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“I wouldn’t have broken that church window if the light were like this,” he said meditatively. He didn’t tilt his head, but he rolled his eyes up, trying to peer toward the dome.

“No?” She murmured it, shifting slightly, going over her lines, filling in the waves of hair.

“No,” he said. “The fog was thick that night, and the window was red, a screaming red. That’s how I felt when I saw it. It screamed at me. Red like artillery firing, metal so hot it smokes. I had to stop it.”

The bottom edges of his hair almost touched his collar. She sketched the lines of his shoulders.

“Is this what you told the magistrate?”

“The magistrate didn’t waste a minute on me. No, this is the first time I’ve spoken of it.”

“Blaming the color red,” she murmured. “The idea . . .”

The neck was a cylinder rising, at a slight forward incline, from the shoulder girdle. Important not to flatten it. She shaded the notch at the base, contoured the faint bump of the Adam’s apple, followed the muscles as they wrapped around the sides.

“Did it stop, the screaming?” she asked, shading with the broad face of the charcoal. “When you broke the window?”

“It did, but then the police officer started shouting.” The self-mockery was there again, in his voice. “If it was peace I was after, I should have chosen a different course of action.”

He rolled his shoulders, tossed the hair from his eyes. His whole posture shifted.

“Drat it,” he said. “Have I spoiled it?”

But she’d finished.

“Move at will.” She shut her sketchbook. A good drawing. She returned the sketchbook to the bench, brushing the charcoal from her fingers.

“It’s easy to talk to you.” He was grinning; she could hear it in his voice. She looked up with an eagerness she couldn’t disguise. That grin. Those eyes. But she saw his back instead. He’d wandered away. She watched as he poured out another glass of whiskey, her heart deflating. He gave her a sideways look, flashing a smile no less beautiful than the one she’d imagined.

“Light’s going,” he observed.

It was indeed, going fast. Soon, she’d be on her way home, to sew, to sleep, to wake and begin again.

“I have the mad idea,” he said, “to invite you to join me for dinner.”

Amazed, she folded her arms. Protests rose to her lips. She’d smudge the tablecloth with charcoal. She’d set all the servants’ tongues wagging, and someone might even challenge her to a smock race. She’d no idea what spoon one used to eat mock turtle soup.

All she said was: “Do it. Invite me.”

He spun in a circle, his glee contagious.

“Do you like salmon?” he asked. “Mutton? Duck?”

He reached for her, and she went breathlessly into his arms. His mouth tasted hot, of salt and peat.

“Turbot?” he murmured. Now his lips teased the sensitive spot behind her ear, found the hollow beneath her jaw.

“Turbot.” She repeated it doubtfully.

“Don’t decide. I’ll have Humphreys bring everything,” he said, releasing her and sweeping his jacket from the hook in almost the same movement. “You can see what strikes your fancy.”

She jammed her fist into her stomach, tried to keep her face expressionless, but he could see the change come over her. He shrugged into his jacket, eyebrows raised, half-inquiring, half-concerned.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” She smoothed her skirt, which was burgundy and showed no smudges. “Nothing, I . . .”

She would not sulk like a child denied a pretty bauble. It wasn’t that she wanted to dine in Weston Hall, that cold, rather hideous house. Not at all. It was just . . .