He stood by the door in the candlelit studio at the top of his house, looking at the small wooden paint box on the table by the window, and did not say anything for a long, careful while.
Alice watched him. She watched his face. She watched a shadow pass behind his eyes. With a sinking feeling in her gut, she watched his face arrange itself in the way it had in the gallery in front of his brother’s portrait, and she understood that she had done a thing she had not until this moment been certain she had any right to do.
“Cassian.”
“Yes.”
“It was silly of me. I should?—”
Cassian crossed the room in three long strides, took her face in both his hands, and kissed her.
He kissed her in the small candlelit studio with his hands cradling her cheeks. He kissed her in the disciplined way he had not allowed himself for ten days.
When he drew back, his face was inches from hers.
“Thank you, Alice.”
“Cassian—”
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome.”
He drew a slow breath. “But it is not enough.”
“Cassian—”
“It is not enough, Alice.”
“What—”
“I need a model.”
She did not answer at once.
“A model?”
“A model, Alice.”
“For…”
“For the first thing I’ll be painting in sixteen years.”
She drew a shallow breath. “Yes.”
He turned around and went to the paint box on the small table by the window. He opened the lid and looked at the careful arrangement of pans and brushes inside, the small stoppered jars, and the tightly capped tube of linseed oil at the corner.
He stood for a long moment with his hand on the lid. Then he turned around.
“Alice.”
“Yes.”
“Take it off, please.”
“Cassian—”
“The wrapper. Only the wrapper.”
