She nodded thoughtfully. “Is there anyone else locally who might have bought one of Wesley’s earlier paintings?”
“Not that I know of.” He was relieved she had not pressed him about the crate he’d had carried up to the top floor. Not yet.
“Good,” she said on a sigh. “Hopefully Lord Thorp has the only one of me on display.”
Stephen thought again of the miniature painting he carried with him. Considered showing it to her. Explaining... But the words wouldn’t come. Instead he thought back to the day he had found it last year....
He had let himself into the room adjacent to Wesley’s bedchamber that his brother used as a workroom. Stephen was looking for the deed to a cottage they had recently purchased to accommodate a tenant farmer with a large family. The deed wasn’t in Humphries’ office, though Wesley had promised to deliver it there. Stephen guessed Wesley might have mislaid it among his personal papers and sketchbooks. Probably drawn something on it in the bargain.
Stephen fingered through the papers on his desk, and then those scattered around his easel. He found another haphazard pile near the hearth, apparently rough sketches rejected and being used as kindling.If Wes inadvertently burnt that deed, so help him...
Stephen sank to his haunches and sorted through the pile. And then he’d found her... Those soulful eyes. That golden hair. That long graceful neck. Why was this small portrait among Wesley’s castoffs? Stephen had wondered. And he’d kept it, without one ounce of guilt.
His brother had discarded it, after all. But Stephen had saved it from the flames.
The next afternoon, inspired by all the art she had seen at Langton, Sophie slipped her drawing pad from her dressing table drawer, where she’d kept it out of sight until now. She did not presume to think she might be able to draw or paint anything fractionally as good as the masterworks she’d seen in Lord Thorp’s gallery, but still her fingers itched to hold a drawing pencil or paintbrush again. Painting was difficult to do discreetly, requiring a palette and easel. So for the present she would attempt to satisfy her craving with drawing.
She began in her own bedchamber for privacy, but when Flora came in with her housemaid’s box and carpet broom, Sophie gathered her supplies and left the room. She went quietly downstairs and slipped from the side door into the garden. There she sat on a bench with her pad, pencils, and a set of Conté drawing crayons her father had given her for Christmas. She began by sketching the ivy on the garden wall, and the daffodils and another flower she was unfamiliar with—but then a plop of rain landed on her paper, quickly followed by another. She picked up her things and hurried back inside. She went into the morning room, which was rarely used in the afternoons, when Mrs. Overtree entertained callers in the white parlour.
Without flowers as a convenient subject, Sophie fell to sketching a face without any definite plan about whose face it was to be. She took a soft pencil, gave it a broad point, and began working away. Soon she had traced on paper a rectangular face with a broad forehead and a square jaw with a decided cleft down the middle of it. The contours pleased her, and her fingers continued to fill the outline with features: dark, strongly defined eyebrows, a long nose with a straight ridge and full nostrils, and a broad mouth with pleasingly shaped lips downturned in stern lines. She tufted in thick, bristling side-whiskers and black hair falling over the forehead. She left the eyes for last, because eyes were always a challenge and required the most careful working. And because to render them would render futile her willful denial of whose face it was. Finally, she drew prominent eyes and shaped them with a somber slant at the outer edges. She lightly shaded the irises and framed them in dark lashes.
She held the drawing pad away from her and regarded the whole. Something was missing. She darkened the shading, so that the resulting highlights flashed more brilliantly. Yes, he had a decided glint in his eye, though whether of anger or frustration or something else she was never certain.
She held it away once more. Much better. But still there was something missing. Dared she? Why not. The drawing was simply for her own amusement. An exercise for her languishing skills. No one but her would see it.
She took up her pencil again and added in the scar, snaking out from the bristly side-whiskers and across his cheek, the skin there darker, and pulling slightly at the side of his mouth, giving one corner an ironic lift.
There. She had Captain Overtree’s face under her gaze; at least a decent likeness. She knew she could do better with a model and in paint, but she was content with her first attempt.
So absorbed was she, that she did not hear anyone enter the room until a voice nearby broke the stillness like a cymbal. She jumped.
“Sophie? What are you doing?” Kate asked, a little frown of surprise creasing her face. Carlton Keith stepped in behind her, a drink in hand, though early in the afternoon.
Sophie quickly closed the sketchbook. “Oh, just... passing the time.”
“Why are you hiding in here all alone?”
“I’m not hiding. I just wanted...” It would be rude to say she had wanted to be left alone. Instead she said, “Some quiet place to wait while the maid is working in my... our room.”
“What are we drawing?” Mr. Keith snatched the sketchbook from her hand, and opened it to—thankfully—a page of flowers.
She pulled the book away from him. “Just some flowers and ivy I saw in the garden, before it began to rain.”
“Very pretty,” he drawled.
She detected a patronizing tone in his voice and wasn’t surprised. She knew Mr. Keith had idealized Wesley and stood in awe of his talent.
“May I see?” Kate asked.
Knowing it would only raise suspicions if she refused, she angled the page of flowers for Kate to see before once more closing the sketchbook and tucking it under her arm.
“Lovely,” Kate breathed. “I wish I could draw like that.”
“That’s right...” Keith mused, a speculative glint in his eye reminding her of Captain Overtree. “You are a budding artist yourself. Not surprising, I suppose, given you are a painter’s daughter. Wesley claims to have tutored you.” He lowered his voice and leaned nearer. “But I confess I doubt that’s what you two were doing alone together all those hours.”
“What?” Kate asked. “What are you talking about? Wesley and Sophie were friends? I did not realize.”
Sophie ignored her burning cheeks and said as nonchalantly as she could, “Oh yes, I met your brother last year in Lynmouth. My father keeps a studio there and I often accompanied him. I have met several artists there. Poets, too.”
