He smirked. “Always proper, Miss Ellsworth. My health is as you see it. Bright light pains me, as do harsh sounds and any scrap of glamour.” He nodded at the bare walls around them. “That is why I am allowed no visitors: not because of the need to conserve my strength, but because Lady FitzCameron does not want their poverty displayed.”

How dare Lady FitzCameron treat him thus. To spend his health and then confine him in order to hide her ill judgment was beyond criminal. “Is that why you are going to Bath?”

“In part. Dr. Smythe does seem to think the waters will do me some good, but I loathe the idea nonetheless. Forgive me; I grow resentful in my confinement. You are my first visitor.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighing. “Would you do me the kindness of opening the top right drawer of my bureau and bringing me the book in it?”

“Of course.” She rose, grateful for an activity to distract her from his pitiable state. “Am I truly your first visitor?”

“Captain Livingston has stopped in, but I think merely to report to others. We have nothing of moment to say to one another.”

Within the bureau, Jane found the notebook in which she had seen Mr. Vincent sketch. At this close range, she could make out the remnants of the initials V. H. embossed upon the worn leather cover. She turned with volume and held it up for him. “Is this it?”

Mr. Vincent nodded. “I should like for you to have this. As a thank-you for saving my life.”

Jane was so shocked that she nearly let the book slip from her grasp; to what purpose did he want her to have his sketches? “No thanks are necessary. Truly, it was nothing but what any person with—”

“Please, Miss Ellsworth, do not torture me with your civil phrases. Or at least use them to accept my gratitude with grace. I should be clear that it is not for preserving my breathing form for which I thank you, but for my art. Dr. Smythe has repeatedly told me that I shall make a full recovery and that I owe that to nothing more than your quick thinking. It is true that I might have lived without your efforts, but as a husk. That would have been a slow death for me. So it is—” He paused and looked at her with such focused intensity that Jane felt his gaze burn through to her spine. “It is for my art, which is my life, that I thank you, and it is my art which I offer as thanks.”

Even diminished as he was, the force of his personality dwarfed Jane’s. It did not seem any wonder that Melody felt Mr. Vincent’s regard when with him, if he looked at her with this directness, which went far beyond what was normally due a lady. In that moment, Jane doubted that Mr. Vincent were capable of regarding anyone with less than his whole being.