Page 56 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

Chapter 18

Two days later, Alistair once more donned his blue coat and returned to what he had come to think of as the scene of the crime. Not his crime, to be clear.

At least, not yet.

He’d spent part of the morning in the library with Edwina, going over the household accounts. If he’d needed another reminder of why he’d asked his aunt to find him a wife of means, his sister had supplied it—not only with proof of how she had scrimped and saved, but also in her soft-voiced retelling of the curate’s, her curate’s, efforts to help those on the estate who were in far worse straits.

If Alistair’s thoughts had tended to wander into forbidden territory now and again since leaving London, that meeting had been a spur to his conscience.

He was the Earl of Ryland. He had certain obligations, which he intended to fulfill.

Constantia must remain off-limits.

“Is all well with you, my lord?” she asked when he stepped into the studio.

She was clad much as she had been the day before, the heavy apron pinned over her light woolen dress. Her hair was once more down around her shoulders, but this time, it was tied back from her face with a length of cream-colored ribbon. She looked ready for work.

An easel sat ready with a blank canvas upon it. Nearby stood the wooden chair with another canvas propped on its seat. On that canvas, she had pinned some of the sketches she’d made two days before. Points of reference as she worked, he supposed.

“Why would you ask?” He approached, but not near enough to view the sketches of himself clearly.

Mischief twinkled in her eyes as they grazed over his face. “I do not think that scowl is one you would wish to have immortalized in oils.”

His efforts to clear his visage only succeeded in making a muscle leap in his jaw. “Surely you could use one of those faces for your purposes?” He nodded toward the collection of sketches.

“That is the general idea, yes. It lessens the need for you to sit in one pose or maintain one expression for hours. Do you wish to see?” With a fluid wave, she motioned him closer.

Reluctantly he examined the dozen or so renditions—some partial, even a single feature, as he’d imagined, but not as unsettling as he’d feared; others in profile, which drew rather more attention than he liked to his nose. Just three captured his entire face, and of those three, one in particular drew his eye. The strokes of which it was composed were starker, somehow, and there was a hint of wildness in his gaze.

It cut him to the quick to learn that she saw him thus.

It was not a picture—not a version of himself—he wanted anyone to see.

“I had not realized there was so much of my father in my face.” He knew his voice was rough, but he hadn’t a prayer of softening it.

Constantia seemed to recognize that this was dangerous ground. With a light touch to his shoulder, she motioned him toward the chaise. “I daresay there is a bit of him in all his children,” she said in a brusque, businesslike voice. “Lady Harriet’s love of drawing, for example.”

“Pray God that’s all they share,” he barked. But he seated himself on the chaise as she wished, angling his shoulders and turning his face toward the light. “Like so?”

“Look here, if you please.” She held up her pencil at the level of her nose, giving him something to focus on that thankfully was not her penetrating eyes. “Yes, that will do.”

While she applied herself to her work, his thoughts churned so loudly through his head that she could surely hear them. They drowned out the soft scritch-scritch of her pencil sweeping across the paper.

“You’ve seen some of his paintings, I know,” he blurted out when he could stand it no longer. “You must have done, when you straightened up this room.”

The movement of the pencil slowed but did not stop. “Yes.”

Despite the obvious reluctance embedded in her reply, the way she stretched the word to avoid having to say more, he couldn’t keep himself from asking, “You are a skilled artist. What is your expert assessment of his work?”

For a long moment, she said nothing. All of her attention appeared to be focused on some detail of her sketch as she frowned at the canvas, erased some errant line, and lightly drew another in its place.

At long last, she laid the pencil on the ledge of the easel, but still she did not look at him. “Some of the paintings were . . . extraordinary,” she said, in a voice that confessed she would rather have found them otherwise but refused to lie. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. There’s a—an unusual quality to the brushstrokes. A boldness. He had a way of capturing light . . .”

Even having steeled himself for praise of his father, he hadn’t expected the wistful, almost covetous, look in her eyes. As if the man’s abilities were something to be envied. But he knew just what she meant.

“His work used to hang in every room of this house,” he told her. Ordering it taken down had been one of his first acts as Earl of Ryland. He could not bear to look at it, so he’d had it wrapped up and stowed away. He ought to have had it destroyed.

“Given his choice of colors and subjects, I can certainly understand how being surrounded by it might be overwhelming.” She glanced toward him but did not hold his gaze. “But to leave the walls bare? Surely there must have been other artwork that could have taken its place. Something must have been there before.”