Page 34 of Courting the Wrong Duke

“Unlike women in portraits.” She gestured lightly toward the adjoining gallery. “Walk into the next room and you'll find ladies arranged in precisely the same graceful poses, wearing precisely the same serene expression, painted by gentlemen who seem convinced we all think and feel alike.”

Gabriel followed her glance toward the portrait gallery before looking back at the landscape.

After a thoughtful silence, he nodded. “I believe you are right.”

She looked at him, pleasantly surprised by how readily he accepted the criticism.

“I've looked at paintings all my life,” he admitted. “Somehow I never noticed.”

“Most gentlemen do not.”

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I imagine I shall notice now.”

Their conversation carried them naturally toward the next painting, Gabriel listening with genuine interest as Isabella began pointing out details William suspected he would never have observed on his own.

William watched them disappear farther into the gallery before turning toward Rosalind, who had stopped before a solitary landscape hanging in the quietest corner of the room.

He lingered where he was, watching Rosalind rather than the landscape before her.

She stood perfectly still, her gaze fixed upon the lonely stretch of countryside captured in oil. Rolling green hills disappeared toward a distant horizon beneath a broad afternoon sky washed in pale gold and soft peach, while a narrow footpath wound through the grass with no village or road in sight.

There was very little happening upon the canvas.

And yet she looked almost peaceful.

It was the first time since Lord Eastmere's disappearance that William had seen anything resembling calm settle across her features.

He stepped quietly to her side. “I am surprised my brother agreed to lend this one.”

Rosalind glanced toward him before looking back at the painting. “Why?”

“Because it is my mother’s favorite.” His gaze followed hers across the bright sweep of countryside. “She likes to keep it in her morning room whenever the collection returns to Aldermere. I never expected Algernon to part with it, even for a few weeks.”

“Yet he does.”

William smiled faintly. “He insists she enjoys knowing other people may admire it as well. I have never entirely understood what she sees in it.”

“I think I do.”

He studied the landscape again. He had always thought it pleasant enough, certainly, but somewhat empty. A solitary figure walked the distant path beneath an enormous summer sky, with nothing waiting ahead that William could see.

“It seems rather lonely.”

“Only if you believe the traveler is lonely.”

William looked at her.

“There are no houses,” she said softly, her eyes never leaving the canvas. “No village waiting for him. No one expecting him to arrive at a particular hour or become a particular sort of person.”

A thoughtful smile touched her lips.

“He could be anyone.”

William followed the winding path toward the horizon. He had stood before this painting more times than he could count and had never once considered that possibility.

“I imagine it would feel,” she said, pausing as she searched for the words, “free.”

“Free?”