Her brother.
Lillian had not seen the duke since that first afternoon in the blue sitting room. He had been conspicuously absent during her subsequent visits; always in his study, always occupied with estate business, always somewhere that was definitivelynotwherever Lillian happened to be.
She told herself she did not mind. She told herself it was a relief, actually, not to navigate his prickly silences and cutting observations. She told herself she did not think about him at all.
She was, as previously established, not very good at believing herself.
"Oh, look!" Rosanne's voice broke through her reverie. "That almost looks like a tree! A proper,non-digestive-complainttree!"
Lillian examined the new addition to Rosanne's painting. It did, indeed, look somewhat more tree-like than its predecessor, though it still retained a certain...character.
"Much improved," she said warmly. "You see? Patience."
Rosanne beamed, and Lillian smiled back, and for a moment they simply sat together in the golden morning light, two young women united by watercolors and a growing friendship.
Then the door opened, and the Duke of Wyntham walked in.
***
Daniel had not meant to enter the morning parlor.
He had been on his way to the library, there was a particular volume on drainage systems that he needed to consult, and the morning parlor was not on the route to the library. It was, in fact, quite definitivelynoton the route to the library. One would have to make a deliberate detour to pass by the morning parlor while walking from the study to the library.
And yet.
Here he was.
Standing in the doorway, watching his sister and Miss Lillian Whitcombe bent over their paintings like conspirators sharing a secret.
Miss Whitcombe looked up first. Her hair was slightly disordered, a strand had escaped its pins and curled against her cheek, and there was a smudge of blue paint on her left hand. She looked comfortable and at ease, as though she belonged here, in this room, in this house, in his life.
The thought was so startling that Daniel nearly turned around and left immediately.
"Daniel!" Rosanne's voice was bright with surprise, and, he noted with some unease, with something that looked rather like satisfaction. "I did not expect you. Do come in. Lillian is teaching me to paint."
"So I see." He did not move from the doorway. He told himself this was because he did not wish to intrude. It was not because Miss Whitcombe was looking at him with those steady, disconcerting blue eyes, which made him not entirely certain what his face was doing in response.
"We are painting the garden," Rosanne continued, apparently oblivious to his discomfort. "Or rather, Lillian is painting the garden, and I am painting something that may eventually resemble a garden if one squints and has very generous standards."
"You are too hard on yourself."
"I am appropriately hard on myself. My tree looks like it has some kind of illness."
"It does not..." Lillian began, then stopped, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Very well. Perhaps a mild cold."
Rosanne laughed, and the sound of it, bright and unguarded andreal,did something complicated to Daniel's chest. His sister so rarely laughed like that. In London, her laughter was always careful, modulated, designed to cause no offense and attract no attention. Here, with Miss Whitcombe, she laughed as though she had forgotten to be afraid.
He should be grateful for that and hewasgrateful for that.
And yet some part of him, some small, shameful part that he did not like to examine, felt something else entirely. Something that felt uncomfortably like jealousy.
"Perhaps you should join us," Rosanne said, in the tone of someone making a suggestion they fully expected to be refused. "Lillian is an excellent teacher. She might even be able to improve your perspective."
"My perspective is adequate."
"I was not referring to your painting."
The words hung in the air for a moment, pointed and precise. Daniel looked at his sister and saw something in her expression that he had not seen before. A kind of gentle challenge. A quiet assertion that she was no longer simply going to accept whatever mood he brought into a room.
