Pryor leaned close to see what she was working on and uttered a low laugh. “You’re coloring a butterfly, too.”
Ella didn’t tell him that she was a butterfly. “I like butterflies,” she said. Her cheeks still felt flushed with color and her heart was flushed with color, too, the petals turning a rosier shade of pink.
was“I’ll draw some more then, shall I?”
They set to work, all three of them, Phillip and she coloring, Pryor drawing, while Minette meandered through more of Bach’s compositions, Arthur read by the fire, and rain tapped against the windowpanes. It was peaceful and cozy and companionable, domestic and ordinary and unexciting—and somehow, because of those things, it was also perfectly idyllic.
* * *
After luncheon, Ella, Phillip, and Pryor visited the mews behind the Duke of
