Page 22 of The Muse of Maiden Lane

She flicked a glance to his canvas, temporarily diverted. “You’re painting?”

“The beginnings of a landscape, as you see. Not one of my best efforts.”

A doubtful frown puckered her brow. “It looks quite good to me.”

“From a distance, perhaps, but not when you view the brushstrokes at close quarters.” He rolled his chair back a turn, giving her a better view. “See for yourself.”

She hesitated. “I don’t wish to disturb you.”

“It’s no disturbance,” he said. “I was just breaking for tea.”

There was a pause. A weighty one. Teddy’s fingers curled tight on the wheels of his chair. He ruthlessly tamped down the urge to say something more.

“Very well,” Miss Hobhouse replied at length. “If you’re certain.”

Hope surged in Teddy’s breast, despite his best efforts to contain it. Restraining a smile, he motioned to the canvas, inviting her to look her fill. The gesture was deceptively nonchalant. It seemed to do the trick.

Miss Hobhouse slowly advanced into the room, as careful as a fox entering the secluded glen of a known hunter. Wariness shadowed her gaze, at war with a palpable curiosity. Curiosity about his work.

Or perhaps it was about him.

Teddy set a guard on his tongue. He wasn’t going to be candid with her. Not this time. He wouldn’t risk frightening her away.

She came to stand in front of his unfinished painting, studying the canvas for a long moment. The finely woven wool of her dark blue day dress caught the light, making the modest fabric gleam as sensuously as velvet.

Teddy watched her with rapt attention. She was a young lady comfortable with silences. Still and grave in her perusal, as he suspected she was in most areas of her life. It took an effort not to pepper her with questions. He had so many of them.

“How talented you are,” she declared at last.

He swallowed an unreasonable swell of pride. She wasn’t the first to compliment his work. Yet, her opinion held unusual weight. If he impressed her favorably enough, she might agree to let him paint her.

“I’m pleased you think so,” he said.

“And yet so young,” she added, still gazing at the canvas.

“I’m four-and-twenty. Older than you, I’d wager.”

“Only by two years.”

So, she was two-and-twenty. He’d guessed her age to be somewhere thereabouts. But that wasn’t what made him look at her with increased intensity. It was that their conversation had so rapidly escalated to the personal. He didn’t know whether to be encouraged by it or insulted.

Perhaps his unapologetic candor had inspired her own? Or perhaps…

Perhaps she was one of the countless females who regarded a gentleman in a wheeled chair as a variety of nonentity.

Teddy had met such women before. Ones who addressed him not as a man, but with the same degree of informality as they’d use with a boy in the nursery. After all, what harm could a crippled man do to a lady’s virtue?

He hadn’t thought Miss Hobhouse was such a lady. Not based on her behavior on the night of the ball. Then, she’d responded as any respectable young miss might when opportuned by an impertinent gentleman. She’d taken umbrage at his forwardness. She’d reprimanded him for using her given name. She had, ultimately, fled.

Teddy was nevertheless on his guard. “It’s not the years that matter in art. It’s the experience of life.”

She cast him an interested glance. “I suppose you’ve had a great deal of that experience, studying in Paris as you have.”

Another irrational surge of hope caught him by the heart. She knew something about his life. Which meant she’d asked someone. Which meant she was intrigued by him.

He forced his fingers to loosen from the wheels of his chair. A man mustn’t appear too eager, he reminded himself. Eager for approval. Eager for admiration. Especially not where pretty girls were concerned.

Pretty? Ha! Who was he fooling? She was as shimmering as a moonbeam. As bright as a star, even with that atrocious auburn dye marring her silver hair.