6

Once I had completed the portrait of Roland, I slipped a note under Wakeford’s door. I wanted to allow him advance notice of my arrival this time, hoping it might ease his nerves. I wrote that I had something to show him, and would come the next day. Whether or not he would open the door remained to be seen.

To my surprise and relief, when I knocked Wednesday afternoon, there was little pause before his voice sounded from within: “Miss Preston?”

“Bertie,” I answered. “How’d you know?”

The door came open. Wakeford was dressed for company in a grey saxony tweed lounge suit, half belted and tailored at the waist, hair carefully arranged as neatly as could be at a length. I allowed myself to gawk, astonished that he not only had read my note, but had anticipated my arrival with a touch of formality.

“I recognized your knock,” he said.

“I’ve never been recognized by my knock before.”

Wakeford minded the canvas warily, as though it might leap to bite him if he made sudden movements. “Is that—forgive me, how do you do?”

I found his bashfulness utterly charming. “I’m well, my lord. And yourself?”

“Yes, well.” He pointed. “You’ve brought a painting?”

“Would you care to have a look?”

We bent in tandem to lift the canvas, nearly knocking heads. I forced a laugh at the blunder while he backed away, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“Mayn’t I help you with it?”

“Yes—yes, do. Thanks.” It wasn’t heavy, but I could tell chivalry was embedded deeply in his person. How dare I refuse? “Oh, take care; it isn’t quite dry.”

Without another remark, he maneuvered the canvas carefully through the door, pausing in the center of the room. “That chair, there. If you would?”

I closed the door behind me and followed his gaze to a simple bergère near the window. I moved it out from the wall and faced it towards the light. Wakeford leaned the painting on the chair, hovering his hands to ensure it was steady, then came round to stand with me.

I don’t think he was expecting to see Roland.

He touched the knot of his tie, which hardly needed adjusting. He smoothed his mustache with the pad of his thumb. He changed his stance three times.

We weren’t familiar enough for me to deduce whether these were good omens or bad, but they made me anxious. “I did say I would paint him, didn’t I? Of course, if you don’t like it, there’s no need to have it. I do think Roland was keen—”

“He looks old,” said Wakeford.

I started. “That’s funny. I thought he looked quite young.”

Lord Wakeford twirled the longer whiskers under his chin. He adopted a rather similar expression to the one his brother wore in the portrait. “I suppose in my mind he’ll always be a boy of thirteen.”

I was reminded instantly of my father. I’m not a little girl anymore, I was wont to say to him, and he’d reply, You’ll always be a little girl to me, Bertie. The memory hit me like a fist in the gut, with the realization that I didn’t know when I would see him again.

Wakeford breathed a laugh through his nose, bringing me back to the room. Though he seemed to be far off in the world of the painting.

“I know I was commissioned to paint Braemore,” I said. “And I will. But I was inspired, and I think perhaps you’ll agree that Roland is as much a part of Braemore as the fountain. He belongs in the gallery, don’t you feel?”

Wakeford went into his chest pocket for his cigarette case, and held it to me. I accepted and he raised his lighter, hands smelling of bergamot and tobacco. We smoked. I waited for some sort of indication of whether what I’d done pleased him.

“I don’t plan to hang your paintings in the gallery,” he said.

My heart slipped to my feet. The rest of me wished to follow, down, down to the Persian rug, where I might curl into a ball and forget my wretched dreams.

But I was standing before the Earl of Wakeford, who did not find a touch of gravity in his statement, and so I merely nodded demurely and said, “It isn’t any of my business.”

Wakeford cleared his throat and pushed the bridge of his spectacles to adjust his mask. “I’ll have it, of course. I hope Roland thanked you?”

I nodded again, disappointed he didn’t explain where precisely my paintings would go. I dragged hard on my cigarette and looked about for an ashtray, finding one on the end table. Wakeford appeared behind me, indicating the settee. I willed myself to move past my ego, and remembered to sit on the far end so I had his lordship’s ear.

Right. I was in and past the difficult bit. I couldn’t forget what I’d promised Roland. But how to begin? I couldn’t ask Wakeford why it was he locked himself away. I was reluctant to even mention the war—most men preferred not to discuss it. It’d been easier to talk the last time, when I was so very sure of myself. When I hadn’t been given the mission to cure a shell-shocked man. When I’d been ignorant of his falling-out with Celia. All those turbulent years and not a word between them!

