“I have found only one man who is able to see past my face, past my deficit of talent, and see me within. I should not be jealous of you, but it is hard to break a long habit.”

“How long a habit?”

“Since I first realized that you were talented and I was not.” She sighed. “Indeed, though you will not believe it, I am sorry that I read Mr. Vincent’s book. I should not have done it. I am sorry.” Melody’s eyes were round and glistening with tears. “Forgive me, Jane, but even if you do not, read the rest of the book, or at least look at the pictures. That’s all I really did.”

Before Jane could respond to Melody’s claims, the dining room door opened. “Jane? Melody? Are you coming to dinner?” Mr. Ellsworth peered down the hall to them.

“Yes, Papa. La! You would not believe who stopped in, but Mr. Dunkirk! Jane left her shawl and he returned it.”

“Did he, now?” Mr. Ellsworth beamed. “You must tell us all about it, only do come. Your mother is fretting because the soup is getting cold.”

Though Jane’s body rebelled at the thought of sitting through dinner, she recognized that her mother, at least, would be hurt beyond measure if Jane did not attend dinner the night before they left. And as they were to leave at dawn, it would not be too much longer before there was peace in the household for reflection. “Coming, Papa.”

She set the bonnet aside on a table in the hall. There would be time enough to repair it after Melody left.

Twenty-one

Wolves and Muses

Exhausted, Jane went to bed as soon as she could slip away after dinner and settled in a chair by the small grate in her room with Mr. Vincent’s book. A slight apprehension kept her from at once opening the book to look for that at which Melody had hinted, though she could not have said whether she was more afraid that the pages held something other than ruminations on art or it was simply one of Melody’s inventions. Jane ran her finger over the embossed V. H. on the cover with no notion of what name the H might represent, nor why the initials were different from his name. It occurred to her that she had no notion what Mr. Vincent’s given name might be.

Jane opened the book to the page she had last been reading.

I have been experimenting of late with the effect of combining a wilder underlayment of paint with a very precise, thread-specific, top coat of glamour. On the whole . . .

Jane left the page marked and skipped forward, looking for the pictures. She paused at a series of pages detailing a glamural he had done at a home in London, then skipped ahead to a sketch of a single fern frond. Though the writing below it tempted Jane, with its discussion of how energy could be saved by duplicating the threads for the larger frond on smaller and smaller levels, she turned the page, skipping through the text beyond to a series of pages shewing the plans for Lady FitzCameron’s dining room. Jane scanned the delicate lines of his sketches for hints of the nymph, but did not see any, nor anything else to excite remark beyond Mr. Vincent’s skill.