Emma’s gaze lingered on the movement. “Did it heal properly?”
Amélie shrugged. “I cannot paint for hours at a sitting. The wrist seizes. I learn to do things quickly, or not at all.”
There was a silence then, heavy with the knowledge that quickness—urgency—had shaped more than just the shape of her art. Or her life.
“I have never been quick,” Emma said, tracing the rim of her cup. “Or elegant. Or anything worth painting, really.”
Amélie leaned forward, her eyes fixed on Emma in a way that felt like a physical touch. “You do not see yourself clearly, Miss Goode. Or perhaps you do, and you simply dislike what you see.”
Emma bristled. “What I see is a woman who cannot hold her tongue, who causes only trouble for her family, who?—”
“Who is honest,” Amélie interjected, softly but with force. “Who is loyal, and brave, and who thinks herself unworthy of kindness. That is a rare combination, and not an unattractive one.”
The compliment—if it could be called that—struck Emma with a disorienting force. She felt the heat rising in her cheeks, and for a moment she was a child again, caught out in a secret mischief.
Amélie watched her with a half-smile, then poured a splash of wine into Emma’s teacup. “The willow bark will taste less like regret this way.”
Emma stared at the cup, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. She took a tentative sip. The wine did nothing to soften the bitterness; both flavors wrestled on her tongue, leaving her more awake than before.
“Do you miss France?” Emma asked, desperate to steer the conversation away from herself.
Amélie’s face changed, the lines around her mouth deepening. “Sometimes. The light is different there. Softer, more forgiving. Here, everything is sharp and gray.” Her gaze lingered on the lamp’s trembling shadow, then flicked to Emma. “But I imagine I would have left there, even if I’d had a choice. Some people are born restless. You understand, I think?”
Emma startled at being so neatly dissected. She wanted to protest, to be contrary, but instead found herself nodding. “I don’t much care for standing still,” she admitted. “Not for long.”
“Then perhaps there is something worth painting in you, after all.”
The way Amélie said it—soft, unhurried, with an undertow of challenge—made Emma’s pulse thump in her injured arm. She felt exposed in a way she was unprepared for, as if the duchesse had peeled away her skin and rearranged her, bone by bone, into someone new.
“May I?” Amélie’s hand hovered, palm up, between them.
Emma stared at it, unsure what was being offered, unsure even what she wanted. She set her cup aside and gave a single, cautious nod.
Amélie took her uninjured hand, just the tips of their fingers touching, nothing more. The contact was gentle, but it vibrated through Emma like an aftershock. Amélie’s thumb traced a tiny circle on the side of Emma’s index finger—a motion so intimate, so deliberate, Emma nearly snatched her hand away. She did not.
“You have a powerful hand,” Amélie observed, turning it palm-up in her own. “A hand made for tools. Or for holding on.”
Emma looked at their entwined fingers, at the contrast between her own square, freckled knuckles and the duchesse’s elegant, olive-toned ones. “I never thought of hands as beautiful,” she said, too abruptly.
Amélie’s smile was a private one, visible only in the slight softening around her eyes. “Nor did I. Until I learned what they could do.”
She lifted Emma’s hand to her lips and pressed a kiss into the hollow of her palm.
It was over in a second, but the sensation—heat, and the faintest moisture—scorched itself into Emma’s memory. She felt drunk, but her cup was empty. She could smell the wine, the berries, the faintest trace of Amélie’s perfume—a scent like orange blossom and woodsmoke.
“I should…” Emma started, but had no idea how to finish. She did not pull back her hand. “It’s late.”
“Or early,” Amélie corrected. “Time means little in a house like this.”
Emma tried to laugh, but the ache in her shoulder and the ache under her breastbone combined to choke her. “If anyone saw us?—”
The duchesse’s grip firmed, just enough. “No one will,” she said. “And if they do, let them wonder.”
Emma could not bear the weight of that gaze. She looked down at the battered kitchen table, at the crumbs and stains and the empty plate.
“My mother believed if you did a thing in darkness, it would stay there,” Emma said, her voice low. “But I’m learning that nothing ever stays hidden, not really.”
A silence stretched between them, elastic as a wire humming between them. Emma’s heart battered her ribs, as if seeking escape from the cage of her chest.
