Page 12 of Romancing the Artist

“Color comes later.” She tapped the paper again. “First a sketch, then an outline on canvas, and then the color. I have to know all the lines and details first.” She studied her work and shook her head. “Do you know what time it is?”

The question caught him off guard, and it took his mind a moment to form an answer. “Half past two, or a little more, I think.”

“Oh, bother.” She turned and looked about the ground, then turned over a corner of the blanket she’d sat on, revealing a wide-brimmed straw hat. Not a lady’s hat. It was too simply made and lacked any kind of embellishment. But she still put the thing on her head and kept it in place by tying a dark blue ribbon under her chin. “I must be going. I have an appointment at three o’clock.” She gathered up the blanket, rolling it up tightly before tucking it under one arm. She held her free hand out, and he put the sketchbook into her grasp.

“It was…interesting. To meet you, I mean.” He’d almost said it had been nice, but really she had made him feel so wrong-footed he wasn’t certain he could use the word with any honesty. “Will you be here long?”

“What, in the woods?” She laughed. “Of course not. But if you mean to ask if I will be in the neighborhood, then yes. I am here all summer.”

“Oh.” He tried on a smile, and then laughed with her. “Good. Then perhaps we will be lucky enough to have a proper introduction in the near future. And then I’ll know your name.”

She gave him a considering look, and her eyes still danced with humor. “Perhaps. I am told I will meet all sorts of people while I am here. I suppose you could be one of them.” She turned in the direction of Inglewood Castle.

He couldn’t let her leave without another word. It didn’t feel right. Edward called out to her, after she’d stepped into the trees. “I hope I get to see your finished scene—with the color added.”

She peeped from behind the tree she’d barely passed. “Have you a great interest in art?”

Her strange boldness inspired some of his own. “When it is created by pretty ladies, I suppose I do.” The moment the flirtatious comment left his lips, Edward felt his ears turn warm. Why had he said such a thing to a woman he’d known less than ten minutes? A woman who hadn’t even given him her name, in point of fact.

She neither laughed nor took offense. Instead, she bestowed a slow, curious smile upon him. One that made the warmth leave his ears and fill his chest instead. “Is that so? How interesting. Farewell for now, Sir Stranger.” She left without another word, and Edward stared after her for several long moments. Wondering if he had imagined her, so quickly had she gone.

Until he realized how stupidly he had behaved. “I could have offered to carry her things,” he muttered aloud to the clearing. Would it be odd if he hurried after her? Yes. Yes, he felt certain it would.

He took a different path to the shore. One that wove around the edge of the Inglewood estate rather than through it. Because coming upon the lovely woman a second time in the same afternoon, without a proper introduction, would likely turn him on his head.

No matter how pretty the woman, he ought not flirt with her. Even if curiosity about her tugged at his thoughts.

The waves crawled upward to the shore, slowing and leaving remnants of white foam before hurrying backward again, back to the sea. The gulls overhead dipped toward the water, then let the wind take them up again. For a time, Edward stood still, breathing in the salt-heavy air and closing his eyes.

He had no plan. Despite his ramble through the woods. And instead of trying to untangle the mess of his mind, he was thinking about the sprite in the woods.

It was Mariah Kimball he had to worry about. His friend had asked for his help in keeping a secret. A secret that had taken root in his life, despite the fact that it belonged to another. How best could he assist Miss Kimball whilst still keeping his parent’s expectations in check?

He opened his eyes again, staring out across the blue-gray water to the horizon, where a ship sailed far in the distance. Steadily forward, on course in a way Edward’s life ought to be.

He needed to devise a plan to convince his parents that marriage wasn’t on his agenda. And soon. He turned on his heel to return home, but Inglewood stood before him, the woods just behind it.

The mysterious woman’s smile, tilted and teasing, remained painted upon his mind, surfacing the moment he let his guard down. And he couldn’t help returning the imagined smile, even as he shook his head at himself. “Stop being a fool, Edward,” he muttered aloud, and above him a gull burst into its laughter-like call.

* * *

Caroline’s heart didn’t slow its rapid pace until she walked through one of the side doors of the castle, out of the sun and away from any possibility of that man coming upon her again. She’d acted ridiculously. All the lessons her grandmother and mother had given her, trying to teach her how to look and behave ladylike, had emptied from her head the moment that man had stepped out of the trees.

He’d made an awful noise, stepping on leaves and snapping twigs beneath his feet. She’d known someone was about to interrupt her quiet sketching, and she’d prepared herself to greet either a noisy child or a loose donkey.

When a man had appeared, without hat or coat on his person, Caroline hadn’t quite believed her eyes.

Hadn’t anyone ever taught him how to move quietly in the woods?

And then he’d come closer, his attention on the boat before he looked her way, and Caroline had found herself staring at a tall, broad, handsome gentleman with chestnut brown hair and eyes the color of the sea on a bright summer’s day. His bearing, his clothing, marked him as a gentleman. But the figure he cut—it quite addled her thoughts.

Until he looked at her directly, and Caroline realized what he saw.

She walked up one of the smaller staircases, trying not to breath like an overburdened ox and still keep hold of both blanket and sketchbook. Climbing two flights of stairs after crossing what felt like a mile of property just to enter the house, Caroline wondered how the countess ever accomplished anything. The lady likely spent most of her time traveling from one destination to another.

She paused for breath at the top of the stairs, realizing she still had half the length of the castle to cross before she came to her room.

The man in the woods had seen her sitting on the ground, in a plain brown dress she’d brought from home, without gloves, parasol, or even a bonnet atop her head. She’d looked like a country mouse, no doubt about it. Not like a guest of the earl and his wife.