Page 90 of The Muse of Maiden Lane

“Not at all.” Teddy called to his manservant. “Jennings? If you’ll assist Miss Hobhouse down?”

Stella uttered no further objections as Jennings handed her down from the wagonette. She then waited, quietly, while the manservant attended to Teddy.

It was a painstaking process that first required Jennings to remove Teddy’s wheeled chair from the back of the wagonette and place it on the house’s doorstep. The manservant next lifted Teddy down from the driver’s bench and—leaving the placid Samuel dozing in his traces—bodily conveyed him up the house’s shallow front step to his waiting seat.

Teddy didn’t look at Stella as it happened. He was fully focused on doing his part—his jaw tense and the muscles in his neck corded with effort as he gripped Jennings’s shoulders. It was only when Teddy was firmly established in his wheeled chair that he turned his attention back to her. His face was heated from the exertion.

Or perhaps it was embarrassment.

She’d witnessed him at his weakest, both when he’d boarded the wagonette and now when disembarking from it. She’d seen him vulnerable and reliant, just as he’d been when he’d joined her in the sleigh in Hampshire.

He didn’t want her to view him that way—as a man who must rely on the strength of others. He’d rather she recognized that he was strong himself.

Jennings used the key Teddy gave him to unlock the door of the house. He opened it wide before backing away from the threshold to make room for Teddy and his chair.

The piebald cat watched them from a safe distance, eyes squinted and tail swishing.

Stella glanced back at the horse. A gust of wind down the lane stirred the hem of her skirts and ruffled the wide silk ribbons of her spoon bonnet. “Who will stay with Samuel?”

“Jennings will,” Teddy said. “I don’t need him for the next part.” He paused on the threshold. “After you.”

Twenty-Three

Stella could have refused. Indeed, she should have done. A young lady shouldn’t be going into an empty house, or anywhere so private in nature, with a gentleman unaccompanied. But she knew Teddy. She trusted him. And she was too dratted curious to deny herself the opportunity to see his future studio firsthand.

Entering the small, shadowy hall, with its steep, narrow staircase, she waited as Teddy rolled in after her. He left the front door open behind him in a minor concession to propriety.

“This is nothing impressive,” he said. “But beyond it are four good-sized reception rooms.”

He wheeled himself down the hall to a doorway on the left. It led to an expansive drawing room flanked by several windows. One of them was the same half-boarded front window Stella had observed from the street. Rays of light shone in through the grease and the grit, casting dancing shimmers over the dusty, slatted wood floor.

“The previous tenant had this as a parlor,” Teddy said, “and the others as a study, library, and music room. But I have another idea for how to use them.”

Stella wandered at his side as the two of them surveyed the large room. There was some abandoned furniture scattered about—a sagging settee with the stuffing coming out of it, and a tall chair propped in the corner with a torn damask cushion. A broad wooden seat, built for the purpose, had been fitted low in front of the window. Its lacquered finish bore several deep scratches.

“Will this be your studio?” she asked, looking about her.

“It will. Not only because of the light, but because it’s at the front of the house. It will be less tiresome if people come in to look at my paintings.”

“And the back rooms will be your private residence?”

Teddy nodded. “A parlor, and bedrooms for myself and Jennings.”

She followed him to look at the other reception rooms. They were as grimy as the large reception room had been, but Stella could nevertheless see the appeal. “All of your needs will be met on the ground floor. You’ll have no cause to go upstairs.”

“That’s the idea,” Teddy said.

“But there must be several rooms above.”

“Not too many, actually. Just enough for a housekeeper-cook, and the occasional houseguest. You can go up and look at them if you like.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all.”

Stella briefly considered demurring out of politeness. But only briefly. Once again, her curiosity got the better of her. “I shan’t be a minute,” she said.

“I’ll be here.” Teddy stopped his wheeled chair by the large window in his future studio. “Find me when you’re done.”