“Silhouettes?” he asked.
“Yes.” Amelia did not look at him, as all her attention was attuned to the frame. “Miss Angleton has been kind enough”—a clear emphasis on the wordkind—“to agree to sit for me.”
“I’m quite looking forward to it,” Miss Angleton said. “The first you did of me was superb, but I’d like another. Just in case I acquire an admirer.” Something saucy about the curve of her lips. God help her future admirer.
“You were not at dinner.” Amelia’s observation clearly directed at him, though still she did not gaze his way.
“I became preoccupied with…” The gloves burned a hole in his pocket. “A task. I did not realize how late it was.”
Amelia left the frame and pulled the bell in the corner of the room. Almost instantaneously, Mrs. Scott appeared. “Could you bring some dinner here for Lord Andrew?” The housekeeper nodded and disappeared, and Amelia returned to her frame.
“Thank you,” Drew said. “I’m quite famished.”
“I thought about sending a dinner plate up to you, but…”
But she’d been angry, and if he’d wanted food, he could get it himself. True enough.
“I wouldn’t have taken a plate had you sent one. It would have grown cold. I was too engrossed. Now is better.”
“I’m glad that whatever you were doing is not more engrossing than our company.” Cold words, a hard line to her jaw.
“Never.” He could be charming when he wished. He sat at the side of the room as Amelia fitted a large piece of paper to the frame, and Miss Angleton plunked out a merry tune on the pianoforte. She sang a bit off-key but put so much of herself intoit that Drew did not care. The room was cozy and drawing tighter around them like a blanket on a winter night. The sort of thing he hated. The sort of thing that could end badly at any moment. The gloves burned in his pocket, and he tried to make himself comfortable. “Do you like that song, Miss Angleton?” he asked.
“Very much,” she called out, still plunking on the keys. “It’s quite popular. And it makes me feellovely.” A sigh of a word. Atlas would be pleased. “As if there’s a happily ever after waiting for me.”
“Thereis,” Amelia said. “There must be.”
“Do you truly think so?” A hesitation in the plonking of the keys.
“I do. I must.” The last two words pronounced more softly than the first two. And why did that make him feel sad? She’d said it more to herself than to anyone else in the room, convincing herself. She finished fitting the paper into the frame. “Miss Angleton, do come sit before the fire.”
The younger woman did, immediately casting her shadow onto the paper between her and Amelia.
Amelia hummed, using her fingers to outline the woman’s profile. “A lovely profile. Now you must stay quite still. Remember?”
“I’ll do my best.” Miss Angleton pulled up tall, tilted her chin high, then froze.
Amelia turned to a small box on a table at her side. Inside lay a variety of pencils and chalks, all well used, the inside of the box scuffed with their accidental markings. “Ah.” A pleased sort of sound as she reached inside and took out a stubby bit of pencil. She tilted her head and studied the paper, the silhouette cast upon it. Her hand approached the shadow and then backed away, then approached once more, almost setting pencil to paper, then slowly withdrew once more.
“Indecisive, Amelia?” Drew’s discomfort forgotten, he drew his fingers up and down the curved wood of the armchair, mirroring her own movements.
She frowned. “Not really. It is only Miss Angleton’s hair. She has it piled all so artfully, and curls do tend to be complicated. I would like to get them just right, so it does not look like there is a potato atop her head.”
He laughed, a snort he covered with his fist.
“No potatoes, please,” Miss Angleton called out.
“I shall try not to disappoint.” And then, with the tip of Amelia’s tongue darting out between her lips, she placed pencil to paper and drew in one long continuous swooping curve, attacking the curls, then the slope of a forehead, then the jet of a nose and the bump of the other woman’s lips before finally a chin and a long smooth neck.
He barely saw the profile coming to life. Saw only her fingers, capable. And her smooth nails, so neatly trimmed. She pulled her hand away and exhaled deeply, pressing a shaking palm to her belly.
“Were you holding your breath the whole time?” he asked.
“Yes.” A small titter of a laugh. “It makes me nervous.”
“There’s always another piece of paper, another opportunity.”
“But there’s something of a challenge to getting it right the first time.” She looked at him. Finally looked at him full-on, and the force of her gaze would have brought him to his knees had he not already been sitting. “You do not roll your eyes. Yet I’m speaking of a form of art, of appreciating the challenge of it.” She raised a brow.
