Beatrice tilted her head at the sketch on the canvas, her critical eye passing back and forth between the drawing and her subject. She sighed—she was never going to get him to look out the window as she wanted. She might as well portray him as his father had, looking directly at the artist. “I think perhaps it would be more natural if you simply looked at me. Turn your head a bit more in my direction. No, not that much. Yes, that’s good.”
Setting to work correcting the angle of his head, she thought of how different their upbringings had been. How different would her life have been without Mama’s constant presence? Turning a critical eye toward him, she studied his expression for a moment before turning back to the sketch. “Do you miss your mother?”
“Every day,” he said without hesitation. “Maybe it would be different if she had died when I was younger, but at five, my entire world revolved around her.”
She didn’t doubt it. If something happened to her parents, as had almost happened to Papa earlier in the year, Beatrice doubted she would ever get over the loss. “How did she die?” It was a bold, nosy question, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Her heart squeezed for the little boy in the portrait, his eyes so serious and challenging at such a young age.
“The usual,” he said, his shoulder hitching up in a halfhearted shrug. “She and my brother died in childbirth.”
Beatrice’s breath caught—he’d lost his mother and his brother in the same day? Her heart melted for the man, let alone the boy she’d never known. “I’m so sorry. How heartbreaking to lose them both at a time that should have been joyful.” She shuddered to think of how things could have been different when Evie had Emma.
“Yes.” The single word was filled with a wealth of emotions. For a moment he was quiet, doing nothing more than holding his pose. “It might have been different if my father had handled it better—not that I blame him. He loved my mother very much. When he lost her, he lost his wife, his helpmate, his son’s mother, and his greatest champion.”
Perhaps it was his hollow tone, or the sudden sadness weighing the corner of his lips down, but for some reason she felt as though she had hit upon a nerve. “But your father loved you, too, of course.”
“He did, I think. In his own way. Just as I loved him in my own way. But growing up with a man more dedicated to his art than his family was a bit . . . demoralizing, shall we say.”
She sucked in a surprised breath. Tate had always been such a paragon in her mind. Was Colin saying that he’d had more regard for painting than for his child? “But by working, he was providing for you, was he not? Perhaps that was what he worried about in the early days.”
He nodded, looking down for a moment before meeting her gaze again. “Yes, though it might have been helpful if he had more sense with the commissions he was earning. It wasn’a long before I realized that if the accounts were to be paid and our bills not lost, it was up to me to see to it.”
Beatrice offered him a sympathetic smile. “Is that how you came to be the responsible barrister?”
Even as her heart went out to him, she could scarcely make herself believe that his legendary father could have such a failing. Everything she had heard about him had been in the vein of charming, affable, and eccentric. A little odd, as artists can sometimes be, but a great addition to any social event. She had been devastated that he had died just as she was to make her debut.
“I suppose one could say I spent my whole life in training.”
“Did things not change when your father remarried?” She knew little about Tate’s second wife, other than the fact she had died several years earlier.
“They did, actually. She was determined to get my father’s life in order and to provide a good upbringing for her two children and me. But old habits die hard, I suppose. After four years alone with my father, letting go of the worry dinna come easy.”
He was so sweet with her, so easy to be with, it was hard to imagine him as the stoic little boy he described. Her own childhood had been so carefree; it made her heart clench to imagine his staidness. She set down her pencil, picked up her brush, and began mixing paints on her palette. “Tell me about her children. Do you get along?”
It was the perfect question to ask to break the tension that had tightened his jaw and beetled his brow. “Very well. They are quite a bit younger than me, but they have always been sweet-tempered and good company. Although they were both terribly unhappy with me for leaving them behind in Scotland while I made my grand debut, so to speak.”
“Now, that I can understand. I hated never being able to join in the fun when Evie was out in society. Ironic, really, since she would have rather been anywhere else.”
He chuckled. “I think I’m with your sister on this one. As for you, I think you would like Cora. She has always been fascinated with Father’s work and would sneak up to his studio after bedtime to watch him paint sometimes. She got caught more often than not, sent to bed with a scolding, but it never stopped her from trying again.”
Happy with the color on her palette, she took a deep breath, set the bristles against the canvas, and made her first stroke. “A girl after my own heart, apparently. And your stepbrother?”
She glanced up just in time to catch a look of disgust contort his features. “I’m so sorry. Are you on bad terms with him?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just that I hate that term. They are as much my brother and sister as your siblings are to you.”
“Yes, of course. I didn’t intend to insult you.”
“No, I dinna think you did. But when half the family you have in the world is distanced by the word ‘step,’ it tends to become distasteful. We were raised together from when I was nine, and my life became infinitely better when they came along.”
That was quite possibly the sweetest thing Beatrice had ever heard. Her heart softened toward the two children she had never even met. “I’m so glad to hear it. What is your brother’s name?”
Any remaining stiffness fled completely from his shoulders. “Rhys. He’s a born leader. I could easily see him running the estate, or even making his way into politics. He argues almost as well as I do,” he said with a wink. “If he had gotten his way, he’d be here in London with me now. Luckily, I convinced him that Cora and Gran needed a man in the house to keep them safe.”
“The same Gran who fought the bear?”
He laughed, beautiful amusement lighting his features. “The very one. A more terrifying woman, I have never known.”
“I don’t believe you. You positively glow when you speak of her.”
“She is one of a kind. Half Scottish, half Irish, and with twice the superstition of either people. When I first saw you, her fanciful descriptions of forest nymphs immediately came to mind.”
She paused midstroke, her eyes flitting to his. The sweet smile on his perfect lips made her belly do a little flip. “Forest nymph? Me?”
“Absolutely. The luminescent skin, those huge blue eyes, hair like moonbeams—it all seemed to fit.”
Hair like moonbeams? She sincerely hoped her grin wasn’t as foolish looking as it felt. She ducked her head a bit, giving more care to loading her brush with paint than absolutely necessary. “Perhaps it had something to do with me emerging from the curtains like some sort of mischievous mystical creature.”
“Perhaps,” he allowed, the warmth of his gaze heating her insides from clear across the room. “But I’m glad for the way we met. It was pure, in a way.”
“Pure?” she echoed, knitting her brow at his choice of words as she worked on his outline.
“Neither of us knew a single thing about the other. The only thing I knew for sure was that you were beautiful and damn entertaining, and I dinna want to leave you to go meet a horde of strangers I dinna care about.”