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“Too bad, really. She also said I’d meet a mysterious woman and fall desperately in love. Do I have to disregard all of it?”

He seemed peculiarly intent, waiting for her answer.

“I can’t say,” she said, smile fading. “I’m not an oracle.”

Suddenly, the memories flooded her. The feel of him as he slid down the bed. The thud of his knees on the floorboards. How she’d beat against his mouth.

Her breathing constricted, and she had to turn away, seizing on a jar of brushes.

“I love Jane Eyre,” she said, inspecting a brush. “But my favorite from the Brontë sisters is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Do you know it? It’s marvelous. A woman escapes her corrupted, adulterous husband and supports herself as a painter. She paints all day in a decaying mansion on the moor.”

Ah. She was babbling. She put aside the jar, smoothing her dress. She looked at him. Dimples.

Dammit.

“Marvelous,” he agreed.

“I have borrowed it five times from the lending library.”

“I don’t read novels,” he said. “Can’t, actually.” He picked up his whiskey again, and she tried not to care as he took a long sip. He slouched against the wall, studying his shirt cuff.

“I’m not illiterate.” He looked irritated at himself for having started down this road. “But I’ve never been able to figure them out. Letters, that is.”

He laughed, mocking himself. He’d likely been mocking himself his whole life. Before anyone else could. She regarded him thoughtfully.

“How do you read?” she asked. “Without understanding letters?”

“I think of the words as pictures,” he said, slowly. “I remember them that way, as shapes. I can’t pick them apart. My Latin teacher said I had porridge for brains and that was an insult to porridge.”

“The man should be boiled in porridge,” she said. “Your brain is excellent! You must have a mental compendium of thousands and thousands of words.”

“Something like that,” he said gruffly. He shrugged, tossed back the rest of the whiskey, set the glass on the sill. But he was grinning.

“Boiled in porridge?” He pushed off the wall and came toward her, slowly, deliberately, the smile playing across his lips. His gaze was hot.

She spun to face her canvas, redirecting his attention. “You’ve got a good visual sense, clearly, if you’re sorting through all those word pictures. What do you think, then?”

She gestured to her canvas. She hadn’t yet solicited his comments, and he hadn’t offered any. He’d barely looked at the picture when he came and went. Respecting her privacy, she supposed.

She felt him close behind her.

“They’re confident little creatures,” he said. “Oddly contained. It’s interesting . . . you’ve taken out the garden altogether. They’re almost hanging in air.”

In her first versions, she’d made the figures smaller, painted in the background, the little domestic details. The bricks in the walls, the clothesline with its handkerchiefs. In this picture, she’d enlarged the figures and painted them against a dark, abstracted background, layering color until she produced the right shadowy burgundy, evocative of secrets.

“I want attention to focus on the girls, the world they’re creating,” she said. She risked a glance over her shoulder. Her stomach flipped. He knew nothing about art, but he was a keen and interested observer. Talking to him about her canvas felt natural. Until she looked at him. Then her mind emptied out.

“Don’t move,” she said. “I want to sketch you. May I? The light . . .”

The dimming sky, layered with cloud, cast a pearly light. The dome of the glasshouse looked like a pearl. His black hair and brows, his strong-boned face, stood out powerfully.

“Just your head,” she said breathlessly, scampering for her sketchbook and charcoals. She positioned herself a few feet away.

“Stay as you were,” she said. “Don’t smile.”

“I’ve been told I have a nice smile.” He tried to speak without moving his lips.

“I hadn’t noticed.” Her hand moved rapidly. The scratching of charcoal on paper was the only sound.