A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,55
assist with breedings.”
“Mares are valuable, foals bring in money. Step-mama knew nothing of the particulars beyond that, would be my guess. A maid of the shires should have known nothing of it too.”
Oak rose and set aside his sketchbook. “If you ever were a maid of the shires, you are no longer. You are a widow of substance and means.” Shall I join you again tonight?
The moment was wrong to ask that question, and yet, Oak could not assume he was welcome in Vera’s bed.
“Why is it,” Vera said, taking the snuffer to a second set of candles, “that a woman is defined only as she is related to men or to an absent man? I am a sister, a step-daughter, a widow of some fellow gone these three years. I am entitled to dwell in this house only because I am Alexander’s mother. The property belongs to him—a six-year-old—and I have a life estate only because Merlin Hall has no dower cottage.”
“You are angry.” Vera’s ire was evident in her movements and in her tone of voice, and yet, something lay beneath the obvious air of annoyance.
She looked around the parlor as if wondering who’d put out most of the candles. “Perhaps I am angry. I have been thinking of those paintings.”
The nudes. She was clearly uncomfortable even saying the word. “And?”
“And I realize that I am put out with Dirk for creating them in the first place—they aren’t salable, they aren’t practical. But I am also put out with Anna for being a woman who’d pose for those images. A woman who was that… that… self-possessed. She was no maid of the shires, and she didn’t care who knew it.”
Oak retrieved his sketch pad, took Vera by the wrist, and moved her closer to the last lit branch of candles. “Look at this.”
She accepted the sketch pad with a frown, then peered at what he’d drawn. “Mr. Dorning, you have quite the imagination.”
“You’re not angry.”
“I am…” She brought the drawing closer to the light. “I am speechless. I want to say, ‘Who is she?’ Except she bears a resemblance to me. Not a version of me I see in the mirror.”
He’d drawn her naked, curled up in the corner of a sofa, a crocheted shawl revealing as much as it concealed. Her hair was coming down, soft tendrils complementing the tassels and drape of the shawl, sturdy calves and bare feet clearly in evidence, along with the curve of her haunch and the profile of one lush breast.
“I wanted you to know that an artist can render an image for which no model has posed. Anna might never have sprawled naked in bed while Dirk sketched preliminary studies in the corner. She might have had no idea those paintings were created. She might have forbidden him to paint her thus, and that’s why the paintings are hidden.”
“You’re saying Dirk could have rendered similar portraits of me?”
“He might have, but the point is, you are as lovely as any odalisque, and you must not envy a dead woman because your late husband imagined her as an erotic model.”
Vera lowered the sketch. “You sound very stern. Almost angry yourself.”
Oak was not almost angry, he was angry—for her, for what she deserved from the man who’d taken her to wife, for what Oak was in no position to give her.
“I am frustrated,” Oak said, managing a smile. “The condition is normal for men in my position.”
Vera passed him back the sketch pad and moved toward the door. “You are doomed to more frustration, I’m afraid.”
She was rejecting him. Well, that was… that was… probably wise of her. He’d finish his restorations and be on his way. What need had she of an all-but-itinerant artist without means? Oak hadn’t seen this coming, and he should not be disappointed, but he was.
Oh, he was. Bitterly, howlingly. He was disappointed to a profound, undignified depth. “I apologize if I’ve in any way given you offense, Vera. That was not my intention.”
She paused, back to him, hand on the door latch, then slowly turned. “Given offense?”
“If you are putting an end to our intimate dealings, I will understand, and you need not speak of the matter further.” Those were the required words, spoken in the required civil tones. Oak wanted to shred his sketchbook and toss the pieces into the fire, except there was no fire and what would such a tantrum yield anyway?
Vera crossed the room and kept coming until her arms were around