Free Wonders of the Invisible World by Patricia A. McKillip

what he makes of you.”
    Emma sighed. “But I have to endure his company for hours. I thoroughly dislike him. I didn’t know why at first, but now I do.”
    “Has he been rude to you?” Ned asked abruptly. “If he has, he’ll be wearing his painting around his neck.”
    “No. He hasn’t. I just feel a bit trapped.”
    “And so you have been, and I’ve been complicit in your entrapment,” Miss Cameron said ruefully. “How can I make it up to you? Can you find time to come and paint with us? I won’t charge you for studio space; you can come and go as you please, and see what the rest of us are doing.”
    “Yes,” Emma said emphatically. “That’s why I came to talk to you. I would love a corner here to work in. I feel underfoot at my brother’s, and his friends, though terribly interesting, are so terribly distracting. I could paint here in the mornings, then pose for Mr. Wilding in the afternoons...” Her voice trailed away; Ned found her blue eyes on his face as though she had sensed his sudden pang of distress. She was silent a moment, conjecturing; then she added softly, “And in the evenings, Mr. Bonham, you and I can draw one another.”
    He said, his odd heartache gone, “I can think of nothing I would like better. Well, actually I can, but that will wait until the fullness of time.”
    Miss Cameron eyed them speculatively. “I see you have outplayed us all, Mr. Bonham,” she murmured. “Even the paragon, Mr. Wilding.”
    “I was the more fortunate,” he admitted. “Speaking of posing, your brother wants my head for Salome’s platter. Shall I give it to him?”
    “What a wonderful idea,” Emma said, laughing. “Yes, I think you should indulge my brother. You can get to know him better and meet all of his disreputable friends.”
    “And what is Mr. Wilding making out of you?” Marianne asked her curiously.
    “I am Queen Boudicca, about to plunge into my last battle.”
    “I wouldn’t have pictured you as a warrior queen,” Marianne said thoughtfully. “May Queen, maybe, or Queen of the Fairies, something with a lot of flowers.”
    “Mr. Wilding prefers to set me off with a musty bearskin rug over my shoulders. He claims he shot it in some wilderness or another. Oh, and he says he must put a horse in the painting as well, as soon as he finds the right one.”
    She was looking at Ned speculatively as she spoke. So, he realized uneasily, was Miss Cameron.
    “Perhaps,” Marianne mused slowly, “when your brother is finished with him.”
    “Yes. As what, do you think?”
    “Something with dignity,” Ned pleaded, envisioning himself barelegged on a pedestal with a bow in his hand, dressed fetchingly as Cupid, the object of intense and critical female scrutiny.
    “The young knight errant, going forth into the world to rescue maidens and do battle with wicked knights who look like Wilding?”
    “Can’t I be evil? Just once?”
    “Can’t you settle for being triumphant?” Emma asked with such affection and trust in her eyes that he could only be grateful for his fate.
    He bowed his head and acquiesced.
    “For you.”
     
    Emma found herself whirling through her days like a leaf in a sluice. In the mornings, she went to Marianne’s studio, where she had set up her easel. She drew whatever caught her eye in the endless supply of still life on the studio’s shelves, which held everything from old boots to exotic draperies and vases in which dried grasses, seed pods, and flowers purloined from the park could be arranged. Occasionally, as she worked, someone would come to sketch her. She scarcely noticed. Sometimes she herself drifted through the room, watching the other women work in ink and watercolor, pencil and oil. She confined herself to sketching for a while, to improve her technique. Miss Cameron moved among them now and then, gently suggesting, never criticizing. She was in the midst of an oil, mostly whites and grays and browns, of the river beyond the window, beneath