Page 16

Torie wasn’t thrilled to be courted for her complexion, but beggars couldn’t be choosers . . . and he was a duke.

One day Florence asked to see Torie’s painting studio, so Torie walked the twins to her house and brought them directly upstairs since Leonora was receiving callers in the drawing room.

She and the viscount had tacitly agreed that the twins weren’t ready for a prolonged conversation with her sister. Kelbourne had instituted a Prohibited List, an index of topics to be avoided in polite conversation.

Rather to Torie’s surprise, the list kept growing. She had not considered how many topics were never discussed by gentlefolk. The viscount’s command, “Put that on the list,” had become a joke amongst herself and the twins, with imitations of his growl leading to peals of laughter.

In years gone by, her studio had been her mother’s sewing chamber, but three years ago, Torie had claimed it due to its west-facing window. She hadn’t realized until she escorted the children through the door how messy it had become. The bare floor was splattered with paint in every color, and jars of paintbrushes bathing in solvent sat next to empty teacups. Their butler’s inept household management meant that servants avoided the studio altogether.

“I adore this room!” Florence squealed, clapping her hands. “Why do you have two easels?” she asked, walking over to a still life made up of billowy roses.

“One captures morning light, the other afternoon,” Torie explained.

“I see what you’re doing here,” Valentine said, rather surprisingly. He was standing before her morning easel. The nearly finished painting depicted a rabbit family gamboling in a clearing flooded with sunlight.

“You do?” Torie asked. Half the time she wasn’t sure what she was doing; she was simply compelled to try to master an idea.

“Dawn light is burnishing the rabbits’ ears,” Valentine said. “Do look at this, Florence.” His twin promptly came to stand beside him.

The children were still dressed in deep black, but Torie had dispatched a modiste to Kelbourne House so they at least had touches of white at the neck. They’d gained some weight after the viscount imposed regular mealtimes.

Torie couldn’t help thinking they were utterly adorable, especially when they stood shoulder to shoulder, their hands clasped behind their backs.

“I think she smiled while painting these bunnies,” Florence told her brother.

“I see what you mean,” Valentine replied, once again sounding as judicious as a sixty-year-old man. “These rabbits are joyous, though I’m not sure how the emotion makes itself known.”

“Look here,” Florence said, pointing at one of the babies. “The way his ear flops and his head is bent. He’s so happy to be with his brothers and sisters. And his mama.”

Valentine leaned in, squinting closely at the canvas. “How did you make these whiskers, Torie? I can scarcely see them.”

“A pin,” she explained. And then, since they were interested, she told them all about painting rabbits. “The hindquarters are the most challenging, not because of their shape—that’s easy—but because a rabbit is almost always in motion and springs from its rear legs.”

Florence mimicked her brother, peering closely at the painting. “I see it in the rabbit in the air.” She traced its legs with her finger. “He went up and twisted. I expect it was hard to portray him in motion like that.”

“It’s taken me years,” Torie said simply.

“Perhaps you could teach us to paint,” Valentine suggested. He moved from examining the rabbits to the woods behind them. “I like the way you used indigo blue to make the woods seem so deep.”

Torie laughed aloud. “You’re the first who’s noticed that trick. I learned it from an Italian painter whose paintings are displayed in the permanent exhibit of the Royal Academy of Arts.”

“We should go see his work,” Valentine declared. “I want to learn to paint rabbits. Perhaps not roses, though.”

“They’re not merely roses,” Florence objected. “There’s a ladybug on one leaf.”

The upshot of the twins’ visit was that the viscount had a great deal of paint and two easels delivered to the nursery. “Try to paint something monumental, like the Tower of London,” he advised Valentine. “Roses and rabbits are for ladies.”

Torie swallowed back a wave of irritation.

“Because they are as delightful as women,” Kelbourne added quickly, eyeing her face.

The viscount’s condescension was no worse than that of other men in her life. After seeing one of her paintings hanging on the wall of a friend, the Duke of Queensberry informed Torie that it was marvelous she had a hobby, and that the roses were as pretty as she. “The female vision is attuned to sensual particularity,” he had opined.

Trying to create the depth of the room behind the bunch of roses thrown carelessly on a table had taken four months. She didn’t think her eventual triumph had anything to do with “sensual particularity.”

Valentine gave his uncle a clear-eyed look and said, “I shan’t paint a tower because I’m not interested. It doesn’t sound very challenging.”

A week later, Torie decided that the twins were ready to meet Leonora. The Prohibited List was several pages long—and memorized. A placid conversation over a cup of tea would hopefully lead to her sister reconciling herself to the idea of having wards, which might stop her from grumping about the time Torie spent at Kelbourne House.