Amélie did not rise, but instead shifted to one side of the breakwater, making space for Emma to sit. The invitation was unmistakable, and Emma perched awkwardly, careful to keep a full foot of air between their bodies.
Emma hazarded a glance to the duchesse’s face in the pearlescent light. The sharp, delicate planes and angles of her features were softened, made vulnerable, by the dawn. There were fine lines around her eyes that Emma hadn’t seen in the candlelight, testaments to a life lived, to laughter and sorrow Emma could not begin to imagine.
For a while, they watched the horizon in companionable silence. The sun had just begun to burn away the fog, bleeding faint gold and peach into the steel-blue sky. Seagulls wheeled overhead, their calls muted by the dampness of the air.
Amélie drew with quick, sure strokes, pausing only to blow a lock of hair from her brow or smudge a line with the side of her thumb.
Emma found herself watching the duchesse’s hands, the way they moved with authority and grace. She tried not to notice the curve of Amélie’s neck, the delicate way her collarbone shifted beneath the starched cravat, the faint crescent of a scar just visible above the fabric. She tried not to notice, but she did.
“Another soul who cannot bear to miss the sunrise?” the duchesse said in a low murmur, nearly lost beneath the sound of the waves. She looked from Emma to the horizon, where a faint blush of rose and gold increasingly spilled over the grey. “Or are you, perhaps, fleeing the family constraints of a high society wedding?”
The question was so unexpected, so oddly perceptive, that a startled laugh escaped Emma’s lips. “Is it so obvious?”
“A little,” the duchesse confirmed, a ghost of a smile touching her lips. She turned her dark eyes on Emma, and there was no judgment in them, only a calm, assessing curiosity. “You left rather abruptly last night. I was afraid our baronet’s tedious politics had mortally wounded you.”
“I have a sturdy constitution,” Emma replied, her voice regaining some of its usual directness. “But a low tolerance for pomposity.”
“A sensible affliction. It saves a great deal of time.” The duchesse gestured toward the shoreline. “This is a better tonic for it than sherry, I find. The sea does not care a whit for the Corn Laws or the tedious, stupid opinions of men.”
The wry smile she flashed Emma pulled all the blood from her face.
They fell into an easy silence, watching as the sun’s liquid gold now leaked across the surface of the water. Emma, who had expected to feel awkward and exposed, instead felt a strange sense of peace. The duchesse did not seem to demand anything of her—no witty rejoinders, no social graces.
She simply shared the morning.
“You’ve seen many sunrises, I imagine, Your Grace,” Emma said, the words coming out before she could stop them.
The woman’s laugh thrilled down Emma’s spine. “Did you just call me old?”
Ice water turned the thrill to mortification. “No…I would never… I just… I mean…”
“I know. I’m teasing, mon ami.” The duchesse laughed at her, but her gaze became distant. “I have seen this sun rise over the rooftops of Florence and set the Aegean on fire. I have watched it turn the snows of the Alps pink. But it is never the same performance twice. That is its genius, don’t you think?” She spoke of the sky’s cycle with a casual worldliness that made Emma’s existence feel like a single, unturned page in a vast library.
“I have only ever seen it rise over Albion,” Emma admitted, a familiar pang of inadequacy striking her.
“There is no shame in knowing one piece of the world intimately,” Amélie replied gently. “It is its own form of wisdom.” She looked at Emma then, truly looked, and Emma felt pinned by that intelligent gaze. “You love your home. It’s written all over you. The way you stand. As if you have roots.”
“I’d still like to explore the sea,” she confided.
No one had ever said such a thing to her. No one had ever looked past the clumsy girl in the ill-fitting gowns to see the person who belonged to the land. A warmth spread through her chest, entirely different from the feverish heat of before.
“Most people like to sketch sunsets,” she said, looking to escape the all-knowing intimacy of the duchesse’s eyes. “You’re likely the only duchesse who wakes before dawn.”
“It is the only time I can think,” Amélie said, without looking up from her sketchbook. “Before the day fills with expectation and noise. Here, no one demands anything of me.”
Emma snorted, a brief, unladylike sound. “If only the rest of the world shared your good sense.”
Amélie’s lips twitched. “If only. But then we would all be out here at dawn, and it would be far less peaceful.” She turned a page, then paused. “You did not sleep.”
Emma startled, caught off guard by the observation. “No. I don’t…rest well, in new places.”
“Neither do I,” Amélie said. “I suppose that is the price of being always a guest, never quite at home. Even in one’s own house, sometimes.”
The words hung between them, weighty and true. Emma nodded, unable to articulate the strange, aching recognition that thrummed through her.
Amélie closed the sketchbook with a snap, setting it aside. She looked at Emma then, truly looked at her, and the force of it was almost overwhelming. There was no flirtation in her gaze, only a frank curiosity that made Emma’s skin prickle with awareness.
“You are not what I expected, Emmaline Goode,” Amélie said softly.
