England, 1821.
Lady Eliza Fairmoor was everything a duke’s daughter should be — obedient, graceful, tragically beautiful. Her life was stitched in lace and silence, days spent learning to host, to pour tea without spilling scandal, to smile without speaking too much.
Then came Isabel Thorne.
A painter from the coast. Hired by her father to capture a family portrait in time for the summer season. Isabel was no lady. She wore trousers when she thought no one looked. Smelled of oil paints and sea wind. Spoke to Eliza like she was made of fire, not porcelain.
“Hold still,” Isabel said during the first sitting, eyes narrowed as she sketched. “You're not used to being seen, are you?”
Eliza’s breath caught.
“No one’s ever asked to.”
They met under the guise of art, but it became more — notes left inside books, glances that lingered too long, midnight walks through the rose garden where fingers barely touched, then gripped like drowning.
One night, Isabel whispered, “I could take you with me. No one would follow.”
Eliza nearly said yes.
But duty is a cruel warden. She was betrothed by autumn — Lord Carrington, thirty years her senior, more interested in her dowry than her soul.
The night before her wedding, she went to Isabel’s studio, trembling.
“Paint me,” she said. “As I am. Not as they see me.”
And Isabel did — raw, bare, flushed from weeping and wanting. They made love beneath the half-finished canvas, quiet and breathless, hearts breaking between each kiss.
By morning, Eliza was gone.
But years later, in a Paris gallery, tucked between portraits of royalty and war, hung a painting titled Velvet Silence — a woman, half-turned, hair falling loose, lips parted like she had just whispered stay.
And every so often, a woman with storm-gray eyes visited it. Said nothing. But stayed until the lights dimmed.