Chapter 10 #3
“Darling, now who’s making light? I could study ten years with John Constable and not even touch anywhere near your talent.” With a chuckle, he returned his journal to his pocket.
Andromena swallowed tightly as the worst thing happened: a remaining fragment of her heart fell to Edgar.
He brushed his knuckles down her cheek. “I know what you are doing, darling.”
He knows. He knows I love him…
Her stomach knotted up.
“You’ve got me talking about myself, so you don’t have to talk about your work.”
Relief slammed into her. “That’s not true.”
Edgar gave her that all-knowing look.
Her lips twitched into a smile. “All right, a little bit it was, but a bigger part of me,” Yearns. “Wants to know more about you. How you know so much about art.”
“Now, you know. And now we can go back to finding out how your damned family hasn’t put your skills to use.”
“They are. My uncle—”
“I’m talking about the fools who sailed the seas. When our families became connected, we shared our documentation. I saw their scrawling’s.”
Andromena laughed. “That is a fair descriptor of their sketches. But I cannot sail with them.”
“Why?”
That brought her up short.
Edgar arched one of his sleek eyebrows. “They don’t feel they’re able to keep you safe? Actually, forget that. I know the answer.”
She searched his beautiful face. “You’re…being serious.”
“I’m disappointed.”
“With me?”
“From a woman who sneaked out to a masquerade, around Ermine Street, the Rookeries, and God knows where else, I haven’t already found you; you haven’t even thought about voyaging the seas.”
“I love England,” she said, her voice small and defensive.
“I do, too,” he replied. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t love all the places I’ve seen and explored.”
“Well, I never wanted to leave.”
“You never wanted to leave—or you never thought about it because your family and society told you it wasn’t allowed.”
Andromena drew back, the words hitting her like a cold splash of water.
Myrtle had attended finishing school. Cassia and Linnie had both taken control of their own fates and saw the world.
Then there was Andromena. She had no control over her life or happiness.
Both felt as distant as the foreign places Edgar claimed she was missing.
He wasn’t near done with her. “By your earlier logic, the artifacts you insist should be left to lay where they were created, would never be seen.”
Her throat tightened. “H-How dare you?”
Edgar, who had gone back to studying her work, lifted his head and looked around, as if searching for the person who had offended her.
She knew by his frown, the moment he realized he was the source of her upset.
Andromena grabbed for her pad.
He dodged her efforts.
Tears burned her eyes.
His black curse filled the museum-like space. “Why are you crying?”
She sniffled. “Now?”
He exploded like a defiant boy. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you were thinking it. You’re always thinking it.”
Edgar snatched a hand through his unkempt curls. “Because you’re always weepy with me.”
“Then don’t give me reasons to cry.”
His pallor went death white.
Andromena couldn’t stop herself. “Y-You praising my art,”
“Because it’s bloody good, goddamn it!”
“Making ridiculous suggestions about things you know I’m not permitted to do.”
“Since when did people telling you what to do stop you?”
“And making me question my life and if I’m happy—”
His jaw slackened. “Andromena—”
Andromena saw her opportunity and took it.
She snatched her book from his fingers. Except her hands quivered so badly, it tumbled to the floor with a splat, where it lay damningly upon its spine, with one page exposed.
The absolute worst page.
Neither of them spoke. They stared in silence at a forbidden rendering.
Oh, God.
She thought she might have uttered it.
Because Edgar stared at her with a weird expression.
They grabbed it at the same time. His reflexes and speed gave him the advantage over her.
While he stared at the picture of them, shame spread hot and fast through her.
She had meant to destroy it. After her trip to the Rookeries, sleep alluded her, and she tried everything to get her mind to rest and to get herself to bed.
And invariably she did what she did when she couldn’t clear her head of worries.
She sketched something, but this time, unlike anything she had ever done.
Something naughty. Forbidden. Wicked.
As the artist, Andromena had masterfully captured the moment.
Draped across the heavy slabs of his muscular thighs, her body flowed into the broad strength of his arms. Every line of the scene appeared alive: the sharp, textured wrinkles of her redingote against the dark fabric of his trousers, the stark white of his knuckles where he grasped her hips, and the soft, helpless fall of her neck.
Then came their mouths, fused in a heat as sweet and binding as the gold honeybee necklace that had drawn them to this exact room today.
“My God, Andromena.”
The horror in his utterance was too much.
She decided she didn’t need her favorite notebook after all. If the rendering of them disappeared forever, she could pretend this day never happened; pretend he hadn’t seen it.
And gathering her skirts, she bolted…and did just that.