melted under his gaze, as if she were pinned beneath a magnifying lens like the one Leo, when he was little, had used for roasting flies and moths in the sun’s burning rays.
“So we could talk more,” he said. “Would you like that?”
“I would . . . yes, of course.” Then the words she’d been holding back rushed out of her. “I would so very much like for us to be friends, Donovan. We could talk about all the things that are important to us.”
He smiled. “Good. Come after class. Bring food if you like. There’s nothing here, and we might get hungry.”
“Yes, of course. Yes, I will.” A picnic in an artist’s garret—how scrumptiously romantic.
But part of her felt the tiniest bit unsure of the circumstances. Could she really do this? Come here, alone, to this common man’s part of the city, late in the day when it might soon become dark? Come here to be alone with a man in the place where he lived? As Vicky would have said: “This simply isn’t done.” Louise didn’t dare think what her mother would say.
Louise had already started backing away toward the top step when Donovan leaned out through the open doorway and brushed his lips across her cheek. An appalling breach of etiquette. She should slap him and leave. Refusing his invitation would certainly be appropriate.
“I’ll be waiting,” he whispered, his bashful gaze lingering, encouraging.
Her heart fluttered. “I’ll be here.”
Sixteen
To have friends, real friends—not a brother or sister or cousin required to include her in their games or make polite conversation—this was thrilling to Louise. She and her eight siblings had been isolated from the world and under Nanny’s care until the age of five, when they could be handed over to governesses for strict tutoring.
Prince Albert’s personal adviser, Baron Stockmar, took charge of their education and allowed few breaks from their books. Of course, they must all learn to ride, hunt, dance, and behave properly in court. But as young children they were not allowed at court functions and were never, ever exposed to commoners.
Louise recalled her parents describing the middle and lower classes as dirty, immoral, simple-minded folk who were incapable of anything more mentally demanding than manual labor. It was fine to pity or act charitably toward the poor souls, but that was the limit of contact. Even the sons and daughters of lesser nobility were considered inappropriate playmates for the royal offspring.
However, the crowd she’d fallen in with at the art school brimmed with brilliant young people, many from decent (though by no means noble) families. Her friends had new and exciting ideas to share with her about politics, art, and the sciences. She loved her days at the school. There she learned so much more about life than she possibly could have, shut up in one of the family’s castles. In prison, as it were—waiting to be married off to a man she barely knew. During their midday meals clever Donovan, all on his own, had been teaching her so much about the way real people lived in the world. She desperately wanted to keep him as a friend. Just a friend. She dared not think of him as more than that.
The week crept along. Louise could hardly contain her elation when Thursday came at last. As soon as her final class of the day was over, she gathered her shawl, the basket of food she’d purchased during their break, and swept down the steps, hardly noticing Amanda resting on the curb, a broom across her knees.
“I will join my lady friends for a supper in Chatham Park,” she loudly told her driver as the footman lifted the basket from her arm and set it inside the carriage on the floor. “Please hurry. I don’t want to keep them waiting.”
She hoped the lie had worked but could tell nothing from the expressions of either of the men. She had a sense of Amanda’s eyes fixed in a less than approving way on her as they drove off.
This time the neighborhoods through which they passed were not new to her. But she drank them in as she hadn’t before. Each minute detail appealed to her artist’s eye. The edges of objects felt so crisp and perfectly defined she could almost reach out and touch them. Colors shone as vividly as if they were undiluted pigments, hand ground and swathed across the London streetscape. Despite the coal dust–gray air and the filth of even the finest