She moved to a wide, cluttered worktable and rifled through a stack of papers. On each page was a sketch of lobsters coupling in a different position. Logan had never seen anything like it. She’d created a lobster pillow book.
He looked around at her desk—-the piles of paper, bottles of ink, rows of pencils at the ready. Here and there a drawing of a thrush’s nest or a locust’s wing.
Logan lifted a sketch of a damselfly and held it so that the light would shine through, illuminating every inked contour.
She’d been deft with sketching ever since she’d begun writing him. But he’d never seen her produce anything like this in all the margins of her scores of letters.
It was beautiful.
When he lowered the paper, he noticed that she’d been studying him just as closely as he’d been studying the page. Staring, with dark--eyed intensity. He was struck by a sudden feeling of self--consciousness.
“That’s only a preliminary sketch,” she said, biting her lip. “It needs work yet.”
“Looks damn near perfect to me,” he said. “Ready to fly off the page.”
“You truly think so?”
Her face was so serious and pale. As though she were worried about his opinion. Surely with work of this quality and friends like Lord Varleigh, she didn’t need a Highland soldier to tell her she had skill. Nevertheless, the vulnerability in her eyes made him want to try.
He wished he knew something clever to say about art. How to compliment the lines or the shading. But he didn’t, so he just said what came to mind.
“It’s lovely,” he said.
She exhaled, and color rushed back to her cheeks. A small smile curved her mouth.
Logan knew a small, quiet sense of triumph. After years of destruction on the battlefield, it felt good to build something up.
“How do you do it?” he asked, genuinely curious to know. “How do you draw a creature so faithfully?”
“Oddly enough, the trick isn’t to draw the creature itself. It’s to draw the space around it. The hollows and shadows and empty places. How does it bend the light? What does it displace? When I start to draw an animal—-or anything, really—-I look carefully and ask myself what’s missing.”
He thought of her a few moments ago, studying him intently. As though she were wondering about his missing elements. “Is that what you’re doing, then? When I catch you staring at me?”
“Perhaps.”
“I suggest you not waste your time, mo chridhe.”
She crossed her arms and cocked her head, gazing at him. “I’ve spent years studying all sorts of creatures. Do you know what I’ve noticed? The ones that build themselves the toughest, strongest shells for protection . . . inside, they’re nothing but squish.”
“Squish?”
“Goo. Jelly. Squish.”
“You think I’m squish inside.”
“Perhaps.”
He shook his head, dismissing the notion. “Perhaps there’s nothing inside me at all.”
He turned his attention to a map of the world mounted on the wall. The continents and countries were littered with stickpins.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“I place a pin in the appropriate country for every exotic specimen I’m commissioned to draw. I always wanted to travel myself, but between the wars and my shyness, it never seemed possible. This is my version of the Grand Tour.”
Logan tilted his head and looked at the map. He saw a smattering of pins in India, Egypt . . . several in the West Indies. But one particular area had the largest concentration of pins, by a wide margin.
“You’ve drawn a great many creatures from South America, then.”
“Oh, yes. Insects, mostly. That brings us back to Lord Varleigh, you see. He recently returned from an expedition to the Amazon jungle, where he collected nineteen new species of beetles. I did the drawings, and he’s going to present the specimens to his colleagues next week.”
“So your work for him is concluded, then. Good.”
“I didn’t say that.” She took the sketch from his hands and set it aside. “In fact, I hope to do a great deal more illustrations, and not only for Lord Varleigh.”
He shook his head. “I dinna think you’ll have the time.”
“But you said we would not interfere in each other’s interests and occupations. That you would have your life, and I would have mine.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
He waved toward the stairs, in the direction of Lord Varleigh’s exit. “Before I knew ‘your life’ included that jackass.”
“You needn’t be angry just because he made an invitation. He was only being polite, to start. To continue, I was never going to accept. You already know I dislike social engagements.”
“I should have accepted his invitation for us both.”
She laughed.
“No, truly. I’d take you to that ball and make certain that Lord Varleigh and every last one of those naturists—-”
“Naturalists.”
“—-every last one of those insects knows to keep their feelers off my wife.”
She shook her head. “He’s a professional acquaintance. Nothing more.”
“Oh, he’d like to be more.”
“And I’m not your wife yet. Not properly.”