Cut to the Quick by Kate Ross Read Free Book Online

quietly and undra-matically dropped her head in her hands.
    Isabelle gathered up the pieces of her drawing and tucked them away in her sketchbook. As always, her movements were graceful precise, and confident. Julian thought she made the most ordinary actions look like a ballet.
    “Why don’t we all go to bed,’’ Lady Fontclair suggested quietly. She put an arm around Lady Tarleton’s shoulders and guided her toward the door. The others followed. Julian went over to Isabelle. “May I?’’ he said, indicating her sketching box.
    “That’s kind of you, but it isn’t heavy. I carry it all the time.” “All the more reason I should ease the burden, this once.”
    She shrugged slightly and handed him her sketching box and sketchbook. Trailing a little behind the others, they climbed the spiral staircase that formed the hub of the new wing.
    “Would you show me your work some time?” he asked.
    “If you like.”
    “Do you ever paint?”
    “No. I find line and shadow more interesting than colour, so I prefer to work in pencil or pen and ink. Perhaps you’d be good enough to sit for me while you’re here.”
    “I can’t think of anything I should like more.”
    She turned a cool, distancing gaze on him. “I sketch most people who visit Bellegarde for any length of time.”
    “Lest the honour go to my head?”
    “Lest you think I mean to flirt with you, Mr. Kestrel. I only want to try my hand at capturing your likeness.”
    “But I’m not to try my hand at capturing your favour?”
    “I should rather you didn’t. I mean that seriously.” She stopped outside a door. “This is my room.”
    He gave her back her sketchbook and sketching box, at the same time catching and holding her gaze. “I think it only fair to warn you, I’m becoming rather fascinated.”
    “If you’re in earnest, Mr, Kestrel, then I’m honoured by your attentions, but I appeal to you—don’t pursue me. Leave me to myself. If you’re merely amusing yourself, then I must tell you, there is nothing I find more tedious than gentlemen who regard me as a challenge. Good night, Mr. Kestrel.”
    “So you see,” Julian said to Dipper later that night, “if there’s a rural uprising while we’re here, we’ll be able to defend ourselves with everything from medieval lances to duelling pistols. I’ve never seen a household so armed to the teeth. Now I come to think of it, this whole house is reminiscent of a fortress. Look how thick the outer walls are.”
    He went to the window. It was a bay window, shaped like half an octagon. Some of the small leaded panes were brilliantly stained in crimson, green, and gold. On either side, where the wall was cut away to form the embrasure, were wood panels carved with all manner of animals and objects. Julian had earlier realized that all these carvings were sacred emblems: Mary Magdalen’s ointment jar, Anthony’s lily, Peter’s two crossed keys, Agnes’s lamb. Several years in Italy had taught him to know his saints. What their emblems were doing in a bedroom window, he had no idea. Perhaps in Elizabethan days England was more like Italy, where religious and secular decor were gaily intermixed.
    The window gave a lovely view of the rear courtyard, which was planted with silver lime trees and bounded on the right side by the new wing, with its fluted columns and delicate balustrades. In the moonlight, the treetops stood out in silhouette against the new wing’s pale grey stone. Candlelight gleamed in windows here and there along the upper floor. The window at the far end, where a light shimmered faintly behind white curtains, would be Isabelle’s.
    Julian left the window abruptly. “This whole place has something of the fortress about it. Nowadays people fill their houses with French windows, so that Nature comes flowing in on all sides, and every room seems to be trying to creep out into the garden. Here I haven’t seen any French windows except in the conservatory, and there