“I’m glad I did not. A foolish heart’s mistake.”
She stood calmly. “But your heartwasinvolved.” His silence pressed in on her, making it difficult to breathe. “Why did you not tell me?” Hadn’t she asked him? It had been a mistake, a silly way of asking about a mistress, but she’d asked him nonetheless.Have you ever been in love?
His face became an emotionless mask. “It no longer matters. She has nothing to do with us. It’s the past.”
“It was your secret.”
The mask slipped, revealing the furrowed brow of confusion.
Maggie could stand still no longer. Movement was paramount. “Thank you, Henrietta!” she cried as she left the shop, Tobias hot on her heels. She looked both ways down the busy street and spoke without looking at him. “You, Mr. Blake, collected every single one of my secrets, and I gave them easily. I trusted you with them.” When she spied their carriage, she jolted toward it. “The blackmail. The two engagements. My family’s poverty.”
Tobias hurried after her, his longer stride easily keeping pace. “I shared myself with you, too.”
“Not all of yourself. You kept one very important secret back.” She threw her arms into the air and let them fall lifelessly to her side. “How do I even know there’s only one important secret kept under lock and key? Each day is a new discovery with you.” She stopped in front of the carriage and whirled on him. “And when the knowledge could have served me best, this afternoon confronted by Mrs. Piedmont, I did not have it. I sat weaponless and vulnerable.”
He swept up into the carriage and helped her in beside him. “You are never vulnerable. You are—”
“Not as important to you as your”—she opened her mouth wide, searching for the right words—“I don’t even know what to call it. You hide yourself from everyone. Your father, your friends, Henrietta. She could help you, Tobias, and you her. She is perfect, and you will not even consider it. I swear you were trying to avoid her this morning. It’s why you refused to escort me.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and avoided her gaze.
“You hide me as well. I thought—” She closed her eyes and pressed the lump in her throat down.
He reached for her. “Maggie.”
She pulled away, retreating to the corner of the carriage farthest from him. “I’m annoyed with you right now, Tobias Blake.”
His hand dropped limp to his side. “Even paintings have their secrets, Maggie.”
Paintings? What had they to do with a damned thing? “What an absurd way to sound wise.”
Tobias’s eyes popped open wide and his shoulders shot back, stiff. “Pardon me, but thatwaswise. It is truth.”
“It’s a lot of poppycock, is what it is. Paintings are not people. Paintings do not have fathers and mothers and friends and wives. Paintings have no obligation or responsibility. They take no delight in living because they do not live.”
He opened his mouth to speak.
She cut him off before he began. “Livingis so much more complicated. And the reason we can look at paintings and see secrets and complications is because of the artist who painted it. And perhaps the artist painted secrets because that’s what they know. Perhaps they know only a hidden life. But I promise you, they also know misery. And at the same time an artist shares his work with the world, he does not hide who he is or what he does any longer, even though he might hide some message inside of his painting.”
He raked his hands through his hair and turned his back to her. His shoulders nearly vibrated with the tension rippling through him. He swung back around, his face a furnace of passion. “I’ve let you in more than anyone in my life, and you want more! You have my heart, Maggie, and my respect, what else do you need?”
“But do I have your trust?”
“Of course.”
“Then why keep your secrets from me?”
He threw his arms into the air and pounded on the top of the conveyance. “Stop!”
Maggie looked out the window. “Here? We’re not home yet.”
“I don’t wish to go home yet.” The carriage slowed and he jumped down almost before it stopped.
She leaned forward and looked at him on the dusty street, shining in the afternoon sun, framed by the carriage door as if he were a painting after all. But it was unlike any portrait Maggie had ever seen. The pink of his cravat and orange of his waistcoat made him appear the silly fop, but his pulsing jaw and wide eyes spoke of anger and determination. “But where will you go? We must discuss this, Tobias.”
He swept an elegant bow. “There is nothing to discuss. You want to know about Mrs. Piedmont? I proposed to her. I gave her my secrets, and she laughed at them, at me. Said I was a child pretending to be a man. No doubt she’s laughed at the memory since and came here to laugh today. I’m nothing but a joke to most, Maggie.” He dragged his lips between his teeth and hung his head. When he looked back up, his mask held tight to his features. “I must be off. Please do excuse my absence during this, our first real argument. But I do believe in your talent, darling, and I’m confident you’ll cover both parts of enraged wife and hangdog husband credibly. Break a leg, my dear.” He turned and slammed the door behind him.
Her frustration bubbled up and into her throat. She almost let it into the air, but locked it away at the last moment, and the scream sounded as a dying gurgle instead. She leaned back into the seat and closed her eyes tight, daring the tears to leak out. The coward had closed himself up again, pulling his drollery about himself like a suit of armor.
