“The angle of the knees is off,” he said.
“I know,” said Jane, looking at that over-erased spot. She clamped her lips closed on a torrent of other inadequacies she could plainly see.
“And yet you have captured something of the spirit, which is far more important. It is Dorie to the life. May I?”
Jane nodded, let him take her pencil.
He studied the girl for a moment, then with firm black strokes corrected the tilt of the waist, the knees, the toes digging into the ground. “Always draw what’s underneath,” he said, “before you get to the folds and lace on top. You should have a life drawing class.”
Jane did not say the obvious, that there were very many things that this Jane would have liked to have.
Perhaps he saw the stubborn set of her lips, for he returned to a discussion of what he did like. “Yes, something in the chin, the tilt of the head, is just right. Happy only when she is being adored. She is so like…”
“Her mother?”
“Though it pains me to admit it.”
“Because you miss her,” prompted Jane, uncertain why else the thought would pain him.
He handed the pencil back to her. It was warm from his hands. She let it lie loosely in her palm.
“And now it is expected that I should take a new bride,” he said. “Dorie needs a mother, and the staff need someone else to cosset, someone who does not gruffly lock himself in an attic for weeks at a time. Miss Ingel is their frontrunner, I believe, for she is wealthy and kind and has a decade on those little chits the Misses Davenport. Yet another worry to add to my plate.” His fingers rested lightly on the sketch of Dorie.
“Oh,” said Jane. She did not wish to say anything, yet the syllable burst forth anyway. There were so many things she wanted to say, and did not want to say, and letting the “Oh” escape at least stopped the incoherent words of desire for him, for her, from tumbling from her lips.
There was silence in that misty air. She was transfixed by those amber eyes, caught, searching their blackening depths. Had he really sculpted her face? And why? Was he as curious as she to know what she might have been?
Silence, and him watching her veil flutter. “You’re not wearing your mask,” he said.
Jane’s hand flew to her cotton veil. “Does it bother you? Can you feel the curse?”
He leaned close, considering.
Surely her chest did not always rise and fall this much; surely her breaths were usually even and regular, barely disturbing the profile of her dress. Water, she thought, water to suffocate the flames. I could not bear it if he raged at me.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “I am certainly angry that this happened to you, but I have felt that since shortly after we met.”
“Perhaps you have more practice dealing with strangeness, because of Dorie.”
“Perhaps I have too much anger of my own to tell. If a man is steeped in bitter anger every day of his life, how then would he notice a small additional fire? Particularly when the fire comes in the presence of…”
She was silent as his eyes searched past her veil for hers. He was the source of all that she wanted, she knew that now, and the burdens of that were too much for one man to bear. She was insignificant; she could not be to him a tenth of what he represented to her.
And yet, she felt something as he leaned in. It was oddly similar to the way she had seemed to sense Dorie’s feelings. Not her desire … but his?
His breath made his voice rumble. “Words, I fling words at you, and still you bear up under them, Jane. Yet if you knew what I had seen, accepted, nay, desired … it would shock you. You are too unspoiled. If they knew, they would all leave, all those women, and good riddance. But the hurt to me is that I would lose your good opinion forever.”
The accusation of naïveté echoed Alistair’s words, and she could not bear it from him. Oh, why did everyone think that because she was a scarred governess that she understood nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing?
“I cannot believe you are evil,” she said. “If all the world spat on you, what care I for the world? If they all left you in a great flurry of fear, I should still be here, and stay by your side.”
“I almost believe you would,” he said softly.
The silence was too charged on that, and she rushed on: “Anyway, I know what you have done.”
“You know…?”
“Nina mentioned certain things and I uncovered the truth of the matter to my satisfaction. You are no mere artist in clay, but another sort altogether.”
“Jane.”
She lowered her voice. “I understand why you keep it hidden, why none of your clients talk. It would be embarrassing for them, surely.”
His lips opened to speak, while that same rushing desire for normal welled up in her like a river that could not be contained, a waterfall that threatened to break open upon her lips.
“Jane, I—”
“Mr. Rochart, if—”
“Oh, Edward!” cooed a young voice from the lawn, and another girl giggled. “Come see what we have made for our little pet.”
Silence.
“You are called,” said Jane, and she bent her head away from those amber eyes.
“Of course, Miss Eliot.” A sharp bow, and he straightened with a smile, stiffened his spine as if arming for the fray. “Miss Davenports One and Two! I have been too long deprived of your company.”
The two girls, Dorie, and Edward formed a happy little knot on the lawn, laughing and flirting as if nothing could possibly be more important. It was very like the happy moment in the bedroom that night he brought her the golden dress, except this time she was on the outside looking in.
The waterfall of desire spilled over into her eyes and she turned away from the group into the bushes, shoulders jerking, trying to regain her composure. “Not for you,” she whispered fiercely. “Not for you.”
It was some minutes before she could turn back to the lawn. Edward was surrounded by Blanche and Mrs. Davenport, each clinging to an arm and holding a very spirited discussion about what Edward should do next. The younger Miss Davenport was off finding croquet mallets with a gentleman, and the elder Miss Davenport was sulking. Jane blinked, blotting her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve.
Dorie was nowhere in sight.
The sketchpad and pencil fell from nerveless fingers, thumped to the damp grass. Jane whirled, looking up and down the lawn. Any second she would see Dorie’s curls bouncing around that willow, see her tumbling down the slope, showing off for the pretty ladies.
No Dorie.
Jane ran—her feet took her to the sulking girl on the divan, and though Jane had never spoken to her, she did not even notice that now she spoke firmly, commanding—“Where’s Miss Rochart?”
The elder Miss Davenport sat up straight, saw for herself the girl’s absence, started babbling. “It’s not my fault, I’m not in charge of her, you can’t blame me…”
There was fear in her eyes, and Jane pressed further, harder, seized the girl’s silk-trussed arms and shook her. “Where did she go?”
The silly girl was unable to speak, fright at being scolded turning to tears in her eyes.
The rage rose up in Jane at the delay, broke through the calm pond. She was all hot rage and orange fire, so fierce and strong that she lost control. She could not feel her fingers pinned on the girl’s arms, she did not know what she was saying, only that she was shouting something about the idiocy of city girls who spent the war sheltered and foolish, who had never learned to use their brains.
Miss Davenport was completely unable to speak now, and something snapped in Jane and pushed through her rage. It was like a shiver of lightning, a force, something hot and fierce and fine, willing the girclass="underline" Tell me where Dorie is.