Wonders of the Invisible World by Patricia A. McKillip Page A

awake with his late hours?”
    “I haven’t been sleeping well. But Adrian is never less than thoughtful.”
    “You mustn’t get ill. Perhaps you should stop going to Miss Cameron’s studio until I finish my painting.”
    “I will be fine,” Emma said stolidly, shifting her grip on the spear until it balanced properly. “I have no intention of giving up my studio time.”
    He reached out, gently shifted hair away from her eyes. “Your hair has such lovely shades of saffron in it. Perhaps I’ll take forever with this painting,” he added. “What I weave by day I will unravel by night, like Penelope... Miss Slade, you look positively horrified. Where has your fighting spirit gone?”
    “I hope you are joking, Mr. Wilding.”
    “Perhaps,” he said lightly. “Perhaps not. I don’t intend to stop seeing you.” Her hand tightened on the spear. “That’s better. The hawk’s glare rather than the hare’s stare of terror.”
    Emma didn’t answer. He painted a while, mercifully silent. Her thoughts strayed to Mr. Bonham. Edward, she thought fondly, remembering his face in the lamplight as he sketched her. Edward Eustace. My Ned.
    “Perhaps your sleep is troubled by foreboding,” Wilding commented after a while. “No, don’t answer. Don’t move an eyelash. Foreboding of the future. A house full of caterwauling children, a husband who, no matter how good his intentions, cannot, for the sake of his own art, put your work before his needs. You are equals now. But marriage has a way of altering the scales. He will tend to his art. You will tend to everything else.” His eyes flicked to her frozen face. “You think I am cruel. I am only thinking of you.”
    “I can’t imagine why,” she said sharply. “You have told me that no matter what I do, my art will be inferior.”
    “I did not say that,” he answered calmly. “I said that most female painters lack depth. Surely not all. But I can’t know what your art might become.”
    “No.”
    “Don’t speak. And neither will you know, if you marry. You simply won’t have time. What is regarded as novel and intriguing and perhaps is important in you now will be looked upon as irrelevant when you have a household and a husband to look after. I’d think very hard about those things, if I were a woman. Don’t speak. I’m doing your mouth.” He concentrated on it for a while, then went on smoothly, “I never wanted children around. Noisy, messy, ignorant little barbarians who must be taught the slightest thing... Nor do I need a wife to make myself seem respectable. What I have longed for is a companion. An equal, in wit and temperament and of course in beauty. Free to indulge herself in whatever she might consider important. She would not need my permission to do as she pleased because legally I would have no claim on her. Consider that, Miss Slade.”
    She did, straightening so suddenly with a whirl of spearhead that he blinked. “Mr. Wilding,” she said icily, her voice trembling, “what kind of monster are you, trapping me and then tormenting me?”
    He raised his brows, gazed at her perplexedly for a moment. Then he put down his brush. “I think, Miss Slade, that I will send you home early today. You must be very tired to be imagining such things. Tell your brother that you need a good night’s sleep. Forego the studio in the morning just this once. Try to come back refreshed tomorrow.”
    “Mr. Wilding—”
    “It’s all right. I’ve just given you some things to think about, that’s all. They may seem a bit confusing now, but they’re worth examining. Get dressed. I’ll walk you out and send you home in my carriage. Fender had an unfortunate encounter in the garden this morning; it will be a while before he’ll be up and about.”
    Emma flung open Adrian’s studio door and said tersely to the group of startled faces—Ned, Euphemia Bunce, and Adrian—around his easel, “Mr. Bonham, I have changed my mind. I really do need to get away.