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Dominic looked at him. “A sanctuary?”

“She is here, she is everywhere, she works here.”

Bloody hell. “You’re in love with my wife.” The words came out like bullets, but there was a limit to what a man could take.

“Philistine!” Langlois screamed.

He didn’t resemble a man in love. Queensberry’s eyes had had longing in them that Dom was pretty sure could be seen in his own eyes now. To the contrary, Langlois looked outraged.

“You are in love,” the Frenchman snorted. “L’amour is not for me. I am a man of great seriousness, I!”

His English was disintegrating. Langlois turned his back and started vigorously swirling his brush around, mixing colors before he darted at his canvas.

It wasn’t unlike how Torie painted. Sometimes Dominic walked in and found her staring at her easel. Then she would fly at her colors and swoop over the painting and . . . do something to one leaf, or one petal.

But when he tried to ask what, she brushed him off, saying that she couldn’t explain it.

“Langlois,” he said.

That earned him a Gallic stare.

“Explain this painting to me.” Dominic pointed to the painting hanging on the wall, the wilting flowers Torie had given him for their wedding, but never really given to him. It had gone up on the wall of her studio, and sometimes he found her peering at it, almost as if she intended to wipe it with turpentine and start over.

He should probably rescue it.

Twenty minutes later he was as bewildered as if the Frenchman was talking of pears. Not flowers, but time. Not just time, but time passing, time dying, time caught in time. “Le temps qui passe,” Langlois concluded, picking up his paintbrush and going back to his hapless pear.

Chapter 36

As soon as they arrived at Huntington Grange, the duchess helped Torie set up her easel and paints before the red locomotive. The duke dragged out an overstuffed chair from the drawing room himself, for there was no butler. In fact, there were almost no servants at all.

That first day, Torie just stared at the machine: walking around it, then returning to her seat. The machine had no life or sense of time beneath its red paint and shiny curves. But it did have purpose, which was interesting.

She wasn’t alone, as the duke and duchess were busy implementing ideas they gained while meeting other steam enthusiasts around the country. They ignored her, darting here and there around the engine.

The second day, Torie began to sketch, trying to decide which angle to paint from. Not straight to the side, because somehow she had to give the painting a feeling of speed.

Nanny Grey—who had an almost saintlike patience—came outside to tell Torie that she thought the ducal children weren’t being bathed as much as they might. “No nanny and no nursemaid. The boy, Master Silvester, makes certain his sisters are fed and in bed, though of course I’ve taken charge during our visit.”

“Oh dear,” Torie said, trying to envision mentioning the state of the nursery to Her Grace.

“I’m scrubbing that room down tomorrow with caustic soap.” Nanny bustled away, looking surprisingly cheerful.

Torie went back to her drawing, finding herself thinking absent-mindedly that everyone needed to feel needed. She put down her pencil again.

Dominic needed her. He might not realize it, but he did.

It wasn’t until the third day, when she began blocking in the locomotive’s shape and thinking about color, that she realized the most fascinating aspect of the locomotive was not its color, but its creators.

Once she got the locomotive blocked in, she sketched the duchess on top of the engine, throwing her hat in the air, with the duke down below, laughing up at her.

“I like it,” Valentine said on the fourth afternoon of their visit. He was still doing his daily practice making circles, though it was difficult to measure one hour, as they had discovered that no clocks in the house functioned.

“Come here when the sun begins to sink,” Torie had advised him. “When the sky turns purple, your hour will be up.”

He squinted at her. “How will I know that it’s sinking?”

“Pay attention to the light.”