I looked at Wakeford and tried to see a cynical man, a man who could hurt his little sister so thoroughly. But all I saw was the brother Roland spoke of.

“If I may?” I said. “How long have you been the Earl of Wakeford?”

He finished his cigarette and stifled it in the tray. “My father passed just before Celia was born.”

“I’m so sorry . . .”

“It was a long time ago.” Wakeford tilted his head left and right. “For one who doesn’t care for attention, the title has been more a bother than anything.”

“I can’t imagine. I love attention.” He met my gaze suddenly, causing me to blush down to my toes. “I have to fight for it, you see. My sisters make the perfect daughters and I . . . make a fool of myself, mainly.” Wakeford was staring still, with purpose it seemed. “What?”

“You’ve a bit of—paint, I think.” He touched the flesh of his neck beneath his ear.

I mimicked the motion, feeling the patch of dried oil. What a ninny I must have looked! I dispensed of my cigarette and scrubbed with my fingers until I’d got most of it. When I sat back again, Wakeford was still looking, the hint of a smile.

“You have sisters, then?” he asked. Lovely of him, really.

I tucked my hair behind my ear to regain some composure. “Two. Married and mothers. Very accomplished indeed.”

“No brothers?”

“A blessing, I’ve come to find.” I could tell by his nod that he’d taken my meaning. So much for avoiding the war. “Roland didn’t fight, did he?”

“He was too young, thank God.”

“That didn’t stop most boys.”

Wakeford shifted in his seat, and opened his jacket for his cigarette case, turning it over and over in his hands. “I made him swear not to follow me.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “Though I find myself wondering why you were on the front lines. Might a nobleman have petitioned for his use elsewhere?”

Wakeford opened his case, shut it with a click. Opened, shut. “I don’t believe I’d the right to be exempt.”

“That’s very admirable, your lordship.”

He turned his chin towards me. I thought he’d spotted another smudge on my person. “You needn’t go on with formalities . . . I do appreciate your respect, though—” His words stuck in his throat. A twitch of the jaw and he continued. “My captain in the army didn’t care much for me. He would call me ‘your lordship’ facetiously, and now I think only of him when I hear it.”

“Why did he dislike you?”

“He felt I was overly soft on my men.”

I was oddly relieved. Between his sudden anger during our first meeting and the rift with his sister, I expected at every turn that he might prove himself unkind. “I do find it difficult to imagine you barking orders.”

Wakeford nearly smiled, but it only reached the corner of his eye. “I was exacting when it was required of me.”

I drew one leg under the other, settling in comfortably. Wakeford observed my movements as if I was practicing skilled gymnastics. “When you were wounded—if you don’t mind my asking—where were you?”

He tapped the corner of his cigarette case against his knee. “Somme. Eighteen.”

“Nearly through it.” I sank, a familiar weight in my chest. “So many men came into our beds on the day of armistice. None of it was fair, of course, but those men . . . and those who died minutes before the end. We could hear the guns sometimes on the wind, muffled in the distance. I remember how instantly the firing stopped at eleven o’clock that day. God, I’ve never heard the like . . .”

I shivered despite the warmth of the room. Wakeford pressed his cigarette case between praying palms, touching fingertips to chin. His eye closed.

I’d taken things too far yet again.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “You don’t wish to talk about it, do you?”

Wakeford remained so still I thought my apology had gone unheard. Then he stood, set his cigarette case on the table in front of us, and removed his jacket, draping it over the back of the settee. He went to the piano, sat on the bench, and opened the lid.

I held my breath, thinking I’d done it—I’d offended the earl, and in one fell blow, ruined my chances of ever being anything at all in the world. He’d chuck me out tomorrow.

Wakeford turned over his shoulder. “Perhaps you’d like to—?”

I waited for him to finish the sentence. But there was only a drawn silence, lasting until his hand lay palm down on the bench, indicating a space for one to sit beside him.

I flushed. It was a narrow space. If I sat there, I risked brushing sleeves with an earl, and I thought that might break certain rules of propriety. Still, his hand remained as he waited, and so I took the chance and sat there.

