“Do you never go outside, or into society? You must become bored at times.”
Miss Whitney gave her a knowing look. “Are you bored, when you’re alone with your paints?”
Sophie blinked at her. “How did you know I paint?”
“Oh. Perhaps it’s second sight.” She winked. “Or perhaps the fact that you have paint beneath your fingernails....”
Sophie looked down to check, though she’d not painted in weeks.
“Made you look!” The old woman giggled like a schoolgirl. “Sorry, my dear. I was only teasing you. Stephen told me.”
“Oh.” Sophie forced a polite little chuckle, though she was discomfited by the changeable woman. She asked, “But don’t you miss being among other people? You must get lonely up here.”
“Lonely, I can’t deny. But not bored. I like to read, although nowadays my mind wanders along with my eyes. I still like reading short stories, and news articles. Magazines are my favorite. Kate brings up hers when she has finished with them. Do you subscribe to any?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“That’s a shame.” Winnie sighed. “Kate said she would ask Miss Blake to lend me her copies ofAckermann’s Repository, but so far she hasn’t been willing to part with them. At least not to me. She’s on Mrs. Overtree’s side where I’m concerned. The elder Mrs. Overtree, I mean.”
“I knew who you meant.”
Miss Whitney cocked her head to one side and mused, “And what about the younger Mrs. Overtree? Which side will she end up on, I wonder?” She watched Sophie, her blue eyes alight with interest and perhaps a trace of worry. “Do you mind sharing a few morsels of your husband’s time with me?”
“Not at all.”Better you than flirtatious Flora, Sophie thought, but she didn’t say so.
“Good. I lived in a poorhouse once, as a girl.” Winnie shuddered. “And it’s an experience I hope never to repeat.”
That evening, as they walked down to dinner together, Sophie asked the captain where he had gone while she had been busy with the dressmaker and later with Winnie.
An odd look filled his eyes—surprise, secrecy, guilt? “I... am not at liberty to tell you just yet. But it’s nothing to fear, I assure you.”
Sophie hoped that was true.
That night, the captain was late coming up for bed. Libby had come and gone and still he had not appeared, nor did she hear anything from his dressing room. Sophie climbed into bed with the first volume ofSense and Sensibility, which Kate had lent her, and tried to read.
Sometime later, Sophie paused and looked up. What had she heard? A thump and a scrape as though someone had tripped behind the bed. If there were mice in the walls, they were awfully big. She closed her eyes to listen, and heard the drone of a voice coming from somewhere nearby. From her dressing room? Her pulse accelerated at the thought.
Breathlessly, she whispered, “Who’s there?”
But silence was the only reply. She laid aside the novel, climbed from bed, and tiptoed to her dressing room. Moonlit and empty.
She returned to her book.
A short while later, she heard footsteps and muffled male voices, and again rose to investigate. Quietly opening her door, she saw the captain and Edgar carrying a crate between them, up the stairs. The corner hit the stair rail and nearly dropped. The captain let out a mild epithet. Then the men repositioned their grips and continued upward.
Sophie’s stomach clenched. Was that the crate that held Wesley’s paintings of her—those they had packed up in Lynmouth? Was he carrying them up surreptitiously, to avoid his parents asking to see them?
She tiptoed across the corridor and partway up the stairs, curious to know if they were taking the crate to Wesley’s room. She assumed they were. But the men continued up the next flight of stairs toward the top floor.Why?Was he hoping to hide them, to keep them from being discovered even after he’d gone? Was he so ashamed of them? Of her?
Or did the crate not hold paintings at all? Was it something for Winnie, or... someone else? She wanted to ask, but considering his evasive answer about his earlier errand, and about “Jenny,” she decided against it.
The next day, after Captain Overtree left to meet with a tenant, Sophie grew restless. She thought about that crate she had seen him and Edgar carrying. She thought about the paintings Wesley had done of her this year. She was also still curious to discover if the large painting she had posed for last year was up in his room or studio. Otherwise, what had he done with it? She knew it was risky—emotionally and otherwise—but she wanted to take a peek. Dare she? Especially now with Mr. Keith in residence?
Feeling self-conscious, Sophie walked up one flight of stairs. First, she strolled through the gallery, her heels clicking and echoing down the long room. She ran a hand over the hobbyhorse. Studied the old family portraits. And stood at the window overlooking the gardens and beyond, Miss Blake’s home, Windmere, which she could see quite clearly from there. She glimpsed Captain Overtree talking to a man in brown coat and flat cap beside a low stone wall. A female in green cloak and bonnet came by—Miss Blake, she guessed, though she could not make out her features. The man in brown tipped his hat and returned to his work on the wall, but the woman remained to talk with Stephen. Sophie wondered what the two had to talk about, and reminded herself they were childhood friends.
Gathering her courage, Sophie walked out into the corridor and paused at the door to Wesley’s studio. Venturing in there would be easier to explain than being found in his bedchamber, she decided, though she was curious to see that as well. Listening for anyone nearby and hearing no one, Sophie inched open the door and slipped inside, closing it quietly behind her.
For a moment she simply took it all in. Dust motes floated in shafts of sunlight from tall windows. A shrouded easel. Jumbled supplies, scattered papers and rags. The faint smell of paint and turpentine.
