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She was no thief creeping about to filch other girls’ tools. But surely her face was the picture of guilty defiance.

A man filled the doorway, tall and broad and dark. He didn’t notice her flush. He didn’t pay her any mind at all. He was glancing around the room, already shifting his weight to move on down the hall.

With a start, she recognized the ratio of shoulders to hips, the staggering breadth of the former accentuating the leanness of the latter. He was somehow taller even than she’d imagined. Although his height made perfect sense given his length when sprawled upon the ground, his verticality astounded her.

There could be no doubt.

“My corpse!” The words burst from her. Hysterical laughter threatened to follow and she clapped a hand over her mouth. The man whose body she’d spent months daydreaming, drawing, realizing in every detail in oil and pigment, until she’d breathed life into the form and had begun to think of it, of him, as her own creation. He was suddenly scant yards away.

His dark brows arched as he turned back toward her.

“My corpse.” His voice had the unmistakable drawl of the best society. “I am unfamiliar with that expression.”

He was looking at her as though she had sprouted two heads, with a mix of curiosity and revulsion. She saw herself, suddenly, as he would see her, short and scrawny, frizzy-haired, in a vivid dress of purple silk and black brocade. To make it, she’d wedded components of gowns her aunt had sewn for two very different productions, a music-hall melodrama and a Shakespearean tragedy. She felt her flush deepen.

Her attire was interesting but not outrageous, not by art-world standards. Kate wore trousers, and Redcliffe Davis wore an earring!

This man did not hail from the art world. His suit was plain; the wools and linens were of the highest quality. His jacket and trousers were expertly tailored. If this was his typical attire, no wonder he’d been stripped to the skin. A family could dine off the buttons alone.

She swallowed hard. She remembered the heat emanating from his body, the smell of sweat and spirits. This man was clean-shaven. He wore his hair combed back. She knew already how he would smell: perfumed. Wealthy.

Nights, when she lay down at last but couldn’t sleep due to her racing mind, she’d imagined meeting her corpse again. Silly fantasies. He was always wearing rough clothes, and he always recognized her, as though from a dream. He was a farmer. A blacksmith. A gamekeeper. She’d conjured all sorts of country professions.

He was never this, never the gentleman. Imperious and disdaining. The sort of man who would always be a stranger.

She shared nothing with him. Her sense of connection had been exposed in a heartbeat as an absurd presumption. It was ridiculous, but she felt betrayed.

“Only students are allowed in the Schools,” she said, too sharply. “Perhaps . . . you are lost?”

He brushed this suggestion away. Dismissing it. Dismissing her.

“I’m looking for someone.” And although there was no one in the room to find except for her, he stepped across the threshold and began to prowl the room’s perimeter. His stride was athletic. Lazy and sure.

She stood rooted to the spot, staring.

In her picture, she’d styled him classically, as the shepherd king Endymion, but here, in the flesh, his fluid grace made him seem predatory, a poor fit as a protector of small, defenseless creatures. He moved like a panther.

“The Visitor in Painting.” He closed in on her, eyes sweeping over the uneven ring of easels, the model’s chair in the center of the floor. “Do you know him?”

They were green, those eyes, green as moss, but without any of the softness. They were hard, clear. Startling. She’d never have guessed that exact shade. How to convey its brilliancy? Pale green lights added to darkest emerald.

She had looked too long. Suddenly, his gaze grew piercing.

He was staring back.

“Of course I know him,” she said. Her mouth was dry. She could look at this man for a year, for a hundred years, and never grow weary. He did not feel the same way about her. His eyes slid away again easily, turning to more interesting sights. He circled an easel, Susan’s, and leaned over it, peering closely at its contents, then returned his eyes to Lucy with a sniff.

“I don’t see the likeness.” He folded his arms at his chest. She knew how his biceps curved, how the muscle swelled. She could make a map of his veins.

Likeness? Her comprehension had lagged behind his words, but now she snapped to attention. Likeness to whom? Her? Ha! She tried to access her reservoir of scorn, which she could usually rely on to resource her lavishly when she interacted with arrogant men.

He would be the type who took a woman for an artist’s model rather than an artist proper. Did he even know this was a female class? That women painted at all?

What devastating setdown could she deliver?

He strolled to the next easel.

“Ah,” he said. “This one, too, has nothing of your face or expression. Mr. Coover is a poor teacher.”