Wakeford played a few notes strung together by the mere promise of a melody. “I’ve nervous hands,” he said.

“Have I made you nervous?”

“Rather.” A small smile. “Pleasantly, though.”

It seemed that despite his restraint, his lordship was terribly charming. “Go on, then.”

Wakeford rested his hands on the keys, poised to play a chord. He had hands I could stare at all day—impossibly smooth and so pale they were almost bright, the thumb with a natural backwards curve, the knuckles masculine, yet delicate.

There was no music on the rack. He played from memory, something I’d never heard before that instantly weighed on my chest—melancholic yet syrupy, for a tale of lost love.

“You play beautifully,” I said over the music.

“I’ve had much time to practice.”

His hands moved with laziness attained from playing a piece so frequently that every muscle knew the timing. They were strong, too, pressing heavy keys as though they were nothing. Music filled the space, so round and full it thickened the air. I was sure the sound of it reached all the bedrooms, even the hall below.

Wakeford’s song slowed to a romantic swirl of lithe notes as his hands crept closer to my side of the keyboard. “You weren’t wrong to speak of it,” he said to the keys. “The truth is, it’s been years since I’ve spoken to someone who’d seen it, and I—” He paused abruptly and so did the music. My ears buzzed in the sudden silence. “Do you ever feel you’re in a dream?”

Wakeford’s stare was strong enough to take my breath. “Yes.”

“Speaking to you just then,” he said, “I felt the floor solidify beneath me.”

Then he turned to the piano and began to play again, from precisely where he’d left it.

I’d always been a distracted person; perhaps that was why I had a dozen unread books, why I never courted properly with men. I couldn’t sit still long enough. But now—oddly—I was perfectly content to idle beside this man as he played. Comfortable without conversation. Without the sound of my own voice.

When the song finished, Wakeford began to play another, but it broke up into spare notes, and then he drew his hands from the keys to rest in his lap.

“You must think me mad,” he said.

I shook my head. I was frightened of startling him, but I leaned in his direction, just enough that his shirtsleeve brushed my elbow. He didn’t even flinch; no rule after all.

“Why don’t you paint any longer?” I asked.

He bowed his head to study his hands, which were now trembling slightly, I guessed from a mix of nerves and the strain from playing. A symptom of shell shock I was all too familiar with.

Wakeford tilted his chin halfway, and then enough to meet my eyes. “When I was young, my mother believed an interest in art was affecting my temperament.”

“So you gave it up?”

“It wasn’t worth the argument.”

I was preparing my rebuttal when a knock at the door made me jump. Julian, however, remained perfectly steady. I thought he hadn’t heard it at first until he said, “That’s tea.”

“Oh, yes. I’ll just . . .” I hid my disappointment by standing and starting towards the painting.

Wakeford stood as well. “Miss—” Another knock interrupted him. “I may send him away.”

“No, no.” I lifted the canvas, nearly forgetting it wasn’t entirely dry. “You’ll be wanting tea; I daren’t keep you.”

“Stay, then.”

I idled dumbly in the center of the room with canvas in hand, edges cold and sticky on my fingertips. What use was there in scrambling off now? “I should like to.”

Wakeford swallowed hard. “Do.”

Three more brisk knocks.

Lord Wakeford admitted Huxley with his tray. The butler hardly blinked at me, and I wondered what he’d heard through the cracks in the door. He set the tea things on the table, and asked whether his lordship would like an extra place brought up. Wakeford answered this was not necessary, thanked him, and let the butler off, closing the door.

When he turned to me, I hadn’t moved an inch.

“Good of you to invite me,” I said.

Wakeford took the canvas from my hands and set it back in front of the window. He then ushered me to the table, and pulled out one of the chairs for me to sit. I did, and watched him pour.

“But there’s only one cup,” I said. “It ought to be yours, surely.”

He lit a cigarette. “Please.”

As if under a spell, I added sugar, milk, stirred, sipped.

Wakeford blew smoke. “It’s been a long time since I’ve preferred company.”

The comment lightened me, the way he’d surely meant it to. Perhaps Roland was not incorrect in his assumptions. I nibbled on the corner of an egg and cress sandwich while we drifted back into that same comfortable silence. I was finding I quite enjoyed it.

