“Though we are little better than strangers, you always seem to treat me as though you know me,” he remarked.
“And yet it seems I know nothing about you,” she challenged.
It could have been the dappled sunlight, the distraction she provided from his consistent disappointment, the mysterious glint in her eye, or some odd combination of all of these variables that summoned a rakish mischief within him he’d thought forever lost.
“I am an open book,” he declared with false solemnity.
“You are anything but that,” she laughed.
He made a sound of mock outrage. “Ask me any question you please, and suffer the consequences of my absolute candor.”
She pretended to give it some thought. “Speaking of books, then. Who is your most beloved author?”
“Shakespeare, obviously.”
She cast him a dubious look. “Which play?”
It was his turn to give it some thought and answered with a defiant smirk, “The one wherein the parent dies and someone goes mad.”
“That’s nearly all of them.” Her eyes danced with mirth. “So much for candor. I’m beginning to doubt you know Shakespeare at all.”
Cole plucked from his memory one of the numerous sonnets he’d devoured as a child.
“‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove, O no! it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken…’” He let the words trail away as their significance pierced him with solemnity.
“‘Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,’” she finished breathlessly, the paintbrush trembling in her hand. “‘But bears it out even to the edge of doom.’”
Their eyes locked and held as Cole’s mind churned with the same frenzy his stallion’s hooves had only minutes prior. Was that what he was doing? Bearing out his obsessive need for Ginny, even to the edge of his own doom? What would the bard have to say about his behavior? he wondered. Would he have censured Cole for pining after Ginny all this time? Or for forgetting to do so when thusly engaged with the Lady Anstruther?
“I stand both corrected and astonished,” she admitted, seemingly impervious to his thoughts. “I, too, love Shakespeare. Though I enjoy his words more when performed than the reading of them. To be honest, Isobel is the great reader in our family, as I tend to appreciate more visual modalities.” She gestured to her painting.
“I can’t find fault in that,” he murmured, unable to tear his eyes from the vision she made. A violet blooming in the shade of their tree. “There is much to appreciate.”
A pretty pink blush stained her high cheekbones, and she lowered bashful lashes. “You’ve been riding today.” She swept some horsehair from his jacket, and Cole could almost hear the scandalized gasps of the noble matrons passing in their expensive carriages. He loved that she seemed to care even less than he did. “It is my most fervent regret that I never had the chance to learn the equestrian arts.”
His first instinct was to offer to teach her, and then he realized what the sight of her on horseback would do to him. She was a lithe woman, and proximity to her rolling hips and her bottom bouncing in a saddle might just be the death of him.
Shifting away from her, he gestured to the nude Achilles statue, the hero’s only adornment, other than a sword and shield, an intimately placed fig leaf. “You abandoned your garden today in search of more … stimulating inspiration for your art?”
An impish dimple appeared in her cheek. “I’ve always been fond of this statue,” she admitted. “On a day like this, I like the play of the sunlight on the darker bronze of his musculature.”
Cole swallowed around a dry tongue as he watched her gaze trace the exposed lines of Achilles’ form with naked admiration.
“More of your passion for Greek mythology?”
She shook her head, surprising him yet again with her audacity, even as her lashes swept down. “No, actually, he … reminds me of someone.”
“The Duke of Wellington, I presume? The thing was cast in his honor though, obviously, not in his image.”
“No.” She glanced back up at the imposing statue, and Cole had the absurd notion that she was studiously avoiding his gaze. “Someone else.”
Cole glared at the statue with a renewed distaste for it. It reminded her of someone … Someone she’d apparently experienced in flagrante delicto.
Were he a lesser man he’d be jealous.
But he wasn’t.
Not in the least.
Though he had to admit it a balm to his ego that his physique could rival that of Achilles, at least, this particular rendering of him. The one she so admired. He couldn’t help but wonder what her aesthetic eye would capture if she were to gaze upon him so revealed. Would she see his strength and sinew, or only his impediment?
“I like his stance most of all,” she said, studying it as though she’d done so a thousand times before. “It’s as though the sculptor captured the heartbeat before a great triumph. His shield is brandished in a way that leaves no question that he deflected the blow of his enemy. His sword is readying for a maneuver that he’s mastered. One can almost complete the moment in one’s mind in all its fierce victory, even though other variables are missing.” She finally turned to him, eyes shining with the fanatical enjoyment he’d often envied in the intellectual set.
“It’s the mark of a great artist, don’t you think? To still convey what is not captured on the canvas, or … in the clay or stone, as the case may be. It’s a talent to which I aspire.”
For a moment, Cole forgot where they were or what they were talking about. All he could do was gape at her, as though seeing her for the first time. He could stare into her eyes all day and never catalogue all the hues. The ring at the center of her irises was decidedly brown, and then bled with color to the verdant edge. From a distance, the sunlight turned them green, the moonlight burnished them a silvery-gray, and her tears made them murky as the Thames in a storm.
By what magic, he had no idea, but Lord, did he enjoy the spectacle.
Grace, he realized, was something this woman had in spades.
“And here I thought you merely painted the landscape of your garden,” he murmured, discomfited that his voice seemed to have lowered a few unnecessary octaves.
Her brow puckered again, as it seemed to do when she was distressed. “If I’m honest, I’ve been unable to enjoy my garden since…”
“Lady Broadmore?” he guessed.
She nodded, again avoiding his gaze. “And also, I confess I’ve had the distinct feeling that I’m being spied upon when I’m out there.”
A guilty flush stole from beneath his collar. He’d spent more time than usual at the window with the intent of watching her, but for no other reason than Morley had asked him to, of course.
“Though, I suppose, venturing from the safety and anonymity of my gardens probably does me some good. I not only challenge myself artistically this way, but I endeavor into the unknown potential of the day.” She summoned a sunny smile for him, and again his heart sputtered. “For example, I might chance to meet a newly mended acquaintance, or notice an art gallery I hadn’t previously visited.”