Page 55 of The Forsaken

“Edgar, give me my book.”

“These aren’t doodles.”

Her breathing grew shallow in her ears.

He sounded enraged on her behalf, and also at her.

A single look from him set her adrift, but his support of her work threatened her heart.

“Stop it.”

His brow creased.

“You know,” she said, her temperature rising. “You’re making fun of me. You always do.”

“No…” He grimaced. “Not always. Not this time.”

The raw intensity of his russet eyes filtered with a swirl of emotions.

“Your shading here,” he indicated the honeycomb. “There’s such light and depth it comes off the page. Your transitions from light to dark are seamless. Here,” he pointed to some other spot. She didn’t know which one. She could not take her eyes off his enthralled visage.

He continued dissecting and then praising the quality of her work. “You’ve done far more than give a cursory inventory; you gave it life. The light touching from the window, the gleam captured reflects…”

Edgar paused. He stayed quiet or spoke low to himself. His silent scrutiny of her sketches, however, was pure torment.

Andromena spoke fast. “I learned that technique from John Constable.”

Surprise filled his eyes.

“Not… personally.” Her whole body went hot. “When I was a lass, my parents wanted me to spend time with our aunts and uncles who live outside London. My favorite visits were with Aunt Beatrix. I was always lost in my big family, but there she cared about everything I said and did. She had a small cottage in Hampstead Village, some one hundred paces from Bishop’s Pond, but it was easily more beautiful than all the earl and countess’s English properties combined. To a young lass like myself, it looked like a fairytale castle, draped in thick ivy and blooming roses.” Memories called her back and she smiled. “There was this one tree beside Bishop’s Pond. Every day—and sometimes night—I would climb in its big, gnarled branches and draw…” You are rambling. Stop it.

But Edgar did not look bored. If anything, he looked too intent, as though her every word mattered.

That was the trouble: her words and actions meant nothing to anyone. Many men wanted to marry her and praised her looks, but no one listened to her thoughts or cared about her mind—as Edgar seemed to now.

Andromena fiddled with her skirts. “I’m being silly. In your travels, you’ve visited a million more beautiful, wonderful places than Hampstead Heath.”

Kerr’s gaze didn’t waver. “I never saw it through your eyes, though,” he said quietly.

Andromena’s breath hitched.

“And sometimes, Andromena, when we look at such great grandeur, we forget to appreciate the beauty of our own home.”

Her lids fluttered closed.

He made it impossible to forget how she’d been charmed by him, and then deceived. That deception felt further and further away.

“I take it you met John Constable there?”

The moment broke.

Startled from her musing, she looked at him. “Hmm?”

“John Constable. You said—”

“Oh. Not…quite.”

“I sense mischief here.”