Her body, spread across deep burgundy bedding. Her chin was lifted, proud, although her eyes were partially closed behind her spectacles, the fan of russet lashes casting a shadow across her flushed cheeks, and berry lips curved in satisfaction. One arm was draped across her torso, the other tossed high over her head, hair spreading wildly around her like a cumulonimbus burst of flames, her form arched as though she had just experienced pure bliss, down to her curled toes. He had not portrayed her as she wanted to be, slimmed and constrained, but exactly as she was. And somehow she was…
“Beautiful,” she whispered around the lump in her throat.
She heard his chuckle, deep and warm, behind her. “It only took a gallery exhibition to convince you of that,” he said. “Perhaps I should have done this earlier.”
Ellie turned to face him. “I don’t sleep in glasses.”
Henry laughed, broad and free, and she couldn’t help smiling in response. “I know,” he said, “but you’re most comfortable when you have them and can see clearly. I wanted you to be comfortable, even in paint.”
Her breath caught and Ellie pressed her palm to her chest. Was she really considering this? Could he win her back so easily, just by creating something beautiful?
It isn’t his art that is beautiful. He made me beautiful.
“Ellie,” he said, and she realized he had stepped back from her. “I don’t want you to think I’m trying to convince you to change your mind. As much as I disagree with your decision, I respect you far too much to pressure you into something you don’t want.”
Panic returned—he would not pursue her? Did she want him to?
Yes, she realized. She had wanted this, wanted him to prove that he loved her, that she wasn’t merely an obligation, a step towards respectability. Ellie had never seen herself as worthy of him, but he had all along.
Loving someone gilds them, wraps them in a protective glow the entire world can see if only they look hard enough. Henry had been the first person to truly look.
“There’s one more thing,” he said, breaking into her thoughts.
Henry held his sketchbook, the book she had seen in his hands so many times in Rome, containing pages she had ached to see but respected his privacy too much to intrude. His expression was guarded, as though he was considering holding this back from her. “I needed you to see how I see you, how the world sees you. And now that you understand, I can leave and my heart will survive. I'm sleeping again, and eating right, boxing every day. I haven’t touched a drop of liquor since the night Victor found me. I need you to know I can be without you, Ellie.”
Well, this was not what she had hoped to hear.
“I’m not trying to win you back, but build you up, make up for what I destroyed in you. You helped me find my strength, my passion and my value to the world. You saw me—still see me, I hope—as a person worthy of genuine affection, of love and appreciation.” He gave a self-effacing chuckle and shook his head. “I always knew I was an idiot. It turns out I have been surrounded by everything I thought I was missing for years and was just too stubborn to see it. You’ve always made me want to be better, Ellie, and show me who I already am.”
“You’re not an idiot,” she broke in, but Henry held up his palm.
“Iwasan idiot, but I’m not any longer. I won’t ignore what the world has given me, nor will I ignore what I can give the world. Thank you, Ellie, for helping me find the confidence to value who I am.”
Is he saying goodbye?Her pulse thrummed violently as she stepped forward, but Henry opened his sketchbook. The page showed his initial sketches of her nude portrait in lifelike detail in pencil. “I drew it the second night we made love, after you fell asleep in my bed. I couldn’t sleep until I finished it, so I could never forget it. Not that I ever could or ever will.” Henry’s eyes rose and met hers, their chocolate brown depths pulling her in.
“I captured the past with these paintings, but I also wanted the future. And whatever picture I drew in my mind, you were in it.”
He turned the page, and they were there, outside the Pantheon, his hand holding hers as they crossed the threshold of the building. Another page, another image, his body cradling hers in front of a fire.
“There are more of those,” he admitted sheepishly. “They got a bit racy.”
Ellie giggled, unable to hold back the warmth glowing in her breast.
Another page, this time in a garden, Henry cupping her cheeks as he kissed her. “Those are the gardens at Heathercliff,” he said. “I’d love to take you there. You’d adore it.”
She nodded, tears threatening to spill. “I would.”
“I also used some imagination to give us a bit more travel together.” He turned the page again, revealing several small sketches of the pair engaging in a continental tour. At the Eiffel Tower, in front of the Duomo in Florence, strolling in the lavender fields of Provence. But in every drawing, the landmark was merely the background. Their love spilled off the page.
“It comes down to this, Ellie.” Henry sucked in and exhaled a deep breath. “Icanlive without you, and you without me, but I don’t want that, not at all. I’ll give you whatever future you want. If you want us to remain lovers only, I will make it my life’s work to make you sing with pleasure every time you give me the opportunity. If you want to move to Italy and give tours in the Colosseum, I will attend every tour and allow you to correct every guidebook I can find. If you want nothing to do with me anymore, I will walk away and you will never see me again.” He worried his bottom lip before releasing it. “If you want me to be your husband, I will find the closest vicar and troth myself to you before the day is out. But the future is yours, entirely. I only hope that I have a place somewhere in it.”
He hesitated a moment before turning to the next page, and her heart caught as she saw the drawing. She lay in bed with Henry at her side, his arm wrapped around her shoulders. His other hand reached down to cup the bundle in her arms.
A baby.
“You deserve to be a mother, Ellie,” he said, his brows drawn. “You were dealt a terrible hand, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have everything you wanted.”
A tear, then more, spilled down her cheeks, catching in her lashes before she swiped them away. “That’s not fair to you,” she said, her voice shaking. “You want a family too, and I can’t provide it.”
