Page 134 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

“Poppy.”

She stopped.

His voice was quiet.

He picked up one of the brushes and held it as if it were something fragile recovered from a ruin. His thumb moved along the handle. He tilted it, not to see, exactly, but to understand its balance.

Poppy folded her hands in her lap to keep from reaching for him too soon.

“I remembered,” she said, more softly now, “that afternoon in the maze. You were painting for Aurora’s closet.”

His head turned toward her.

“You thought I did not notice,” she continued. “You were painting the shelves. Such delicate little work, though it was only a closet. You had paint on your cuff, but you looked…”

She stopped before she could make him retreat.

He finished for her. “Foolish?”

“No.”

His fingers closed around the brush.

“You looked peaceful,” she said. “Not idle nor escaped from duty. Only…yourself.”

Hector lowered the brush to the desk but did not release it.

“Mrs. Patterson told me,” Poppy said carefully, “that you once wished to paint more than you allowed anyone to know. Before you…lost your sight.”

“She should not have burdened you with that information,” he said gruffly, trying to hide his emotions.

“She did not. She gave me a door I had not known how to open.”

His jaw tightened. “It was a young man’s interest.”

“It was yours.”

“A duke has limited use for such indulgence.”

“Then perhaps a duke has been starved of useful things.”

He went very still.

Poppy regretted the sentence until she saw his hand move again toward the supplies.

“I do not know what I can do now,” he said.

The admission was stripped of defense. It hurt to hear because he had not asked for comfort; he had simply placed a fact between them.

Poppy leaned closer. “Then do not begin with what you can do. Begin with what you want to touch. What colors do you remember? What shape your hand knows even when your eyes refuse certainty.”

His eyes lifted toward her. The pale gray of them held light in a way that made her chest ache. There were moments when she felt he saw more by longing than other men saw by sight.

He turned the brush in his hand. “And if I create something that never becomes anything worth keeping?”

“Then I shall keep it.”

His gaze fixed on her, unfocused and piercing all at once.