Someone walked by the open door, causing Tris’s shadow to flicker as the candle wavered. “Are you finished yet?” he asked from behind the glass panel.
“Hold still,” she admonished. “Artistry requires patience.”
“It’s just a profile.”
Alexandra flushed, though she knew better than to take offense. He was simply impatient. He’d always been an admirer of her work.
As well he should be. Alexandra made excellent profile portraits.
”You promised you’d sit still,” she reminded him, injecting authority into her girlish voice. “Just this once before you leave.” She’d been asking Tris to sit for her for months, but he never seemed to have the time. This would be her only chance.
“I’m sitting,” he said, and although his profile remained immobile, she could hear amusement in his tone.
She loved his good-humored forbearance, just like she loved everything about Tris Nesbitt.
She’d been eight when they first met. Her favorite brother, Griffin, had brought him home between school terms. In the six years since, as he and Griffin completed Eton and then Oxford, Tris had visited often, claiming to prefer his friend’s large family to the quiet home he shared with his father.
Alexandra couldn’t remember when she’d fallen in love, but she felt like she’d loved Tris forever.
Of course, nothing would come of it. Now, at fourteen, she was mature enough to accept that her eminent father, the Marquess of Cainewood, would never allow her to marry plain Mr. Tristan Nesbitt.
But that didn’t stop her from wishing. It didn’t stop her stomach from tingling when she heard his voice, didn’t stop her heart from skipping when he looked at her with his silver-gray eyes.
Not that he looked at her often. After all, as far as he was concerned she was little more than Griffin’s pesky younger sister.
Knowing Tris couldn’t see her now, she skimmed her fingertips over his silhouette, wishing she were touching him instead. She’d never touched him, not in real life. Such intimacy simply didn’t occur between young ladies and gentlemen. Most especially between a marquess’s daughter and a commoner.
The drawing room’s draperies were shut, and the low light seemed to enclose them together—alone!—in the room. She desperately wanted to say something clever or diverting, something he would remember after they parted. But she could think of nothing. ”Where are you going again?” she asked instead, although she knew.
Let him think she’d barely noticed he was leaving.
“Jamaica.” He sounded excited. “My uncle wishes me to look after his interests there. I’m to learn how his plantation is run.”
“Is that what you wish to do with your life?”
“He doesn’t mean for me to stay there permanently. Only to acquaint myself with the operation so I can manage it from afar.”
“But do you wish to become a man of business? To manage property? Or would you rather do something else?”
He shrugged, his profile tilting, then settling back into the lines she’d so carefully drawn. “He paid for my education. Have I any choice?”
“I suppose not.” Her choices were limited, too. “How long will you be gone?”
“A year or two at the least. Perhaps more.”
Everything was changing. Griffin would leave soon as well—their father had bought him a commission in the cavalry. Although Griffin and Tris had spent much of the past few years away at school and university, these new developments seemed different. They’d be oceans away. It wasn’t that Alexandra would be alone—she’d still have her parents, her oldest brother, and her two younger sisters—but she was already feeling the loss.
“Two years,” she echoed, knowing Griffin would likely be gone even longer. “That seems a lifetime.”
Tris’s image shook as he laughed aloud. “I expect it might, to one as young as you.”
He seemed so much older, already twenty years of age. Alexandra could scarcely imagine being two decades old. And young boys experienced more of the world than girls, leaving home as adolescents to pursue their educations. They spent time hunting at country houses and carousing about London while girls stayed at home with their mothers.
She was counting the months until she’d finally turn sixteen and have her first London season. She used to spend hours dressing up in Mama’s old gowns and playing with her younger sisters, imagining the balls, the finery, and the grand young lords who would sweep them off their feet. One of those charming gentlemen would be her entrée to a new life as a society wife. And she would love her husband, she was certain, although right now she could hardly imagine loving anyone but Tris.
“Will you bring me something from Jamaica?” she asked, startling herself with her boldness.
“Like what? A pineapple or some sugarcane?”
It was her turn to laugh. “Anything. Surprise me.”
“All right, then. I will.” He fell silent a moment, as though trying to commit the promise to memory. “Are you finished yet?”
“For now.” She set down her pencil and walked to the windows, drew back the draperies, and blinked. The room’s familiar blue-and-coral color scheme suddenly seemed too bright.
She turned toward him, reconciling his face with the profile she’d just sketched. She wouldn’t describe him as pretty. His jaw was too strong, his mouth too wide, his brows too thick and straight. As she watched, he raked a hand through his hair—tousled, streaky dark blond hair that always seemed just a bit too long.
Her fingers itched to touch it, to sweep the stray lock from his forehead.
“It will take me a while to complete the portrait,” she told him as she walked back to where he sat beside the glass, “but I’ll have it ready for you before you leave.”
“Keep it for me.”
She blew out the candle, leaning close enough to catch a whiff of his scent, smelling soap and starch and something else she couldn’t put her finger on. “Don’t you want it?”
He rose from the chair, smiling down at her from his greater height. “I’ll probably lose it if I take it
