A/N: Apologies for the long delay, I've been terribly ill the last week or so. I'm still not 100% so I don't know when I'll update next, but there will be at least one more chapter of this.
All through that long day Jean struggled to focus, her thoughts too occupied with the sketchbook she'd secreted away beneath her mattress to pay attention to the mundane details of running the doctor's house. Lucien himself was nowhere to be found; by the time she had gathered her courage enough to return to the kitchen she'd found him gone, his hat and coat missing from their pegs by the door. Mercifully he had no patients that day, but when he did not return for lunch, Jean began to worry. Much as she was cross with him, much as she was terribly confused and more than a little frightened by what she'd discovered in the dim light of dawn, she could not help but be concerned for his well-being. Jean had grown accustomed to looking after Lucien Blake, making sure he was where he was meant to be, doing his laundry and keeping him fed, tending to all his hurts, in his body and in his soul. Caring for him had become second nature, and if what she felt when she looked at him was more than the sort of wry affection one might expect a housekeeper to have for a charming but decidedly difficult employer, she tried her best not to dwell upon it. Jean was a widow employed in service, and she knew her place. She knew what was expected of her, knew how to walk the path that had been laid before her feet, even if Lucien refused to learn the steps of his own dance. Nevermind that he was handsome, nevermind that the brush of his hand against the small of her back set her heart to racing, nevermind that every night while Lucien was away in China Jean had knelt beside her bed and whispered a rosary for him. No matter what her fickle heart might long for, Jean knew it could never be.
And now this. The expression of abject terror on his face when he saw her, his stammering attempt at apology, the heat of his fingers encircling her wrist, the terrible obscenity of the images he'd drawn, all set her thoughts to swirling into patterns she could not fathom. And Lucien had fled, had not lingered long enough for Jean to face him with a cool head, for her to ask him what on earth he had been thinking, though in truth she felt she already knew the answer to that question, much as she feared it. The longer he stayed away the more her doubts began to fester; why had he done it? What were his intentions? What did he think of her? And where on earth had he gone?
Some answers arrived late in the afternoon in the form of Charlie Davis, who stopped by on his way home from work to inform Jean that Lucien had been making a nuisance of himself at the police station all day, and that he had taken himself off to the club for supper. That at least resolved one of her immediate concerns; so long as she knew where he was, she could stop fretting about his safety and move on to more pressing worries. Cec Drury would keep Lucien in line, Jean knew, and if there was trouble afoot he knew to ring her on the doctor's telephone. If Lucien worked himself into a state tonight it would not mark the first time Jean had been forced to collect him from the club, and she suspected it would not be the last.
Dinner was a quiet, stilted affair; though Mattie had noted Lucien's absence and asked after him Jean's somewhat tart response had been enough to put an end to that line of questioning, and as always Mattie respected her rather obvious need for peace and quiet. They ate quickly and without discussion, and then Mattie took herself off to her room, leaving Jean to her dishes and her doubts. The house was too quiet and the work over too quickly; as she dried the last dish and tucked it away in the cupboard Jean found herself at a loose end. There was no more work to be done, and the thought of settling down on the sofa with her knitting and the wireless held no appeal; Jean did not want to wait up for Lucien tonight, did not want to face him coming home drunk and stinking, did not want to address the issue of what she'd discovered in his sketchbook. It was too much for her to bear, and so she squared her shoulders and marched herself straight up the stairs and into her room.
There was no reprieve to be found there, however, for as soon as she entered her room her eyes darted straight to the mattress. Though she could not see the book she could almost feel its presence, almost hear it calling out to her in some ghostly siren's song. Jean had not taken the time to really look at the images in the book, had only glanced at them, flicking through the pages with fear rising like bile in the back of her throat. Did she really want to see them, to know for a certainty what Lucien thought of her, what he saw when he looked at her, the way he had so reduced her from an independent woman of her own making to no more than a vixen upon a page? For all that she had tried not to stare too long at those pictures she had seen enough to convince herself that Lucien had been drawing her, and the thought of it was enough to turn her stomach.
Perhaps I was wrong, she thought glumly, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back against the door. Beyond her window the sun was sinking, painting her room in shades of gold, but Jean herself was too electrified to settle down, her skin tingling and her eyes unable to look away from her bed and the book she'd hidden there. Perhaps that's why he was so distraught, because I misunderstood.
It would be better to know for sure, she told herself.
