“Cutting it when it’s warm takes skill,” she said. “You need a good sharp bread knife and a light touch. Don’t mash it.”

She stirred cream and sugar into his tea while he feathered slices of holiday bread from the loaf. “You don’t skimp on the goodies.” The loaf was liberally full of candied fruit and nuts, to the point that Elijah’s mouth watered.

“My sister Sophie doesn’t skimp on anything related to the comfort or pleasure of her family. This is her recipe, or her version of our grandmother’s recipe.”

“Your grandmamma was German?” The tea in his cup was steaming too. To make a painting of steam was difficult—probably better suited to watercolors than oils.

“We’re German on Her Grace’s mother’s side. My father would call it the dam line, and he’d use that language in company too. About that sketch, Mr. Harrison?”

He passed her a thoroughly buttered slice of warm holiday bread. “First things first. I arrived here after luncheon was served because I detoured clear back to the posting inn to make sure my baggage had been sent on ahead.”

“And like a man, you did not want to impose on the kitchen when you got here, and you forgot to see to your victualing at the inn because you had a task before you. When you arrived here, you denied my sister the pleasure of caring for an honored guest—and you went hungry.”

She was scolding him, which made him want to miss more meals so she might scold him some more. Surely the cold was addling his wits? “You have no patience for the starving-artist mentality?”

She held up her slice of bread, regarding it as melted butter drizzled onto her plate. “Art should be joyful, so joyful it sustains its creator in ways that have nothing to do with physical nourishment.”

He took a bite of bread rather than snort at her naïveté. He’d believed the same thing, once upon a long, silly time ago. “Art should be pretty and remunerative. You say I’m an honored guest, but in reality, I’m a tradesmen reluctantly admitted into houses above my station.”

She took a dainty bite, chewed slowly, and turned an innocent pair of green eyes on him. “You are the heir to a marquess. By rights, you are the Earl of Bernward. You outrank most of your subjects, though I suspect you keep the title quiet because your patrons would be self-conscious in your presence otherwise. Commendable of you, from an artistic standpoint.”

He hadn’t seen that salvo coming, and so he reacted less carefully than he ought. “How do you know I modeled for Antoine?”

Her ladyship munched another bite of holiday bread, not a discernible care in the world. “Your tea is getting cold, Mr. Harrison. I attended those classes whenever I could. Your generosity as a model did much to improve my understanding of the male body.”

He finished his tea in two swallows. “Women were not permitted into those classes. Not ever.” And yet, he’d known she was there practically from the first.

She popped the last bite of her bread into her mouth and dusted her hands together. “I grew tired of drawing kittens and… flowers, much as you might occasionally grow tired of painting corpulent old lords, aging beauties, and strutting lordlings.”

A Renaissance master would have known what to do with her. She was heartrendingly beautiful to the eye, more beautiful the longer he studied her, and yet—she was a minx too. On the order of a saint who prayed with her eyes turned heavenward and much of her cleavage exposed. She likely didn’t appreciate this aspect of her own personality though, which created a conundrum.

“The lordlings are the worst, and I knew you were in Antoine’s classes.”

All the languor in her manner disappeared. While Elijah watched, a blush crept up her neck, turning her perfect complexion quite, quite rosy.

“I suspected you knew when you came to Joseph’s door last night. May I ask how I was found out?”

Relief swept through him, odd but welcome. She’d been bluffing. Those looks, that thoughtful chewing, the “your tea will grow cold” nonsense had been her attempt at a sophisticated repartee foreign to her nature. He held out another piece of buttered sweet bread to her and wondered why she’d try to misrepresent herself.

“Your sketches were always the best,” he said, helping himself to more tea. “And yet, you never asked many questions, never spoke much at all. You were one of few students who had the sense to move around the room, to change your perspective on the subject from week to week. You took risks. You got down to business as soon as Antoine had described the exercise, and Antoine always had a few words to say to you when he wandered among the students.”

“From that you deduced my identity?”

“Drink your tea before it cools, my lady.”

His words provoked her minx-smile, which hadn’t been their intended effect. He buttered himself more bread rather than smile back. “I followed you home, except you didn’t go directly home. You went in the back door of a modiste’s establishment, and no matter how long I waited, the pale young man with so much dedication and talent never emerged.”

“Though Lady Jenny Windham did.”

“If it’s any consolation, I needed several attempts to figure out your scheme.”

She tore off a bite of bread but didn’t eat it. Even her fingers were beautiful—slender, graceful, elegant. “Why concern yourself at all, Mr. Harrison? You are the darling of the Royal Academy, your talent beyond question. Why would you care about one casual art student?”

A clever reply would have served them both well. They could smile false smiles at each other, finish the tea and crumpets, and perhaps dance a minuet before his nightly nap in the card room if they ended up in the same ballroom next Season.

Half a secret exchanged for half a secret.

He watched the holiday bread crumble to bits in her fingers and chose a different path. “I worried for you.”

She studied her buttery fingers while Elijah tried to find something else to occupy his imagination. “You worried for me, for my safety perhaps?”

Did nobody ever worry for her? Or did she never allow her loved ones to know what she was really about?

“You were safe as houses on the streets of Mayfair in broad daylight, even when you went sauntering down St. James Street in your masculine regalia at midafternoon.” That had been naughty of her—also brave.

“One wants to see more than candlelit ballrooms and sunny bridle paths, Mr. Harrison. What I saw was a clutch of dandies lounging in the windows of the men’s clubs, pretending a perfectly prosaic street scene somehow merited their devoted study. They reminded me of the lions at the menagerie—tame, twitchy, bored, and helpless to address their own miseries.”

Her description was deadly accurate. “I noticed you did it only the once.”

“One need not… I wasn’t doing it to be daring. I wanted to see. Why were you worried for me?”

Afternoon tea should have been an occasion for some flirtation, a little sustenance, and maybe—if he flirted well and she were receptive—a bit of sketching. Elijah wasn’t sure what to call their exchange, but it was not flirting.

“You never fraternized with the other students, never arrived or left with them. You never joined in the stupid, self-conscious banter that ensues when young men are in the presence of nudity.”

She was regarding him with carefully masked bewilderment. He forged on, driven by motivations he was not going to examine closely unless thoroughly drunk.

“When one is talented, particularly early in one’s career, one can suffer doubts. In my experience, the doubts can be commensurate with the talent rather than inversely proportional to it. The myth of the sensitive artistic disposition is not entirely false, and I didn’t want…”

What was he saying? What was he babbling?

She picked up his uneaten slice of bread and held it out to him. “You did not want the quiet, withdrawn, somewhat talented student to doubt himself—herself—to the point of loss of confidence or foolish actions.”