A Closed Heart by Oster, Camille (acx book reading txt) 📕

courses as planned. It was a partnership that repeated every day. Miss Brightly simply did away with it.

Then again, she wouldn’t have a partner in the venture. Her food wasn’t prepared by anyone. This made him wonder what she ate. Did she even have a kitchen? Truthfully, he had very little understanding of her life other than that she lived in Brighton. Nice enough for a seaside town. It was where spinsters and widows went to live, and members of society that couldn’t afford a good address in London.

Perhaps the whole dining experience was uncomfortable for her. It did have rules and etiquette that she might not be aware of. During her season, he hadn’t noticed her being particularly uncouth. At times timid, perhaps.

Her hair curled around her shoulder like a snake—boisterous in lush curls. Her face was fine and her focus complete.

“I met your son yesterday,” she said after a while. “A handsome boy.”

“Atticus. He is... getting older.”

“I told him I would sketch him.”

“If you like,” he said, wondering what this meant. Was this an extension to their contract? Was that why she mentioned in?

She sat down on a stool. “You’re going to have to keep this position.”

“What do you mean?” he said with confusion.

“The way you’re sitting now. It will be how we go on.”

Julius blinked. Until then, he hadn’t paid that much attention to how he’d been sitting. Was this how he wanted to be presented? He straightened.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“It’s a better position.”

“It’s stiff. You look stiff.”

“Not far off how most people perceive me,” he said in an unusual show of candor.

“I think it would come off as looking uncomfortable,” she replied.

“This is uncomfortable.”

“Please relax a little more. Could you trust me on this?”

Trust her? Why in the world would he trust her? Well, he was trusting her with this rather time-consuming adventure. His very legacy.

Leaving the canvas, she walked toward him, which made him instantly feel uncomfortable—especially as she touched his hands, moved them to where she wanted them as though he was a marionette.

“You have good shoulders,” she said, standing much too close with her hands on her hips. What was that supposed to mean? “Not everyone does.”

Stepping back, she returned to the canvas. Julius felt stuck in this position now. The places where she’d touched him still felt the ghost of her, making this even more awkward. Why had they touched? Granted, he knew why intellectually. On a different level, it felt like an imposition too far. It had placed her too close, where she didn’t belong.

It wasn’t as if he was neurotic as such. It was just that he’d grown used to, even comfortable, with his... solitude. Perhaps an unnatural state according to many, but he’d found a balance there. Comforting in the lack of dramatics. And the lack of need. That was something he particularly enjoyed, the absence of needing someone. For when he depended entirely on himself, everything was easy.

Anything else simply invited confusion, contradiction, accusations and discomfort. Turned out he was very much like his father. As a young man, he hadn’t completely understood the man’s insistence on being withdrawn, but there was certainly comfortable solace in being completely and utterly independent. So in essence, he had everything he needed.

There was the issue of Atticus, who sought his attention. The boy was his sole concern outside of his own comfort. But ease with children had never been natural to him, and he certainly didn’t want to spoil the boy.

Jane scratched on the canvas again with the pencil. “This is an unnatural process, isn’t it?” he said.

Her scratchings stopped. “I think that depends on how you approach it.”

“How else can one approach it?”

For a moment, she didn’t say anything. “There is a degree of intimacy in something like this.”

The source of his discomfort so eloquently put. This, he hadn’t expected. “Hence the expectation that I should trust you.”

“I will have to interpret what I see. I’m not a machine.”

“What is there to interpret?”

“You cannot just copy. It doesn’t work. You need to put life in it.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Painting is about feelings.”

Julius raised an eyebrow, not feeling terribly impressed by this. Had he made a grave mistake hiring her?

“In order to do a good painting,” she continued, “you have to capture someone’s light.”

“Light?”

“Their soul.”

“I’m not sure I have one.” The teachings of souls and redemption he’d moved away from even before reaching his maturity. Not planned or purposefully done, but he didn’t readily connect with the teachings of the church. It wasn’t that he disagreed with the fundamental teachings—he just didn’t... feel it. And he didn’t readily see souls in others either. Pride, indifference and even disinterested cruelty was what he saw more often than not. Human beings were not divine creatures. Self-serving, arrogant and insipid.

Perhaps his thoughts were a little harsh. Whenever he went to London and sat on some parliamentarian committee, he saw the disinterest for others.

For himself, he invested his generosity on a public policy level, so he felt justified in disengaging on a personal level.

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe happiness could be found within a pair. Both his siblings had relatively happy marriages, but neither of them had particular responsibilities they needed to uphold. If he sacrificed his family and name for such happiness, he would be a failure just as readily as those who gambled away their fortune for the excitement of a game. In the end, family came first. And that meant ensuring Atticus became the kind of man this family needed. That was now his main priority, and to ensure the family fortunes remained stable, if not enhanced. The future of the family was paramount.

Chapter 10

IN THAT MOMENT, JANE wanted to ask what he was