Page 49 of Duke of the Sun

“My efforts?”

He gestured around. “The orangery, I mean. You have my utmost respect and congratulations for completing such an impressive feat. I’m sure that it would draw the eye of even the most skilled and sought after architect.” Michael bowed deeply. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Cordelia watched as he turned abruptly, and stormed out of the orangery. Within a moment, after the front door clapped shut, Cordelia was once again alone in the orangery. She looked around at everything she managed to create. All that she had been so proud of felt miniscule, suddenly, as if it had never happened in the first place.

And when the tears began to fall, Cordelia had no explanation for them at all.

CHAPTER14

The last time Cordelia saw her Aunt from her father’s side, her self-confidence and courage was whittled down to almost nothing. The memories rang through her as she stared out the carriage window, just as a steady rain fell over London. It pattered against the carriage’s rooftop noisily, though Cordelia found it to be rather comforting. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine how Solshire looked in the center of a downpour.

Haunting, she thought, as if the ghosts of the estate were carried in the droplets and set free the moment they hit the ground. A blurry image came to the forefront of her mind: the estate shrouded in a fog, streaks of rain slicing through the world, the colors of the grass and the garden bright and heavy as they soaked in the moisture. Her next painting, perhaps.

“What are you doing?”

Cordelia’s eyes popped open. Directly across from her, Michael watched with a quizzical brow. He dressed in his fine coats, a top hat beside him. The shadows from the falling sun and approaching storm made him look ethereal, like a mysterious figure in a book, the unwarranted hero or the frightening and tempting villain. Cordelia couldn’t put her hand on it, but perhaps he was a mix of them both.

She shook her head. She felt far too romantic during the rain.

Cordelia met his startled gaze. “Hm?”

“You were,” Michael paused, searching for the word but coming up empty handed. He swayed slightly before raising his hand, and dragging it through the air, one finger pointed out like a paintbrush.

“Oh,” Cordelia mused, the embarrassment already clutching onto her. “Solshire in the rain would be a brilliant painting, don’t you think?”

Michael stared at her, his furrowed brow deepening.

“Sometimes,” she continued, “I feel as though I can see the entire world as a painting in my head. I just thought, with the rain, how beautiful Solshire must look. You know it better than I. Is it as alluring in the rain as I believe it to be?”

Michael hesitated as he pulled his gaze away, glancing out the window as the rain grew heavier the further they crept through London.

Ever since their tour through the orangery, things hadn’t returned to how they once were. Cordelia felt plagued by their shared kiss, the remnants of it lingering across her lips no matter how much she scrubbed them. Their time in the carriage was the closest they had been in a few days. Perhaps Michael wished to put more space between them, but his lack of conversation has left Cordelia guessing more than actually knowing. Even then, as she awaited a simple response, her self-confidence began to shrink and disappear.

“It is magnificent in the rain.”

Cordelia watched his face, her lips parting as a surprised exhale left her.

“While one might expect the colors to grow brighter in the rain,” Michael continued, the strength and steadiness in his voice shocking her even further. He kept his eye focused out the window, one hand holding the curtain back. “They are deeper, instead. As if the leaves and the grass and the petals soaked the water up.”

Michael’s brow furrowed tightly together as he continued, his gaze becoming faraway and someplace else than the carriage. “When the rain is strong enough, a stream flows down either side of the estate, pooling around it like a medieval moat. My -”

He stopped, suddenly, his lips snapping shut.

“Your what?” Cordelia asked.

Michael turned to face her with an unreadable expression; blank like an untouched canvas. “Have you painted recently?”

“Have I…” The words trailed off.

He raised a brow. “Have you,” he said again, slower as if she couldn’t understand English, “Painted recently?”

Cordelia looked back out the window. Her annoyance flared as quickly as the rain grew stronger. Michael was an expert at changing the subject and acting like nothing happened in the first place.

Besides, she wasn’t sure if it was a question she’d like to answer truthfully. The last painting she worked on and finished, was the portrait she did of him. It was a secret sort of project, one that she hid away when she needed to do something else. The thought of letting another soul see it or hear about it was too personal, a piece of her she wasn’t ready to be seen. Cordelia pressed her lips together. How would Michael even respond if she told him the truth, that she painted a portrait of him without needing him to pose? From mere memory alone?

She shook her head. Far too personal, indeed.

“I am stuck on a few,” she responded instead.

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