He held her gaze, then opened his mouth.
“And don’t tell me it was to study my gowns.”
He shut his lips, pressed them tight. His eyes held hers as he debated, then his lips eased and he exhaled through his teeth, not quite a sigh, not quite an exhalation of frustration. “I was worried.”
A muttered confession. “About what?”
“About you.”
He didn’t sound pleased about it. When she looked her befuddlement, he reluctantly elaborated, “About what you might be thinking and feeling.” His hand rose, fingers spearing into his hair, but then he stopped and lowered his arm. “I was worried about how the revelations of the day had affected you.” He glanced away, his gaze falling on the pile of her discarded gowns. “But I did want to evaluate your gowns. I want to complete the portrait as soon as possible.”
A vise of cold iron closed about her chest. “Yes, of course.” Turning away, she moved to lay the bronze silk gown she’d been holding over the chair. “I expect you’ll want to leave as soon as possible.”
Guarding her expression, smoothing her features to rigid impassivity, she turned to face him-and found him, hands on hips, frowning, quite definitely, at her.
“No-I don’t want to leave as soon as possible. I want to complete the portrait and free you”-abruptly he gestured-“from all this-the suspicion and the well-meaning prison all around have created for you.”
The expression glowing darkly in his eyes made her heart leap, then thud. Oh seemed redundant. She moistened her lips-watched his eyes trace the movement of her tongue. “I thought”-she sucked in a breath and steadied her voice-“that perhaps, after this last, you might wish to leave-that you might wish you’d never agreed to paint my portrait.”
“No.” What rang in his tone brooked no argument. He held her gaze steadily. “I want you free of this intolerable situation…” His hesitation was palpable, but then he continued, his words precise and clear, “Free so we-you and I-can pursue what’s grown-growing-between us.”
Gerrard saw the “Oh” form in her mind, more tellingly saw her features ease as the control she’d imposed on them faded. He was searingly aware of an almost overpowering urge to close the distance between them and take her in his arms, to comfort her physically and emotionally, in every way open to him.
Not a good idea.
Dragging in a breath that was too tight for his liking, he forced himself to turn to the fireplace. “So-how do you feel about Thomas’s death?”
Not an easy question to make sound idle, not least because it wasn’t; he definitely wanted to know. He didn’t look at her, but studied the lamp on the mantelpiece. He felt her gaze on him, felt her consider-sensed the change in the atmosphere when she decided to tell him.
She rounded the chair; he turned his head and watched as she smoothed the gown she’d laid over it, then, drawing her robe closed, folding her arms, she paced across the room in a brooding, feminine way. Halting before the windows, she lifted her head and stared out at the dark. “It’s odd, but the point that upsets me most is that I can’t remember his face.”
He leaned back, setting his shoulders against the mantelpiece. “You haven’t seen it for over two years.”
“I know. But that’s a real measure of the fact that he’s gone. That he’s been gone, dead, for a long time, and I can’t change that.”
He said nothing, just waited.
After a while, she drew in a deep breath. “He was a nice…boy, really.” She glanced across the room at him. “He was kind, and we laughed, and I liked him, but…whatever might have been, might have come to be between Thomas and me-that I’ll never know.”
Abruptly, she swung from the windows and came pacing back, her brows knitted, her gaze on the floor. Halting a yard from him, she looked up and met his eyes. “You asked how I feel. I feel angry.”
She pushed back the hair that had swung forward, shielding one side of her face. “I’m not sure why I feel so strongly, and not just on Thomas’s behalf. The killer took something he wasn’t entitled to take-Thomas’s life, yes, but that wasn’t all. He struck because we-Thomas and I-would have had a marriage and a family, and that the killer didn’t want us to have. That’s why he killed-he wanted to deny us that.”
Her breasts swelled as she dragged in a huge breath. “He had no right.” Her voice shook with a medley of emotions. “He killed Thomas and stymied me-locked me into a cage of his making. And then he killed my mother.” Her face clouded. “Why?”
When she refocused on him, Gerrard pushed away from the mantelpiece. “With your mother, it can’t have been jealousy, or any variation of that. Perhaps she learned something the killer didn’t want known, either something about Thomas’s death, or something entirely different.”
She held his gaze. “But it was the same man, wasn’t it?”
“Barnaby will tell you that the odds of having two murderers in such a limited area are infinitesimal.”
Her gaze grew distant, assessing. “We have to catch him-expose him and trap him-and we need to do it soon.”
“Indeed.” His crisp tone drew her attention back to him. “And our first step is to complete the portrait.”
If anything, the discovery of Thomas’s body and their speculation over his death seemed to be hardening her resolve. He remembered thinking that if he were the murderer, he’d be wary of her, of underestimating her strength.
He reached for her arm. “I’m seriously considering painting you in candlelight. Come over here.” He drew her to the end of the mantelpiece and positioned her as before. Retrieving the last gown from the chair-the gown closest in hue to what he wanted-he held it out. “Hold that against you.”
Jacqueline did. She’d cried all her tears for Thomas long ago; it had been comforting to own to her anger, to be able to admit to it-to speak of it aloud and so give it strength. She watched as Gerrard stepped back, studying her with his painter’s eyes. There was an expression in them when he was given over to his art that she was learning to recognize.
That was comforting, too, for it gave her the freedom to think of other things, to acknowledge that he, hearing of her anger-an unconventional response from a young woman over the violent murder of her intended, surely?-hadn’t judged. He’d simply accepted, indeed, he’d seemed to understand, or to at least find nothing startling or shocking in her feelings.
He frowned. “The light’s too even.” He looked at the lamp, then scanned the room. “Candlestick?”
“On the dresser by the door.”
He crossed to pick it up and brought it back. He bent to light the wick at the small fire in the grate, then straightened and reached for her right hand. “Here-hold it like that.”
Leaving her clutching the gown to her chest, the candlestick held aloft, he went to the lamp at the far end of the mantelpiece. He turned down the wick; the light faded, then died.
Crossing in front of her, he glanced measuringly at her, then doused the other lamp, too. He looked at her, then adjusted her arm. “Hold it there.”
He stepped back, then back again. His eyes narrowed, scanning, checking; he spoke softly, vaguely, “I promise I won’t make you hold a candle-I’m just trying to get an idea of how it might look if…”
His words faded. She watched him look at her, not as a man but as a painter. Watched the change in his expression, the play of the candlelight on his features, watched a sense of awe slowly seize and grip him.
A silent minute passed, then he refocused on her face. “Perfect.”
She smiled.
He blinked. Slowly. His lashes rose, and suddenly she knew he was seeing her no longer as a painter, but as a man. He wasn’t seeing her as his subject, but as a woman, a woman the look in his dark eyes stated very clearly he desired.