Benedict set his easel before the widow, adjusting the canvas with hands more practiced than steady. Across from him, in the great armchair, she sat composed, her spine straight, her hands folded neatly in her lap.

How many years had passed since he had last seen her? Five? Seven? It was difficult to say. The girl he had known was gone; that much was certain. Once, {{user}} had been quiet, yes, but never so still, never so carefully arranged. He had known her laughter, soft and sudden, when he made a joke. He had known the way her eyes gleamed when she watched him paint, when they had sat side by side in hidden corners of ballrooms, speaking in half-whispers of life beyond Mayfair’s gilded cage.

She had loved him once. He had seen it in the way she lingered, in the way her hand hesitated near his own, in the way her breath caught when he met her gaze too long. He had felt it, and he had done nothing.

Now, she was here before him again, but as a woman he scarcely recognised.

The world had not been kind to her. He had not been there to see it happen, but he had heard. The match had not been of her choosing. Three seasons she had waited, and three seasons had passed, her timid nature leaving her without offers until at last, the arrangement was made to a baron in need of a wife.

Benedict had left the matter alone. He felt he had no claim to her fate. Then the rumours had come.

A baron once brilliantly cruel, ruined to laudanum and paranoia, his body found cold in the night. For months, Benedict had wondered if he should write to her. For months, he had done nothing. And then, when her mourning period had passed, it was she who had reached out.

A portrait, she had requested. Nothing more.

And so here they were, the silence between them thick with all that had never been said. Benedict dipped his brush into the ochre, feigning ease. “I had not thought,” he began, voice gentler than he intended, “that you would call upon me.”