Chloe started in surprise and jumped up. She’s such a nice person, Charlotte thought affectionately, looking at Chloe’s earnest little face and clear eyes. The two young women had become good friends over the eight weeks it had taken to complete the portrait. Charlotte squinted at her portrait. Was it there? Chloe’s deep-down honesty? She thought it was. The other side to Chloe, the mercurial gleams of desire that seemed so clear to Charlotte two months ago, were rather dimmer in the final portrait. Perhaps because Chloe herself had lost the yearning look she had after the night of King Lear. The night before Alex proposed to me, Charlotte thought with a little, irresistible smile. She couldn’t stop smiling when she thought about him.

“Two more besotted idiots I’ve never seen!” her great-aunt Margaret, a formidable lady at her best, had declared. Lady Margaret had a swollen toe and was feeling particularly testy during the formal dinner given by the Duke of Calverstill to celebrate his youngest daughter’s engagement to the Earl of Sheffield and Downes. “We’ll see how long that lasts,” she said, rather spitefully. But Margaret really was fond of her youngest niece, and this Alexander seemed to be a decent sort. She had liked his father—Old Brandy Balls, they called him when she was young. He would have been horrified to find his son plastered with a nickname like the Ineligible Earl, that was certain.

In Charlotte’s studio, Chloe clapped her hand to her mouth. “It isn’t me!”

Charlotte looked startled. “Yes it is, Chloe. It looks just like you.”

“No,” Chloe breathed. “It’s far too beautiful.”

A smile lit the corners of Charlotte’s mouth. “You’re a raving beauty, my dear.” She put an arm around Chloe’s small shoulders. “You’ll just have to get used to that fact.” Charlotte had chosen not to place Chloe in a fashionable setting, like a ruined temple or a flowery meadow. Instead, she was sitting on the divan, just as she had in real life. Its slightly worn surface was unchallenged by Chloe’s heavy twill dress, the same dress she often wore to sittings.

“Don’t you think it would be a nicer picture if I wore a new gown?” Chloe had asked rather dubiously, when Charlotte announced her intention. “After all, Sissy is in an Egyptian costume—”

Charlotte broke into this comment. “Don’t even mention that vulgar portrait Sissy commissioned! Poor Lady Commonweal was cut up about it for weeks. Cleopatra indeed! Sissy has no sense of dress.”