The yellow lamp lights did nothing but pick out the angles of his face, the ridiculous beauty of his jaw and the line of his lashes. She could watch him while he looked away and see the way he swallowed, the way he moved his jaw as though to speak, then swallowed whatever those words had been too.
“I’m not stopping you drawing or painting,” he said quietly. “You can do as much of that as you like. At home.”
Lucy gave a bitter laugh. “And how am I supposed to get access to a model? You don’t understand any of it.”
“There are a hundred things you can draw without needing…needing to drawthat.”
She coloured, his prudishness making everything seem more sordid than it was.
“Oh, you are just as bad as the rest of them. I am so…so disappointed in you.” Her voice cracked, but she steadied herself, certain, for once, that she was right and he was wrong.“You are judging and condemning me for doing what every male artist has always been allowed to do. For men it is not even worthy of comment; it is as small a thing as sharpening a pencil or mixing a colour. But forwomen…!”
His eyes met hers for a moment, his brow lowered, mouth frowning. But he was listening.
“Why does it have to be so different for us?” she pressed, giving voice to everything she’d stored inside for so long. “Do we not have bodies too? Do I not have a body, Jack? Flesh and blood and bone. What is the shame in that, in these parts of us that move and carry us around, these parts of us that are the visible expression of ourself in this world—or is that what you men hate so much? That women be allowed to exist at all, to take up space with our bodies, or even our minds and voices? Should we be silent and invisible and our bodies only there for the use of men?”
“Hate?” repeated Jack faintly. “I’ve never hated any part of you. I never could.”
“But you would stop me doing what I love! You would stop me doing what I need to do. I’d go mad, Jack. If I can’t create the things I want to… You can’t ever understand it, but I’d go mad.”
She whispered the last part, the sting of tears in her eyes, and that pain, that heartbreak pain, squeezed her throat. He would never understand.
Jack shook his head as though dazed. “You’re putting thoughts in my head that have never been there. I’ve never thought about any of this in that way before. I only thought about your safety, about keeping you safe…”
“And what about my happiness? What of that?”
He shook his head again, as though to clear it. “I…” It was a long pause. He stared up the street. “You are right.” More firmly, he repeated it. “You’re right. I didn’t think about it that way. I didn’t think what it means to you, or what I was asking you togive up. Again—again—I only thought of my own wants: to keep you safe, to protect you. But that is whatIwant, isn’t it? It’s what I want because to me you are…you are precious.” Another small pause, whisper soft. “But it is not my choice to make.”
He looked at her, but it felt like a conversation he was having with himself. An old argument that had been gone over before. And one that he always lost. He stayed looking at her for a long time, grey eyes dark in the shadows. The rattle of a passing carriage came from the end of the street, and somewhere a watchman cried the hour.
“Does George know?” he asked quietly. “Does he approve?”
A jolt went through her, and she fought back a blush. “No. He does not know.”
“And…” he began tentatively, “and hiding it from him doesn’t give you pause for thought?”
“I am not hiding it! It has never…never come up.”
Jack gave her a strange look. “You don’t discuss such things?”
“George trusts me.” Her voice was prim and awkward from the lie.
“You should tell him,” Jack said. “Your husband…your husband should know of something like this. George is far more fastidious than I am in matters of propriety, Lucy. I really think it might be wise to…to discuss something of this with him, before… Well. You know what I mean. I want you to be happy.”
Before they were marriedwas what he meant.Before it was too late.
Lucy looked down, fiddling with the frayed corner of her sketchbook. There was a long pause. She couldn’t look at him, not with this particular sting of tears in her eyes. Her guilt was too loud.
“You can go back,” Jack said softly. “Now or next week. I won’t stop you.”
The words, so gently spoken, sent a quiver through her. They stung that torn, heartbroken part of her. But her gratitude felt like weakness, and she stiffened against it. “I do not need your permission.” She spoke without anger, but firmly. “I am going to go, whatever you say or do. That is, if Mr Thornton will allow it after tonight’s disruption.”
“No one has come out yet. They’re still all there. I can escort you to the door.”
But she shook her head, feeling weak again, though she knew it was the truth as she admitted, “I can’t tonight. I can’t face them after…” After her embarrassment. After this—this conversation in the street. She had no bravery left. “It’s pointless going back tonight anyway.”
“Why?”
“I was trying to get enough sketches to complete a piece—only pastels, there is no time for oils. But there is a meeting of the Royal Academy in a few days’ time. Mr Thornton was going to sponsor my submission. It might have led to something—even getting my piece chosen for exhibition or at least beginning to get my name noticed. But there is no time to complete it, not really. And…and anyway, the model was not…not quite what I needed.”
