And the notion was enticing.
Chapter24
How could the other ladies find this enjoyable?
Olivia groaned and jerked her paintbrush away. Each time she pressed the bristles to the canvas, the watercolor bled and spread. How was one to get the paint to stay in one place?
Olivia clamped her teeth over her lower lip, tapped her paintbrush against the paint once more, and hovered it over the canvas for several seconds before pressing it against it. Patience had never really been her strength, but this was maddening.
MissKline was seated to her left, and Olivia cast a sideways glance over toward the lady’s canvas. Olivia could clearly decipher her subject matter: the swans on the pond. She looked back to her own canvas. Mr.Romano had instructed her to imitate the magenta roses in front of her.
Her painting looked nothing like flowers.
Laura had always possessed a talent for such things—she was always drawing or sketching—but she’d also always obeyed her governess and done her lessons. Laura also knew how to embroider, play the pianoforte, and perform all the tasks that the other ladies engaged in.
Determined not to fail, Olivia wiped her hair away from her brow with her bare forearm and tipped her brush in the paint once more.
She could do this. Shewoulddo this.
Approaching footsteps broke her concentration, and Mr.Avery appeared at her side.
And her mortification was complete.
She resisted the urge to turn the easel and hide her dismal failure. But she straightened her shoulders. She’d show no embarrassment. Her pride would not allow it.
“MissBrannon.” Mr.Avery drew near and put his hands on his hips, squinting at her canvas. “What are you painting?”
She pivoted in her seat to face him more fully. “Can you not tell?”
He lifted his gaze to the garden bed beyond her easel. “The roses?”
She smiled, noting how the breeze lifted his hair. “Did the color give it away?”
“Absolutely.”
Her shoulders relaxed slightly, and she lowered her brush. He’d seen her painting. And it hadn’t been as embarrassing as she’d anticipated. She hated the thought of being seen as incompetent in anything by the other guests, but Mr.Avery was different.
Perhaps it was because she, in some way, knew him, and he was not such a mystery. Perhaps it was because he knew the truth about her—her family and where she came from.
There was freedom in not needing to hide such things.
But there was another element—something about his manner that made her comfortable. She liked the way he talked to her—as an equal.
He came closer, and the breeze caught an alluring scent of sandalwood and smoke. Yes, he made her comfortable, but there was also an aspect to him that made her heart trip within her chest and her breath feel light.
“I’ve come across something that might interest you.”
The idea that he had been thinking of her shot a bolt of excitement through her, like a streak of lightning across the sky.
“It is nothing untoward, I assure you, but it does require discretion,” he continued. “Would you meet me privately in the library after we are done here? I would understand if you do not wish to, but there is a particular item on which I should like to get your opinion.”
She hesitated, for it did seem untoward... an unmarried lady should not be alone with an unmarried man. Was that not the reason for all the chaperones?
Her heart responded before her head. “I should be happy to. I’ll meet you there before we all gather in the drawing room, if Mrs.Milton can spare me.”
“Good.” He reestablished a greater distance between them. “I’d best go and compliment the other ladies on their artwork.”
She liked the hint of laughter and amusement in his tone. “By all means, Mr. Avery. I would not deny that for the world.”
