A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,58

yet?” Mr. Forester aimed a considering glance at her mouth, as if her lips had become somehow different in recent days in a way that would prove whether she’d been kissed.

“He certainly has not attempted to take any liberties whatsoever, nor will he.”

“Then perhaps Master Alexander is not the slowest top in the household. I don’t suppose you were sketching Dorning’s handsome countenance?”

Catherine held up her sketch pad. “I was trying to sketch the roses, because the canes and leaves are a complicated pattern, and that is my challenge at present. To render accurate representations of what I see.” Which required seeing in a way Catherine hadn’t been taught to see previously. Paying attention.

Jeremy Forester was paying attention to her. Catherine wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She was uneasy, and also flattered.

“If I had an hour to spend with you privately each day,” he said, “I’d not be wasting it on dreary old sketches and blown roses. You’re nearly fifteen. Girls get engaged and even have babies at that age.” His gaze brushed lower than her mouth, over her person.

“Are you flirting with me?”

He rose and bowed in a mockery of politesse. “Perish the thought. I’d be getting far above myself should I presume to that degree. If Dorning in any way oversteps, you will apply to me to address the matter. He could do with a sound pummeling, and I’d delight in delivering it to him.”

Pummel Mr. Dorning? Catherine did not know if Mr. Forester was daft or in earnest. “Nobody need pummel anybody.” She stood and gathered up her sketching pad, penknife, and pencil.

“Where are you off to, sweet Catherine?”

“You ruined the bushes I was sketching. I must find another subject.”

“I ruined…? I am abjectly sorry. You must allow me to aid you in your search. Come, take my arm, and we will investigate the garden.” He crooked his elbow at her and appeared to be entirely serious.

Catherine took his arm and allowed herself to be escorted up the walkway as if the occasion were, in fact, a royal garden party. The experience was a tad unsettling and also lovely.

Quite, quite lovely.

“Is this all of them?” Vera asked, turning in a slow circle to survey the eleven paintings Oak had arranged about his studio.

“Everything I found in the gallery. I’d be surprised if more lurk in the attic or in the frames hanging in your private apartment, but it’s possible. Eleven is a very odd number for a man who always painted in series.”

Half of the compositions were not of Anna. Three were of a blond woman Vera didn’t recognize, two were renderings of a brunette with an impressive bust, and one was of the brunette and the blond in an embrace that was not remotely sisterly, given where and how the women touched each other.

“I like this one best,” Oak said, nodding at the entwined women. “Never have I seen purple and orange harmonized so effectively, and all it took was some greenery, a few hints of red and yellow—et voilà tout—a wildly daring palette becomes all of a piece.”

“Are you blind to the wildly daring subject?” Vera could hardly look away.

“They are loving each other,” Oak said, taking the place at her side. “A common enough theme across all of the arts. In addition to the palette, the composition, the brushwork, and the very effective use of natural light, what makes this painting glow is that we’re not seeing one person caught in a moment of private pleasure. This is a moment between lovers. The whole relationship—the tenderness, yearning, frustration, and joy—is present in one image.”

Vera set aside her shock and focused not on hands, genitals, and breasts, but on the subjects’ expressions.

“The smiles are different,” she said. “Not like Anna’s dreamy secrets, but like… like…”

Oak regarded her with patient humor. “Like I look at you?”

Vera sank onto one of the two venerable wing chairs before the cold hearth. She was assailed by memories collected over the past few days.

Oak taking down her hair at night.

Oak holding her chair at breakfast, then performing the same courtesy for Catherine and Miss Diggory.

Oak engaging Catherine in a lively argument about Mr. Turner’s brushwork.

One recollection in particular stood out. Oak had accompanied the household to divine services and patiently endured the inevitable round of introductions in the churchyard afterward. He’d bowed over the hands of all three spinster Davies sisters, raised his voice to accommodate Grandfather Stiles’s poor hearing, listened with apparent interest to young Howard Frampton’s