“I’m not implying anything.” Charlotte gazed at him. “I’m only suggesting that one paints what one knows,” she said slowly. “It is impossible for our own experiences to not act as a filter through which we see the world. How we reproduce it here on these pages. It’s what makes us unique. It’s what gives our work life.” She glanced down at the sketch, wondering again at the circumstances that had shaped this man’s view.

Rutledge made an odd noise, somewhere between a sneer and a scoff. He advanced and reached past her, snatching her own sketch of St. Michael off the table and holding it up between them. “You are a savior and I am a soldier? Is that the light you see yourself in? How you see me?”

“I’m not anyone’s savior,” she said carefully. Save, perhaps my own. “And I don’t know you well enough to see you in any sort of light.” His eyes flickered down to the drawing again, and Charlotte cast about for words that would extricate herself from the dangerous undercurrents of his challenge. “I was only proposing that the juxtaposition of these sketches is what will make the completed work compelling,” she said quietly. “That is what you wanted, isn’t it? Something compelling?”

The scent of him enveloped her completely now, soap tinged with a hint of wood smoke and turpentine. She could see his chest rising and falling faster than normal, his features tight, his eyes stormy. The ridiculous urge to reach out and touch him again, to brush the hair from his troubled eyes, rose hard and fast. A longing to smooth the deep lines from his forehead, feel the roughness of the stubble that covered his rigid jaw.

He was still staring at her, and Charlotte shifted uneasily under his scrutiny, feeling suddenly and horribly exposed. She took a step back and then another.

“Fine,” he said abruptly, before she could retreat farther.

“Fine?” she repeated, her voice wobbling a little.

“I will present these to Lisbon. See if he agrees with the idea.”

“We should discuss other aspects of the composition first, don’t you agree?” Charlotte said, desperately trying to distance herself from these dangerous feelings and yearnings with practical, safe subjects. “Background and balance. Proportion and the palette.” She thought she might be babbling now, but she couldn’t stop.

Rutledge didn’t seem to notice. “And I suppose you have suggestions for those things as well.”

Charlotte nodded. “Some.” She shuffled back just a little farther for good measure. “Lisbon will want a detailed proposal.”

Rutledge sighed but moved to extract a blank sheet of paper from the pile of drawings he had left on the end of the table. “Very well. Let’s get this over with.”

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The juxtaposition of these sketches is what will make the completed work compelling.