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She jumped, her pencil skittering over the page and leaving a light lead mark on the upper right corner.

“I’m sorry,” said Grace, turning quickly.

“No, please stay,” Ina said, patting the spot next to her in a gesture of goodwill. “Why do you think it’s Gavin?”

“His jaw is quite square, and he has that cleft in his chin.” Grace traced her finger over the spot.

Oh. Without meaning to, Ina had begun sketching her husband. She hadn’t even been thinking about him. Not really. And yet now that Grace pointed it out she didn’t know how she could have imagined the sketch was of anyone else.

“It’s unmistakably Gavin even if you haven’t filled in the eyes,” said Grace. “He has wonderful eyes.”

“That’s easy enough to fix,” Ina said.

With a few quick pencil lines, she filled in his deep-set eyes and the strong set of brows that topped them.

“There. That looks just like him,” said Grace. “Does he approve of you sculpting?”

“He must be horrified at the sight of a woman wielding tools like a caveman,” said Lady Sophia from her sofa.

“No,” Ina said sharply. “I believe he’s rather proud that his wife has an occupation she finds fulfilling.”

“An occupation?” laughed Grace. “Surely you mean a hobby.”

Ina tried to remind herself that Grace didn’t mean any harm by it. She was simply unused to the thought of a woman who considered the pursuit of art a serious endeavor. In Grace’s world, women didn’t toil at anything.

“Gavin is very used to seeing me at work,” she said. “Before we were married, he used to treat my studio as a way station between my father’s study and his bachelor apartment.”

“Were you alone?” Lady Sophia asked, horrified.

“The servants were just in the next room, and the kitchen was just down the hall. We always kept the door open,” Ina said, annoyed at having to defend herself to her mother-in-law. There had been nothing scandalous about Gavin visiting her while she worked, but this woman was making it seem dirty.

“I cannot believe your father and mother would’ve allowed such an arrangement,” said Lady Sophia.

“My mother died when I was young, so she can hardly object,” Ina said.

Grace squirmed in her seat, but Lady Sophia only narrowed her eyes. “Your father then.”

“He takes a rather enlightened view of friendship between the sexes,” she said, although really her father had hardly noticed.

The dowager sniffed and turned back to her needlework, effectively ending the conversation.

“Have you ever seen someone carve before?” Ina asked Grace, trying to move beyond her mother-in-law’s ugliness.

Grace shook her head.

“I’d be delighted if you’d stay with us in Edinburgh for a time,” she continued. “I can show you what it is that I do. Perhaps you might try your hand at sculpting too.”

“She most certainly will not,” said Lady Sophia from across the room, where she sat embroidering a pillowcase. “The very thought of traveling when her husband has been dead less than two weeks.”

Ina’s cheeks burned more from anger than embarrassment. She understood that the rules of mourning were strict. Young as she might have been, she could recall the seemingly endless number of stiff black crepe dresses her nurse had outfitted her in the year after her mother had died. Yet Grace wouldn’t be a freshly widowed woman forever, and there was no harm in giving a grieving woman something to look forward to.

“I only mentioned a visit because I was looking to the future,” said Ina with a glance at Grace. “The distant future.”

“Perhaps a trip to London, when you and Gavin open up the house for the season,” said Grace hopefully.

“We don’t have plans to do the season,” she said.

“Of course not this year,” said Grace, “but once we’re out of mourning.”