About Last Night

“Can I see it?” She was already crossing the room, in full knitter mode and anxious to inspect the work-in-progress. Alice Starmore’s patterns were famous for their intricate, beautiful color work.

Evita held the needles out to her.

“Oh, it’s from Tudor Roses,” she said, recognizing a pattern her mother had once knit. “But you’ve changed all the colors.” Gutsy. Starmore’s patterns used a dozen or more different hues, and finding substitutes that harmonized as well as the originals was a dicey job. Evita had done it, though, softening the original palette with cream and pastels to make the design younger, fresher, and more feminine.

“It’s for Beatrice,” Evita explained. “I thought the original colors were too grown up for her. But honestly, I don’t know why I bother. It’s meant to be for Christmas, but she never wears anything I make her.”

Cath wanted to be able to offer a polite denial, but there was no point. Beatrice would certainly reject the sweater, which would be beautiful and also completely stodgy and way too English. Very much everything a thirteen-year-old girl rebelling against her family was honor-bound to reject.

“Yeah. She’ll hate it.”

There was a spark of something interesting in Evita’s green eyes then. Surprise? Admiration? Whatever it was, for an instant Cruella looked remarkably like Nev. His height, his demeanor, and his smile were all Richard, but that predatory gleam Cath so loved had come from his mother.

Huh. Come to think of it, Richard was sweet almost to a fault, whereas there was a lot of steel in his son. The realization made Cath curious whether she could forge a connection to the Dragon Lady. “You know, I’ve done some designing for the younger knitting crowd. If you want, I bet I could come up with a pattern that was more Beatrice’s style.”

Evita frowned. She looked like Nev when she did that, too. Wild. “I appreciate your willingness to help, but I’ve already put a fair amount of time into this. It will have to do for this Christmas.”

Could she say pish-tosh? She so wanted to. Instead, she said, “Come on. You’re only about twenty percent done. It’s going to take you at least thirty hours’ work to finish that, and then she’s just going to wad it up and throw it in the back of her wardrobe. It’s a complete waste of your skill.”

This time, Cath was sure she caught admiration in Evita’s cool, assessing gaze. Evita enjoyed being challenged. Like mother, like son. How hilarious that the lessons Cath had learned from one Chamberlain would apply to another.

She forged ahead. “I’ll just show you what I have in mind. Nev, honey, can I borrow that?” She crossed quickly to the window, where Nev handed her the notebook and his charcoal pencil, his lips all sexy bemusement. She kissed him quick. Couldn’t help herself.

But the sight of her face on his sketch pad caught her up short. He’d drawn her from the neck up, her head against a pillow, hair mussed, eyes wide and liquid, mouth slightly open. The very image of a thoroughly satisfied woman. She flipped quickly through the book, looking for a blank page and trying to get a grip. There were other drawings of her. Maybe two dozen.

They’re just pictures. Not love letters. Pictures.

They were love letters.

“You’ve been drawing me,” she murmured.

“I can’t help it. I hope you don’t object.”

She didn’t object, but she hadn’t needed to know how much she was going to hurt him. It wasn’t something she’d let herself think about, and now she wouldn’t be able to avoid it.

She was going to hurt him bad.

“They’re beautiful,” she said quietly.

He captured her hand and turned it over to press a kiss into her palm. “They don’t do you justice.”

She sank to the ground beside him, a little dazed, and began to draw. Twenty minutes later, she’d discarded a few ideas and come up with one she liked, a chunky cabled tunic with short sleeves and a cowl neck inspired by some designer sweaters she’d recently seen. She sketched it on a tall, thin thirteen-year-old frame, pairing it with black leggings, a long-sleeved black shirt, and boots, and then she handed it to Nev. “What do you think?”

Nev studied the drawing for a while. “The tattoos are your own designs, aren’t they? I had no idea you were such an artist.”

“I only draw a little. It’s nothing like what you can do.”

“Nonsense.” He plucked the pencil out of her hand and quickly filled in Beatrice’s hair and features where Cath had put the barest suggestion of a head. “I think she’ll love it.”

Satisfied, Cath crossed the room and presented the sketch to Evita, who’d spent the interval continuing to labor away on the Starmore sweater.

Evita took one look at the sketch and wrinkled her nose. “It’s a little mature for a girl her age, don’t you think?”

“This is the style now. Half the sweaters for sale at H and M are variations on the theme.”

“No one in this family shops at places like that,” Evita said bluntly.

“I do,” Cath said, just as blunt. “They have good stuff.”