Page 60 of The Quiet Wife
He was the one to break it. He stood away and cleared his throat and heard her catch her breath. In a strange way, it helped to know that she felt it too.
He busied himself with preparing the paints. Squeezing tubes onto his palette, mixing, daubing… messing. He glanced up at her, afraid of what he might see, but she smiled and he duly relaxed.
Inhaling deeply, he dipped the brush into the pale rose paint, standing before the blank canvas, and spreading the paint in a long, straight line. After that, he worked quickly, resolutely, and the first blocky image of Frances emerged before him.
A few strokes of the brush caught the line of her jaw, her eyes, and the tumble of her hair. He glanced at her, and his gaze tangled with hers for a moment before he broke it once more and returned to work. He’d no idea how long passed before she shifted and cleared her throat.
“Do you need a rest?” he queried.
“I thought you’d never ask. Have you seen the time?” She teased him with a wry smile.
He looked at the clock on the mantel. It had been over two hours.
“Christ, I’m sorry. You should have said something.” He put down the brush and hurriedly wiped his hands on a cloth.
“You appeared so deep in thought and so involved in the painting. I didn’t want to disturb you. Is it going well?”
He considered his work so far, a smile growing. “It is. It really is. It will be a glorious painting.”
Frances beamed at him and rang for tea.
“At this rate, you will have me finished in no time.”
He raised his eyebrows at that. “I sincerely doubt it. I foresee months of work in this.”
“Really? Am I so complicated?”
“Are you fishing for compliments?”
She looked shocked for a moment, but then she laughed.
When the tea arrived, they sat in companionable silence. Frances stroking one finger over the chair arm. He’d never met a woman with whom he could just be quiet and feel so contented with.
She broke the silence eventually. “Do you think our social standing will ever improve? After Frederick’s behaviour, I mean.”
Jemie knew she was conscious of her lack of social standing, having not been born into this kind of life. “I suspect things might be tense for a little while until he sorts it all out,” Jemie ventured.
“I fear you may be right,” she agreed.
He sipped his tea. “We could always return to London and leave him to fight it out. I can paint you in London just as easily as I can here.” He held his breath whilst she considered it. The suggestion was dangerous, but he wanted her out of Leyland’s way for a while. She clearly needed some respite from him because she was lighter when she wasn’t weighed down by his presence.
“I couldn’t leave with just you,” she said after a moment.
“True, but with Lizzie, my mother, and the girls, perhaps? Maybe Aunt Agatha and Miss Woodgrove could be persuaded?”
She bit her lip as she thought. “It would be awfully quiet in London, and hot.”
“And blissfully lacking in shipping magnates,” he added boldly.
For a moment, he thought she might agree, but the light dimmed, and it looked for a moment like her eyes might fill with tears. His heart clenched tightly in his chest.
“What? What is it?”
“I can’t leave him here alone. He’ll need me to act as his hostess whilst he tries to persuade everyone to his way of thinking. Besides, all the grand families leave the city for the countryside in the summer. It wouldn’t be the proper thing, so he’d never allow it.”
He knew it was true, but that didn’t stop the truth hurting. He swallowed down the words he wanted to say.
“You are too good to him,” he managed. Leyland didn’t deserve her. Not in the slightest.
