The Nightingale

Chapter Twenty-Five

When the carriage finally stopped, they had traveled far beyond the main village, up through the gates of the largest house Natasha had ever seen, something more akin to a castle. She couldn't help but stare up at the massive stonework as she descended from the carriage and took Easton's arm, the contact making her skin crawl, but she did it anyways, knowing displeasing him would but those she cared about in danger.

"Captain Easton, good evening," a man standing outside the door greeted him, his dark eyes lingering on Natasha's face. Easton greeted the man in return, but Natasha missed his name, focusing on the feeling of her locket against her skin, trying to focus on the comfort it usually brought her. No matter how hard she tried to focus on the presence of the cool metal, however, the tightness in her stomach, brought on by more than the rigidity of her corset, wouldn't go away.

She forced herself to smile at the man at the door when he looked at her again, hoping the discomfort on her face wasn't too obvious as the man then turned and reached to open one of the two heavy wooden doors.

"You're doing excellent, my dear," Easton leaned towards her and whispered, his breath on her skin again making her shudder involuntarily as her skin pricked. She forced herself not to look at Easton as he leaned away from her, looking straight ahead as the doors opened, and she stepped inside at Easton's side. Once again, she found the breath taken from her lungs when she stepped inside, but this time it was out of pure awe at the scene before her.

They had stepped into a grand foyer, at least three times the size of her entire house. The floor was white with waves and swirls of a faint gold, made of a material Natasha had never seen before, but her heels clicked sharply against it as she stepped inside. At the center of the room sat a large, dark wooden table, at the center of the round top was a sculpture of what appeared to be a man and a woman embracing. Beyond the table, on both sides, were two winding staircases, the material a combination of the white flooring and dark wooden banisters. The walls were decorated with gold patterned wallpaper, and dozens of the most beautiful pieces of art that Natasha had ever seen hung at all heights on the wall, up the stairs, and into the hallway beyond. A portrait to her left caught her attention in particular, and she felt herself gravitating towards it, forgetting that she was supposed to be staying with Easton.

"It's quite something, isn't it?" She looked over at Easton as he came up to her left shoulder, and then looked back at the piece of art, trying to decipher what it was made out of. Whatever had been used to create the image of the woman seemed to had clumped heavily against the canvas, giving the portrait a texture she could never create with her charcoal. The various colors brought the woman's dark skin to life and made her green dress seem as if it was flowing off of the page. Even to a man like Easton, Natasha couldn't deny its beauty.

"It's incredible," she admitted, the words leaving her breath in merely an awed whisper. "What's it made of?" Her question made Easton chuckle lightly, and Natasha couldn't help how her cheeks flushed lightly at his response, a reminder of how much of an outsider she was in this situation, her sheltered lifestyle making her a stranger to things that these people probably considered normal.

"It's called paint, Natasha. It's a colored substance, like a liquid, that dries on a surface and leaves the color behind to create whatever image you want." Natasha felt childlike having Easton explain something that was clearly so common, but tried to ignore it, and focus on the painting in front of her.

"Is it safe to assume, then, that the drawings my men found in Captain Avery's room belonged to you?" The mention of John made Natasha's heart skip, and the mention of her drawings made her fingers twitch with longing and her heart ache with the desire to have her charcoal in her hands again to bring relief from everything else she was feeling, or even to have the opportunity to pain and feel the excitement that she had felt the very first time she picked up charcoal to draw, the feeling that came with trying something new. Yet, the knowledge that Easton had seen her drawings also made her deeply uncomfortable, with some of them being immensely personal to her, ones she would never willingly plan to show somebody else.