“Berthold draws me—and everything—as faintly scornful. He’s trying for aloof, but allows a touch of pique to creep in. This drawing was not done by Henderson.”
Mrs. Fremont drew her feet up under her, a highly informal posture, but then, Michael was barely dressed himself.
“I like it,” she said, arranging her skirts over her toes. “I’ve had the luxury of sketching you on many occasions, so the rendering should be accurate, but I can’t study you as I prefer when I’m lurking at the back of a classroom.”
“Berthold wants his students to move about, to not occupy the same seat week after week.” And yet, she moved about only on the fringes of the classroom.
“Tell me about the man I’ve sketched, Mr. Delancey. I know what I was trying to achieve, but did I achieve it?”
She would not leave this, so Michael resigned himself to opining. “The arrangement is skillful, centering the subject without appearing geometric. The mood is pensive thanks to abundant shadows, and yet, there is also a sense of activity resulting from the many curving lines leading to the subject’s face. The subject is immobile, but the flames of the hearth and candle are leaping and flickering—a subtle contrast. He is weary, perhaps past dejection and into the nether reaches of mindless determination. The day has been hard. Tomorrow will offer no relief. Such a robust, well-favored man should have a pleasant path in life, and yet, we all have sorrows and burdens.”
He passed her back the sketch, which she resumed studying. “The fatigue comes through, then.”
The fatigue, as she called it, was always coming through. Strong tea helped, as did liberal doses of frigid winter air.
“I apologize for taking an impromptu nap in your sitting room, madam. You should have awakened me.”
“I had what I needed for the evening, and sleep is what you needed. Has anyone ever done a portrait of you?”
Michael battled the impulse to yawn, gave up, and did his best to cover his rudeness with a seated stretch.
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Because somebody will recognize my subject?”
She was too quick by half. “Mostly, people see what they want to see, which creates the artist’s challenge—to make visible a truth rather than what satisfies the viewer’s preconceived expectations. Nobody expects to see Michael Delancey, Lambeth cipher, lounging about in the nude as the subject of a shop-window print. Besides, Berthold would expel from the class any student who sold an anatomical study. He considers his exercises proprietary, so I’m relatively safe from discovery.”
“If I do a portrait of you, I will obscure your face,” Mrs. Fremont said, setting aside her sketch. “An interesting challenge. You must be discreet about your modeling, and I respect that. London in general is far too concerned with invading any and everybody’s privacy. Let’s get you dressed, shall we? Never let it be said that I overtax my models.”
Michael’s first thought was that he’d vexed her by denying her a standard portrait pose, but then the clock chimed the three-quarter hour.
“You really ought to have awakened me,” he said, rising. “You are not paying me to sleep.”
“I am paying you for the inspiration of your appearance,” she said, getting to her feet and crossing to the worktable. “If you exhaust yourself into an influenza, I will be denied my objective. Next week, I might well ask the most outlandish pose of you or sit you in the corner and ignore you for the first hour of our meeting. Your payment.”
She held out the coins with no discernible emotion. Not distaste, humor, or self-consciousness. Payment for services rendered. Perhaps being Henderson had taught her how to do that.
“Thank you,” Michael said, accepting money he was pathetically grateful to have.
Mrs. Fremont assisted him to dress, the familiarity less awkward than it should have been. She tied his cravat with brisk efficiency, made a few more passes at his hair with her fingers, and handed him his hat.
“You’ll do,” she said, picking up a parcel from the table near the door. “Take this, please. Hazel doesn’t care for Cook’s mushroom sauce, and I can only consume so much at a sitting.”
Food. She was giving him more of that sumptuous beef, more perfectly seasoned, buttery potatoes. “You should not…”
“I have seen you as God made you,” she said, settling his scarf around his neck. “I know when a man could use a few more good meals, Mr. Delancey. The Church would praise you for starving, but I have need of you in excellent good health.”
He held his gloves in one hand and her gift of sustenance in the other, and thus when she hugged him, he merely stood, equal parts shocked and pleased, until she withdrew.
“That’s your coach,” she said as hoofbeats sounded on the cobbles in the alley. “Hazel’s friends take her up, so I ordered the coach for you. You walked here, you need not emphasize your contrary nature by walking home at this hour.”
Mrs. Fremont spoke with such brisk dispatch that had Michael’s heart not been beating at an accelerated tempo, he would have questioned his recollection of a brief, snug embrace from his temporary employer.
“I will bid you good evening.” He bowed slightly. “Thank you for your kindnesses.”
“Be off with you,” she said, holding the door open. “My coachman knows to set you down at Lambeth, so don’t think to fob him off at Green Park.”
Michael slipped through the door, both amused and appalled that she would guess his plan so easily. He took the servants’ stairs down to the back entrance and climbed into the waiting coach. The floor bricks were heated, the lap blankets soft and plush. The warmth radiating up through the soles of his boots was exquisite, and the money in his pocket an even greater comfort.
“What on earth have I got myself into?” He drew the line at investigating the parcel of food. He was not hungry for once, not for food.
For another of Mrs. Fremont’s fierce, bold hugs?
Yes, absolutely. He was starving for adult affection and closeness, and Mrs. Fremont’s sketch said she’d seen at least that much. The question became not how to earn another embrace from her, but how to resist the many temptations she offered while garnering more of her coin.
“We are for the lending library tomorrow,” Hazel said, marching into the family parlor shortly after midnight. “I vow you do nothing but sketch and paint anymore. This will not serve, my dear.”
While Hazel’s life was an endless round of social obligations, committee meetings, and inspections of foundling hospitals.
“How was your evening?” Psyche asked, setting aside her sketch pad.
“Boring, silly. Mrs. Oldbach has very fixed ideas about what constitutes a nourishing soup for the less fortunate, and those ideas are at variance with Mrs. Prebish’s well-considered opinions, though neither woman has ever in her life actually prepared a pot of soup.”
“Why do you do it, Hazel? Why listen to the nattering? Why put up with the posturing?”
Hazel bent to unlace her boots, the firelight turning her red hair into a study in subtle illumination. She straightened, set aside her boots, and settled her feet on a hassock.
“We make a difference,” she said. “Not enough of a difference, but a difference. If the cooper knows his apprentices come around to the church for an extra meal on Sunday, then he also knows Vicar will hear the boys discuss their working conditions. Are the hours too long? Is the morning porridge thin? The extra meal matters, but so does the knowledge that we keep an eye on our patrons.”