. Ashton opened the door, but he didn’t step through. He stood with his formal announcement posture. Chin lifted, chest expanded, breath already drawn for a dignified introduction.
Then, the space behind him shifted. A heavy silhouette eclipsed the light of the hallway.
The Duke of Brigrock walked right past the butler and into Penelope’s studio.
Penelope’s hand jerked. The fine sable brush slipped from her slick fingers, clattered against the edge of the wooden stool, and hit the floor with a wet thud. It left a long, jagged smear of that bruised gray-blue across the polished floorboards.
Mr. Ashton instinctively bent to retrieve it, but Penelope waved him away.
“It is fine, Mr. Ashton, thank you.”
She didn’t care about the paint stain, nor her fallen brush—not when the Duke was standing there, commanding the room as though he himself owned it.
“As you wish, my lady.” Mr. Ashton straightened, bowed once, and withdrew.
The door clicked shut, the sound echoing through the studio like a gavel.
Penelope stood in the center of her sanctuary, the air thick and smelling of the paint chemicals.
She was wearing a pale linen dress, one with short sleeves, so she did not stain the cuffs, and could stay cool at the same time.
The collar was open to catch the cross-breeze she’d hoped for.
A smudge of gray paint marked the side of her right hand.
She looked at the Duke of Brigrock, who was standing in the middle of her private world, his large frame making the high-ceilinged room feel suddenly, claustrophobically small.
She bent down, her linen skirts hissing against the floor, and retrieved the brush herself. Her movements were stiff, fueled by a surge of adrenaline.
She walked to the worktable, dropped the brush into a cleaning jar with a sharp clink of glass, and pulled a cloth from the hook. She kept her back to him, scrubbing at her hand for exactly the amount of time it took to steady her breathing without appearing to need the delay.
“Your Grace,” she said, her voice sounding far more composed than she felt. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t answer immediately. The silence stretched, filled only by the distant, rhythmic ticking of a clock and the rustle of the trees outside.
She finally turned. He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the walls.
She had long since stopped seeing the studio as a gallery; to her, it was a workshop of unfinished thoughts and abandoned dreams. Now, she was forced to see it through his eyes.
Canvases were stacked four and five deep against the wainscoting like discarded memories. Sketches were pinned in chaotic, overlapping layers, a map of her mind’s restless wandering. Three paintings hung on the south wall, unframed and raw.
And then there were the lakes.
Three of them, hung near the window where the afternoon light hit the pigments most clearly. Deep, dark water. Reeds like spears. She had not taken them down because she had not yet admitted to herself why she had been unable to stop painting them since the day at the creek.
The Duke was absorbing it all with that unhurried, heavy attention he gave everything, his gaze lingering on the lake studies. At the corner of his mouth, a smile so faint it was barely a flicker, appeared. She had never seen such a thing on him.
“Your Grace,” she repeated, the sharpness of her tone intended to snap his eyes back to her. “I asked you a question. To what do I owe this visit?”
He looked at her then, and for a heartbeat, his gaze moved to the pale, exposed skin of her arms and the curve of her neck.
She had forgotten entirely about the dress.
The midday heat had made the studio stifling, and she had pulled on the lightest, most informal garment she owned, never expecting a visitor, let alone a man who made her skin feel too tight for her body.
The warmth that crawled up her throat was visceral, a heat that had nothing to do with the sun. She reached for the wool shawl folded over the back of her chair and pulled it around her shoulders, clutching the edges together over her chest as if it were armor.
The Duke looked at the shawl, his jaw tightening, then he cleared his throat. The softness in his expression vanished, replaced by a grim, professional clarity that felt like a shield of his own.
“I would like to offer to teach your son,” he said, his voice deep and resonant. “Riding. Archery. History, for that is most important, and chess, if he has the stomach for it.”
The shawl slipped from her numb fingers. She caught it just before it hit the smear of paint on the floor. “I beg your pardon?”
“Three times a week. At my estate. You would be present for the duration, as would members of my staff. I have already considered the logistics and the propriety.”