I didn’t mind Wakeford’s stare, and he didn’t seem bothered that I peered back. He didn’t eat or drink, only smoked. I reckoned he couldn’t manage to with the mask on, as it covered half his mouth, leaving space enough for only a cigarette. It was easy to admire the mask when one sat opposite him. But the asymmetry of bearded face and clean-chinned prosthetic was beginning to niggle at me. I imagined the thin strokes it would take to mimic his whiskers, the colors I’d mix, the brush that would do the job.

The longer I looked, the less natural it appeared, the more I wanted it off and away. Roland was right—there was a piece of his brother hidden behind it, a piece I figured even Wakeford didn’t know existed anymore.

In another minute, I lost my serenity and tapped my chin. “You wouldn’t happen to have a clean sheet of paper and a pencil?”

Wakeford stifled his cigarette, a lift of intrigue in his brow. “Under the lid on my desk.”

He began to stand, but I motioned for him to stay put, moving excitedly across the room. In his desk, I found the familiar stationery he’d used to write his letter to me, and two pencils that were unfortunately dull. Needs must.

I sat again at the table with a flourish. “Shall we draw one another?”

Wakeford’s face bleached as if I’d raised a loaded gun. “No . . . ,” he muttered. “No, thank you, but . . .”

I should have known he’d react similarly, though I wanted so badly to see his style as an artist. “Or, I could draw that vase behind you,” I said, desperately cheery, “and you may draw the fern in the corner.”

That eased him, but only just. “I’ve not sketched in years.”

“In that case, you had better do me instead. I shouldn’t like to insult the fern.”

Oh, what a smile the man had. I could hardly believe his stern face was capable of such acrobatics. Wakeford watched my eyes for what felt like an eternity before finally reaching across the table for a piece of paper.

“You’ve done the impossible, Miss Preston,” he said, curling his hand round the pencil and shaking out his wrist.

“Oh no, not quite yet.”

He glared from under his dark lashes, shockingly waggish. “Be still.”

I obeyed.

It ought to have been much as before. Me sitting uncomfortably straight, Wakeford studying my face. But there was no comparing this to any sort of polite discourse. This was a tryst, I realized too late, as my blood hummed under his eye. I was not accustomed to being the sitter, to being examined so closely. Many would assume a model was merely needed for an aesthetic, but I knew there was more—even for a simple sketch. He was reaching, and I could almost feel the sculptor’s hands poring over every blemish, every hair, every stalled breath. It made me giddy to keep still, the room silent except for the scratching of pencil on paper.

When Wakeford looked up I nearly crumbled, as though I’d been holding up the ceiling. I waited for him to speak, to hand me the paper. Instead he gave a breathy laugh through his nose.

“It’s rubbish.”

I let myself giggle at the stark embarrassment on his face. “I don’t believe it! May I see?”

He shook his head, looking down at his work. “You’ll never speak to me again.”

“I promise I shall.” The words were out before I could think what they implied. “Please, may I?”

Grimacing, Wakeford sighed and pushed it to me facedown.

The hair on my arms raised as I turned it over. It was a rough sketch—mere lines and reckless shading, with no rubber to remove his mistakes. But it was me, certainly; it could not have been anyone else. And though he’d given my lips an almost comical tilt of amusement, there was an impossible amount of feeling in my eyes for what little detail the medium allowed. I was pretty—far prettier than the woman I saw in the mirror.

“Ought I to have done the fern?” he asked.

I realized I’d been smiling, achingly wide. “It’s jolly good.” He tried to wave me off. “Honestly! Why have you not taken it up again since your mother passed?”

Wakeford observed the pencil in his hand. “I returned from the war without the ability to see beauty where it once was.”

The idea broke my heart.

I finished my tea and reluctantly told Lord Wakeford I really ought to be going. Despite the fun we’d had, he was still an earl and I his artist, and I needed to return to the job he was paying me for.

At the door, he offered a tired smile and told me I should keep the drawing. Neither of us remembered I was meant to have done one of my own.

“I do wish to speak to you again,” I said. “If you’ll have me.”

He scratched his whiskers, a tic now familiar to me. “Perhaps you might bring another painting?”

I bit my lip to keep my smile from growing too obvious. He wished to see more of my work! And deep inside, I reveled at the thought that he might also wish to see more of me.