“Where is the pattern from which you work?” he asked her. He wanted to be able to see the whole picture.
“In my head,” she told him.
“Ah.” He understood then why it was a passion with her. It was not just that she was skilled with her needle. “It is an art with you, then, Jane. You have a fine eye for color and design.”
“Strangely,” she said, “I have never been able to capture my visions on paper or canvas. But through my needle pictures flow easily from my mind to the fabric.”
“I was never any good at portraying scenes,” he said. “I always felt that nature did so much better than I could possibly do. Human faces are a different matter. There is so much life and character to capture.”
He could have bitten his tongue as soon as the words were out. He straightened up in some embarrassment.
“You paint portraits?” She looked up at him, bright interest in her eyes. “I have always thought that must be the most difficult form of art.”
“I dabble,” he said stiffly, wandering to the window and gazing out at the small garden, which was looking remarkably well tended, he noticed. Had those roses always been there? “Past tense. I dabbled.”
“I suppose,” she said quietly, “it was not a manly pursuit.”
His father’s language had been far more graphically scathing.
“I would like to paint you,” he heard himself saying. “There is a great deal in your face even apart from exquisite beauty. It would be an enormous challenge.”
There was silence behind him.
“Upstairs we will satisfy our sexual passions,” he said. “In here we could indulge all the others, Jane, if you wished it. Away from the prying eyes and sneering lips of the world. This is what you have created in this room, is it not? A den, as you call it, a haven, where you can be yourself, where all the other facts of your life, including being my mistress, can be set aside and you can be—simply Jane.”
He turned his head. She was looking steadily at him, her needle suspended above her work.
“Yes,” she said.
“And I am the last person with whom you would wish to share the room.” He smiled ruefully at her. “I will not insist. In future you will entertain me in the sitting room whenever we are not in the bedchamber.”
“No.” She let a few moments pass before elaborating. “No, I will no longer think of this room as mine but as ours. A place in which our contract and our relative stations in life have no application. A place where you may paint and read, where I may embroider and write, a place where there can be a woman at one side of the hearth and a man at the other. A place of quiet and peace, where all is well with the world. You are invited to make yourself at home here whenever you wish, Jocelyn.”
He gazed at her over his shoulder for a long time without saying anything. What the devil was happening? There could be only one reason, one passion to bring him to this house. He did not want any other reason. He might become dependent upon it—upon her. And yet his heart ached and yearned with hope.
For what?
“Would you like tea?” She was threading her needle into the linen and getting to her feet. “Shall I ring for the tray?”
“Yes.” He clasped his hands at his back. “Yes, please.”
He watched her do so.
“There is plenty of spare room in here,” he said. “I am going to have a pianoforte brought here. May I?” He could scarcely believe he was actually asking permission.
“Of course.” She looked gravely at him. “It isourroom, Jocelyn. Yours as well as mine.”
He thought for one moment that it might be happiness that rushed to engulf him. But he soon recognized it as an equally unfamiliar emotion.
Terror.
16
ANE WENT TO BED EARLY, BUT SHE COULD NOTsleep. She stopped trying after half an hour. She got out of bed, lit a candle, pulled a warm dressing gown over her linen nightgown, slipped her feet into her slippers, and went back downstairs to her den. Their den. Their haven, he had called it.
Mr. Jacobs was still up. She asked him to build up the fire again. The young footman brought the coals and asked if there was anything else he could fetch for her.
“No, thank you, Phillip,” she said. “That will be all. I can find my own way to bed when I am tired.”