She stared at him, her indignation rising like a gale.
“I do not know what gives you the right to walk into my home and dictate my son’s education. I am not letting Nicholas anywhere near you. We have been through this, Your Grace. My answer remains the same.”
“Nicholas has been to my estate since the day you came to mine,” Malcolm said, his voice dropping an octave.
Every part of Penelope stilled, even as she tried to open her mouth, a denial already forming on her tongue, but he cut her off.
“Do not try to say otherwise, for I am sure you do not know for certain, while I do,” he said.
“Your son has been slipping through the hedge to see Hector regardless of what either of us has decreed or ordered. He is going to keep coming, Lady Romwich. He is a boy of singular will, and he knows what he wants, and he is relentless in getting it. The only remaining debate now is whether he does it behind your back, with you wondering where he might be every time he is not in your sight, or with you standing ten feet away.”
Penelope’s jaw went tight. Every wall she had built, every reasoned defense, was pressing against her teeth.
She couldn’t release a single one because he had just stripped her of her certainty. Nicholas had been deceiving her, and the realization that she couldn’t control her own son’s curiosity…
It hit her devastatingly.
“The boy is curious,” Malcolm said, as if knowing exactly what she was thinking.
“He is curious and lonely, Lady Romwich, and we have a chance to help with both of those things for him.” His voice softened into something almost like a plea.
“He should not be punished for his natural curiosity, I see that now. It is natural for his age. But his riding is poor because his instructor is a coward who will not let him feel the horse. While I did not give him a bow, I asked him one time to show me his archery stance, but even that is dangerous. He has the instincts of a hunter and the foundation of a house of cards. He is learning through his own means because he has nowhere to find guidance, and it can be harmful.”
He took a half-step forward. “If you permit it, I would like to be that guidance.”
Penelope’s anger tempered for a moment, simmering lower. Charles had all but demanded to be the guidance, pushing himself upon both her and Nicholas.
If you permit it.
She was being given a choice. It did not entirely feel like one because, deep down, she knew the Duke had a point. But she could still hold her head high and say no.
She could—and Nicholas would continue scampering off anyway.
Perhaps the Duke was right: perhaps it was better that she be there, supervising, ensuring nothing went awry.
Still, her stubbornness held firm. “Nicholas has a fine tutor for Latin, and I am certain I can find other, better tutors for—”
“What I am offering your son is not Latin,” the Duke said gently, as if knowing she was trying to fight him.
“It is the ability to stand on his own feet. To be independent—to know what he is curious about, and to learn it. If anything, you ought to dismiss that tutor, if he is anything like your son’s other ones.
Save yourself the coin, and consider my help. ”
Again, it was a choice. Consider. It was not something veiled in threat.
Penelope pressed her lips together, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
She looked at the wall beside his head, unable to meet those piercing eyes.
She realized just how close his eye color was to the paint splatter.
Had she purposefully been trying to mix the exact blue-gray shade?
“Why?” She managed to say. “Why would you offer this? There is no gain for you, and men of your standing tend to do nothing without a price. What do you want in return?”
“Nothing.”
“I do not believe that,” Penelope said firmly. “I have spent my life around men who trade in favors. What is the cost?”
“I am not asking you to believe it. I am asking you to bring Nicholas to my estate three times a week so he can learn what I can teach him.” He took another step, his presence overwhelming the scent of paint, his head tilting to the side.
“Lady Romwich, what makes you think I cannot be trusted with him? Truly.”
“You know very well your reputation,” she answered, but her voice was thin. “I have heard some stories of your… of your ways. The way that the war took you in, only to throw you out as a different man.”
“What else do they say?” he pressed, stepping closer.
Penelope flinched, knowing it was true.
The Duke took another step. “That I am angry? An untamed man who cannot control his temper? That I will inflict harm upon anyone who wrongs me?”
This close to him, Penelope’s mouth went dry. She couldn’t find the words, but she knew Amelia, at least, had warned her to stay away.