Now…
The truth was that it would probably be wise to play to his strength and assume that, once he’d reached the point of being ready to declare his love to Therese, some scenario, some situation, would arise, and the necessary words and actions would occur to him. Following that approach was, usually, how he got the best, most desirable results.
He refocused on her features, then softly sighed and forced himself to ease from the bed.
After collecting his robe and shrugging into it, he crossed to the connecting door to his room, opened it, and walked through. He carefully closed the door, then went to his cold and lonely bed and climbed between the chilly sheets.
Of one thing he was very sure; he was getting exceedingly tired of greeting the dawn alone.
Chapter 8
As she had no morning engagements, Therese elected to take her morning tea with the children in the nursery.
The large L-shaped room took up a significant portion of the attic, with the long arm running down one entire side of the house and the smaller arm stretching halfway across the front. The schoolroom, where the children spent most of their days, occupied the smaller arm, with wide windows affording an excellent view over the tops of the trees in the park. Therese glanced that way and saw the distant glass panels of the soon-to-be-dismantled Crystal Palace winking in a stray beam of autumn sun.
“See, Mama?” The boys had been drawing, and Spencer proudly held up his effort. “It’s Nobbin on the lawn at the Priory.”
Nobbin was Spencer’s pony. Therese studied the oddly shaped lumpy brown figure with all the admiration her eldest son might expect. “It’s a very good likeness, my darling. You’ll be drawing as well as your great-uncle Gerrard any day now.”
Spencer beamed. Therese suggested he put the sheet aside to show his father later.
Also seated at the low table beside which Therese sat, Rupert hunched over his artistic effort and heaved a disgruntled sigh. As Spencer took his drawing to set it on the wide window ledge, Rupert looked up at Therese with weary resignation. “I tried to draw Pippin, but I just can’t seem to get him right.”
Pippin, of course, was Rupert’s pony. Therese smiled reassuringly. “Let me see.”
Reluctantly, Rupert straightened, picked up his sheet, and held it out.
Therese took the drawing and studied it, in truth more closely than she had Spencer’s. Although he was a year younger, Rupert’s effort showed a better grasp of line and perspective than Spencer’s. “You have a good if still developing eye,” Therese told her second son. Making a mental note to continue to monitor Rupert’s artistic progress—drawing, after all, ran in her family—she handed him the sheet. “That’s enough on that one for now. Go and put it with Spencer’s so your father can see it later, and then”—she collected Spencer with her gaze—“I have another challenge for you both.”
Spencer hurried back to the table and sat. While waiting for Rupert to leave his sketch with Spencer’s and return, Therese glanced down at Horry. Her daughter was sitting on the floor to one side of Therese’s chair, being watched over by Gillian, one of the nursemaids.
At eighteen months old, Horry could barely hold a crayon, but as she sat on the floor, a large sheet of paper spread before her, with her small features contorted in a furious show of concentration as she stabbed and slashed at the paper, she seemed single-mindedly focused on making her mark.
Therese smiled, then returned her attention to her sons as Rupert returned to his chair. “Now, take another sheet of paper each.” There was a stack of fresh sheets in the center of the table, and she waited while they each helped themselves to one. “Very well—I want you to draw me a tree.” She held up a finger to stay them. “I don’t want you to draw anything but the tree, but first, I want you to close your eyes and imagine the tree until you can see it clearly in your mind. I want you to be sure what sort of tree it is—you know enough different trees by now. I want you to think of how the branches angle out from the trunk and how the leaves hang from the twigs. Once you are absolutely sure what your tree looks like, you can open your eyes and start drawing.”
Both boys had their eyes closed. A slight frown marred Rupert’s brow, but even as she looked at Spencer, his face cleared, and he opened his eyes and picked up his pencil.
Rupert, however, kept his eyes shut for a full minute more before he opened them and, still frowning slightly, started to draw.
Hmm.Therese made another mental note to ask her uncle, Gerrard Debbington, what exercises he would recommend to encourage a child who might possess a talent for drawing.
While the boys worked and Horry stabbed and slashed, Therese poured herself another cup of tea. Sitting back, she sipped. Her gaze drifted to the window, and she found her mind sliding from her children to their father.
She was now very certain that something in their relationship had changed. Not in the sense of maturing, as she’d initially assumed, but actually altered, albeit in a subtle way.
She recalled her earlier thought of a shield lowering, of some barrier being taken away, and yes, it was something along those lines, and it was Devlin who had changed, not her. He was the one removing some amorphous barrier.
So what was he revealing?
Potentially more importantly, why? Or why now? Was it something to do with Child appearing—reappearing—in Devlin’s life?
She pondered that, but while Child-as-cause fitted the bill time-wise, why Devlin’s childhood friend would be a catalyst for Devlin—who had known Child virtually since birth—to change with respect to her, she couldn’t imagine. She certainly didn’t believe jealousy had anything to do with it; Devlin knew very well that she had never been interested—not in that sense—in any other man, not even one as undeniably handsome and urbanely charming as Child.
Allowing all she’d sensed over their recent nightly interludes to flow through her mind, she felt quite sure Devlin knew precisely where he stood with her—that he was the center of her world. She had never disguised, much less attempted to conceal, what emotion drove her when it came to him. He was the man she loved, and neither she nor—she would wager the Alverton diamonds—he had ever seriously questioned that.
The boys informed her that they’d completed their trees. She drained her teacup, set it aside, and duly admired their efforts, evenhandedly praising both, although, as she’d suspected would be the case, Rupert’s tree was a great deal more treelike than Spencer’s.
She sent them to place the trees with their pictures of their ponies and got to her feet. When they pelted back to her, she bent and hugged them, then releasing them, straightened. “I have to go downstairs, but Gillian and Patty and Nanny Sprockett will help you with whatever game you want to play.”
