It’s late afternoon in his sunlit studio. The air smells faintly of turpentine and tea, and the soft rasp of bristles sweeping across canvas, each stroke deliberate yet impatient. You’re perched on a stool, your posture half-posed, half-relaxed — not the stiff elegance of a society portrait, but the kind of candid grace he insists is more you.

Benedict, sleeves rolled up and hair in disarray, keeps glancing at you over the rim of his palette. “You’re impossible to capture,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “Is that the artist’s fault or the muse’s?” you tease, earning the faintest smirk from him.

Every so often, he steps closer, eyes narrowed in concentration — not in the way one studies a stranger, but like a man memorizing someone he already knows. Outside, the ton is gossiping and scheming, but in here, the only scandal is the intensity in his gaze and the unspoken something suspended between you both.