Jack chuckled. “Then you’ve had a perfect day, I see. Art and art and art.” He swept a hand around the room. “Look at all this! Is this what you’ve been doing the last seven years? Painting all day long in that lonely house and getting wonderfully accomplished?”
She appeared to speak to the box, only peeking at him once. “I would not call it accomplished.”
“Don’t be modest, Min. By the look of all this you’re no amateur.”
“That is what I mean. I hope it ismorethan a mere accomplishment. It is…it is my life. And one day, I hope, my profession.”
Jack frowned. “Profession? You mean toworkas an artist?”
“I believe I might be good enough.”
“That’s not… You have to understand… It’s hardly genteel. Your father might not have left you any money, but he was very much a gentleman and—”
Her brows drew together in the disapproving frown he remembered so well. Yes—she still got the little line between the curve of those dark arches.
“If you think I care for that, you don’t know me at all.”
“You must care a little, Min. Everyone cares about that. And you’re…you’re largely friendless, and poor, and you’re not a child running barefoot in the woods anymore. You…you’re of an age to be married, and your name and your reputation matter now.”
She gave him a look somewhere between disgust and disappointment. “Thank you, Jack. But I do understand how society works. I know exactly what I’m doing.” She put the box down, though her hand stayed on top of it. She wore no gloves, and her skin now looked as healthy as the rest of her, the pale pink shell of a fingertip stroking back and forth overthe varnished lid of the box. “And Miss Sedgewick thinks it’s a wonderful idea. She knows all sorts of artists. And it doesn’t seem that you criticiseher. Quite the opposite.”
He pulled a face. As though that was relevant! “It’s entirely different.”
“How so?”
“She doesn’t mean toworkas an artist. And she’s…older. Experienced. She understands the world. But you’re only just entering society, your reputation is unformed. To immediately become known as…as an eccentric, when you’ve little enough to recommend yourself to any man seeking a wife—”
“Seeking a wife! I did not come to London with the intention of finding a husband! No matter what you or your sisters or anyone else believes, I am here for art and art alone.”
In her anger, she turned away from the box, took a random step or two, then halted, her arms folded. Indignation made her chest rise sharply, the fold of her arms amplifying everything.
Which was also not relevant. He looked studiously across the room.
“I’m sorry, Min. I didn’t mean to insult you. But surely you can see why this plan worries me?”
“You have no need to worry about me. I can take care of myself. Just because we were friends a long time ago doesn’t mean you need to feel any…any responsibility towards me.”
He straightened from where he’d been leaning against the desk. Of all the ridiculous things to say! “What kind of talk is that?”
“We were children.”
“Min! But we’re still friends now. Of course we are.”
“I have not heard from you in seven years.”
He paused, puzzled. “How could you? Our paths never crossed.”
“There are letters, Jack.”
As he stared, hardly any less puzzled, she turned away and began stiffly rearranging the contents of that complicated-looking box, all the glass jars clinking.
“How could I write to you? A young man write to a young lady? You know how that would’ve seemed.”
“I wrote to your sisters. You could have included something. I know men are not always the best correspondents, and I never supposed you would make a great one, but men sometimes write to their friends, I am sure.”
“Terrible scrawled things about horses and what tavern and what odds on which race. That’s not the sort of letter you would’ve wanted.”
Clink, clink,the thick glass of the small bottles sounded dull as pebbles against a horse’s hoof. “Anything would have been better than nothing,” she said.
