Lady Roundtree popped her head back up from the pillows. “I can purchase watercolors. I know where to find the best ones.”
“It would be awatercolorif I were painting with watercolors,” Nora explained patiently. “This is a drawing. I sketch drawings with pencil. Please relax, Lady Roundtree. Everything is fine.”
Except it wasn’t, was it? Her heart beat for one person, yet she had an obligation to another.
Foolish to be torn to pieces over such a thing. It didn’t matter how fervently her heart beat for Mr. Grenville. He would not want her even if he knew how she felt. Why would he?
Despite growing up only a few hours’ distance from London, she was exactly the green country girl his peers all thought she was. She just happened to be able to draw.
What else was someone like Nora to do with a pencil? Correspondence was out of the question for someone who could not make letters stand still on the page. Nor could she be governess in some nursery. Nannies were expected to know how to read. Essays, literature, primers. Even scullery maids would be expected to follow a simple shopping list for market days.
For someone like Mr. Grenville, a public attachment to Nora would be far worse than a public scandal. She would be a disappointment. An ugly, shameful embarrassment, even in private.
Baronesses were expected to be able to do so much more thanread. They were expected to be absolutely perfect.
Lady Roundtree lifted her head again. “Do you have enough pencils? I can purchase more, you know. I know where to find the finest in all of London.”
“You’ve purchased more fine pencils than I could use in a lifetime,” Nora assured her. “Please don’t worry about the sketch. I have everything I need.”
Clearly unconvinced, Lady Roundtree lowered her head back down to the pillows.
The beautiful, wood-cased pencils and soft, cubed rubbers the baroness had purchased for Nora were a far cry from the bits of graphite encased in paper that Carter had somehow procured when they were children. Before the management of the farm had fallen completely on their shoulders.
Even the simple luxury of having nothing to do today but draw was so foreign as to make Nora feel as though she were constantly shirking some important task.
Drawing Lady Roundtree and her puppy was no chore—it was a dizzying pleasure. Nora would never tire of being afforded the privilege of losing herself in her art.
Lady Roundtree gasped and lifted her head. “Do you have enough foolscap?”
The corner of Nora’s mouth twitched. “One page should be enough for one drawing.”
“You have only one sheet left?” the baroness shrieked in alarm.
“There is plenty of paper,” Nora assured her. “I have a half-dozen untouched sketchpads. Please don’t worry.”
The baroness’s fretting over the state of Nora’s art supplies could not help but warm her heart.
Over the past few weeks, she had come to realize Lady Roundtree wasn’t the judgmental Society matron she presented herself to be, so much as a fussy old lady who loved hearing herself complain.
The baroness even nattered to Captain Pugboat when she thought no one could overhear. Her criticisms were not personal, or even meant to rebuke anyone. Hers was just the voice of a lonely woman who yearned to be heard.
Lady Roundtree turned her head toward Nora. “What if it doesn’t come out right?”
“I promise I’m drawing Captain Pugboat as an astonishingly leonine puppy,” Nora managed to say with a straight face.
“Not him!” The baroness’s lip trembled. “Me.”
Nora hesitated. “Are you meant to be leonine as well? Or in a costume of sorts?”
“Of course not. I’m a baroness. A lady accepts nothing less than the unvarnished truth.” She immediately returned her head to her pillow as if the interruption had never occurred.
Frowning, Nora stared at her for a long moment before picking the pencil back up and continuing the baroness’s sketch.
How she loved to dorealdrawings, rather than caricatures. The level of attention required for a truly realistic portrait was so much more intense… and so much more rewarding than the silly cartoons she dashed off in a matter of minutes. The hardest part of those was managing to add a legible caption.
The last caricature Nora had drawn had been a few days ago, when Lady Roundtree’s husband had returned home drunk as a wheelbarrow and a thousand pounds poorer. Nora could not imagine possessing such a fortune, much less losing it over a bottle of port at some gaming hell.
When she’d learned the gambling den in question was an infamous gentlemen’s club known as the Cloven Hoof, her imagination had caught fire. Particularly when the baroness claimed that all any proper lady knew of the club’s enigmatic owner was that he was tall, dark, and dangerous.
