“It is just as unusual as it is here.” She smiled, the same genuine, open look she had given to her son. Gareth thought the expression transformed her face from merely pretty to beautiful. He was, by no means, immune to feminine beauty, but he’d never considered it quite so closely before. “My father, like most men, had wished for a son, but my mother died having me. I was perhaps five when he realized I had an aptitude for clay modeling as well as sketching. He began to take me into his studio. At first I only watched and played with my bits of wax or clay. I made my first piece from terracotta, and he was so pleased he purchased some rather fine marble—a softer grade of stone than he would normally use because I was still young and did not have the strength for the more durable types. When I was fourteen I began to help him in the studio at Monsieur Favel’s chateau. He was a very old sculptor who no longer worked but employed several sculptors and stone cutters to complete commissions he still received. It was a pleasant, if somewhat unconventional childhood,” her smiled wavered. “Or at least it was before the War took its toll.” She shrugged and cut a piece of ham. “So I am an artist by a fluke of nature. If my father had had a son, I would more than likely be married to a sculptor by now.”

He watched her lift the fork to her mouth and realized he possessed a rather unexpected desire to see her wield a hammer and chisel. Her hands were not beautiful in the accepted feminine sense, but they were shapely and dexterous.

“And you, Mr. Lockheart, how is it that you learned to do—” her hand fluttered as she sought the correct word. “Whatever it is you do?”

How to explain what he did? He had tried, once, to Dec, but had given up at his friend’s mystified look. Did she really want to know? Or was this polite conversation?

As if he had spoken the words aloud—which he knew he had not—she answered. “I am asking because I know you are knowledgeable about mathematics and its applications and my son seems to have taken an interest in those areas.”

Ah, so she was interested. “He does not wish to sculpt?”

She chuckled. “No, I’m afraid his talents lie elsewhere. He dislikes any form of artistic rendering but seems to enjoy drawing when it involves solving a problem, as with his automaton.”

Gareth could sympathize with the boy. Art often made him uncomfortable with too much emotionalism, or inexplicable tangents and lack of uniformity or logic. But machinery? Even something as simple as a toy? There was a certain type of poetry in things that worked. And numbers? Well, there was something about the precision and beauty of mathematics that made his soul—if humans indeed possessed such a thing—sing.

“I have always found patterns—mathematical patterns—in even the most mundane of things. They existed before I could understand them. And when I was exposed to my first lesson in the simplicity and power of numbers, I knew I would need to keep seeking until I could know the whole of it.” He paused, considering his foolish words. “Of course the more you learn the more you realize that is not possible.” He could not recall the last time he’d spoken so much to a stranger. Luckily, Mrs. Lombard did not seem to find his words odd.