It was a short walk to Piccadilly Street, where the studio was located. Mr. Hamilton remained grim and silent the entire way. Lord Lincolnshire chattered breathlessly. Though Corinna maintained her half of the conversation, her mind was on other things.
She was impatient to see the studio, to see new Hamilton paintings before anyone else. To see exactly where Mr. Hamilton worked, and what sorts of supplies he used, and maybe, if she was lucky, a canvas or two that wasn't finished yet, so she could study his technique.
But mostly she was excited that after she'd visited his private space—his secret, reclusive hideaway—he'd no longer be able to keep claiming he wasn't John Hamilton. Because honestly, enough was enough.
She was growing rather weary of this act of his. It was becoming more than childish. She was going to let him kiss her again—she could hardly wait for him to kiss her again—but she wanted him to own up to the truth first.
The studio was in a very nice building. Shops filled the ground floor, and the two floors above were divided into large flats. Unfortunately, the studio was in a windowed garret above those, and it was no small feat helping Lord Lincolnshire up the many stairs.
Even though Mr. Hamilton took most of his uncle's weight, they went very slowly, and Corinna found the man much heavier than she expected. He was also shorter than she'd thought, quite a bit shorter than his nephew. Having known Lord Lincolnshire her entire life, she supposed she still thought of him as tall compared to the child she'd once been, but she wasn't a child anymore.
Especially after that tongue-tangling, spine-tingling kiss.
The minute they got inside, Lord Lincolnshire shuffled to a threadbare sofa and plopped down, out of breath. Corinna would have sat, too, but he was sprawled right in its center. And the studio had no other sofa or any chairs.
In fact, it hadn't much of anything.
Six pictures rested on the floor, leaning against the bare walls. An easel held one more work of art in progress. Clearly it would be a lovely scene once it was finished, a beautiful meadow bordered by trees more realistic than any others she'd ever seen rendered in paint. Tiny, individual leaves seemed to be rustling in the wind, casting shadows on the grass below. She looked forward to studying it, to figuring out how Mr. Hamilton had managed such incredible detail.
A small table sat beside it, with a few sketchbooks piled on top. But no pencils.
Odd, that.
Mr. Hamilton's supplies were on the table, too. All of them. There was no cupboard, no shelves in the room, no place for anything to be hiding. She walked over to have a look and found a selection of various pigments, a big bottle of linseed oil, a pristine palette, and two—only two!—seemingly brand-new brushes. Neither of them was nearly fine enough to paint the tiny leaves she'd seen on the trees.
And that was it. There was nothing else. No extra jars to hold leftover mixed paint. No turpentine, no varnish.
No rags, no blank canvases, no knives.
No little spots of paint on the wooden floor.
Since Corinna painted in her family's drawing room, she always spread a large tarpaulin to prevent spotting, but the floor here was bare and clean. And no folded tarp was in sight.
"Where do you make your paints?" she asked.
Mr. Hamilton shifted uneasily. "Right here. Where else?"
"What do you use, then? What surface do you grind them against?"
"I make them directly on the palette," he said, slanting a glance to his uncle.
She frowned. "Isn't that too porous? I've always used glass. And a glass muller."
"A muller?" Lord Lincolnshire asked.
"It's sort of like a flat pestle," she explained. "One has to grind the pigment into the oil in order to completely combine them."
He looked to his nephew. Mr. Hamilton lifted a shoulder. "With enough elbow grease, one has no need of a muller."
There were, she acknowledged, different methods. "I suppose a palette knife would do if one worked the mediums well," she conceded.
Lord Lincolnshire nodded approvingly. "He's very talented, you know."
"Extremely talented," she agreed. But there were no palette knives. And she still wondered how he could grind against a surface as permeable as wood. She wandered to the painting on the easel, admiring its incredibly detailed trees. "Which pigment do you use as the base for your greens?" she asked.
"The green one."
"Hmm?" He had no green pigment. She turned and glanced back to the table to verify. Black, white, yellows, blues, reds, and earth tones. Other pigments were available for purchase, of course, but these were the basics, the same ones she used herself. With these colors, one could mix any other color one might want. Greens were created from blues and yellows.
When she'd asked which pigment was his base, she'd meant which blue. Ultramarine, Prussian, cerulean? "I'm partial to cobalt," she said, "even though it's the most expensive."
"I can afford it," he said haughtily. "I'm partial to cobalt green, too."
Cobalt was blue. Transparent, neutral blue. The truest of all the blues, which was why she preferred it.
She thought a moment. And then she smoothed her pink skirts, moving closer to Mr. Hamilton so Lord Lincolnshire wouldn't overhear. Walking right up to him, she rose to her toes and placed her mouth close by his ear, giving him an eyeful of her scooped neckline.
"Do you like my new green dress?" she whispered.
FOURTEEN
"YOU LOOK grand indeed in that dress," Sean murmured, trying not to ogle the enticing pale mounds peeking from beneath it. He'd noticed Corinna's dresses usually weren't as low-cut as most of those worn by other ladies of her class. Evidently she was too practical to paint while wearing fashionable, tiny-bodiced dresses. But the way she was leaning toward him afforded him a view that made him swallow hard anyway.
"But do you like