Thus resolved she crossed the room at once and fetched the book out from underneath the mattress. She sat primly in the center of her bed, tucking her legs up underneath her and smoothing her fingers over the worn cover of the book. The leather was soft and supple beneath her fingertips, the pages turning easily, loosened by time and use. As Jean began to carefully leaf through the pages her heart seemed to freeze in her chest; the earlier drawings were not of her, were not renderings of naked women splashed in horrible obscenity against the rough parchment pages. No, these drawings were images of horror, devastation. Bodies maimed and mangled, long roads lined with pain, a man kneeling with his hands bound to a post while a faceless stranger lifted a whip over his back, a child wailing next to its lifeless mother. Tears sprang to Jean's eyes as she realized what she was seeing, as she saw the care Lucien had taken to transfer these memories of war and grief from his mind to the page. They were terribly lifelike, and the lines and curves of each image burned themselves into her mind.
No wonder he cries out in the night, Jean thought in abject sorrow as image after image flashed before her eyes. Such terrible things would be enough to break any man, and Lucien's heart was bigger than most.
It was almost a mercy when the drawings changed, when she turned a page and found not a headless body or a heartbroken child but instead the familiar curves of her own body. The first drawing was rough, only the faintest outline of a woman, and though there were no signs to indicate who this woman was Jean felt it in her bones, could almost see her own face carved into the blank space he'd reserved in this image. She was turning the pages more slowly now, watching as with each passing attempt Lucien's woman came more clearly into focus. Though her heart was racing, though her hands were trembling, she forced herself to carry on until she reached the final image in the book.
For a long time Jean simply stared at it, breathing shallowly, cheeks flaming. She was no great student of art, had been forced to leave school early to help out on her family's farm and spent most of her life working much too hard to go lazing about the local museums. The icons of the saints and the stained glass windows of her church contained almost the full sum of her knowledge of art, and even then she did not possess the words, the vocabulary so specific to artists that she felt was necessary to convey what she felt when she looked upon such stark, unquestionable beauty. Though she was as comfortable with her own body as any woman who'd lived past forty and borne two children could be, she had not been much exposed to the naked female form; even that painting Lucien had brought home had been vague in its own way, had lacked the sheer staggering reality of the drawing beneath her fingertips. And so, shocking as it was, Jean found she could not tear her eyes away from the image, found herself so overcome with curiosity and self-consciousness and a terrible, churning longing that she could hardly blink.
Is this how he sees me, truly? She asked herself as with the edge of one red-painted nail she traced the line of the woman on the page, the slope of her calf, the curve of her hip, the dip of her waist, the swell of a breast, the rise of her shoulder. This woman was familiar, faceless as she was; the tapering of her fingers, the curl of her hair, everything about her seemed to whisper Jean's name. Surely, she thought, ashamed even as the idea occurred to her, if he were drawing someone else, some desire of his, he would have drawn her breasts larger, would have made her perfect. For though the image was beautiful, it seemed to Jean that in it she saw every imperfection she had always lamented in her own self. Oh, Jean knew she was attractive enough, for a widow with grown children, but she had, as most women will, measured herself against the actresses in her favorite films and the singers from her favorite records and the wealthier wives at Sacred Heart and found herself lacking in certain departments.
Lucien didn't seem to mind, if the care with which he'd drawn her was any indication of his feelings on the subject. It must have taken him ages, she knew, to get all the details just right; he must have sat at that table where they took their meals night after night, pouring over her, the tips of his fingers turned black as he used them to shade and smooth the lines of her. But why? She asked herself. What good would it do him, to dedicate himself so to drawing her, when he saw her every day?
Perhaps, she told herself, the answer lay within the other images in the book. The nightmares that tormented him, the memories that kept him from sleeping, he had purged them each upon the page. Did he feel the same about her? She wondered. Was the sight of her, the very idea of her naked body beneath her clothes enough to disturb him, to send him fleeing from his bed in search of some reprieve, some sanctuary? Did he want…
Jean's heart began to pound. For months now she had been trying, with all her might, to put aside her own want, her own desire, her own selfish need, trying to ignore the clamoring of her heart in her chest, trying to avert her eyes from the strain of his bicep against his shirt sleeve, from the twinkle of his blue eyes, from the curve of his bum beneath his trousers. For months now Jean had fallen asleep to the imagined caress of his hand, had woken sweating and shaken and shamed by dreams of him moving over her, around her, in her. Even now, sitting on her bed alone in the still of the evening her stomach clenched and a rush of heat washed over her at the thought. Could it be, she asked herself, that Lucien felt the same dire longing, that these drawings were his way of reconciling himself to what he thought he could never have?
It was almost more than she could bear, almost enough to send her rushing from her bed to the Colonist's Club in an instant. Almost, and yet not quite enough, for still her doubts lingered. Jean knew her own heart, knew she cared for him, body and soul, wholly and completely, in a way that was most inappropriate and yet utterly unstoppable. If those affections were returned in kind she knew she would rejoice, would be overcome and overjoyed, and yet the pages before her were not enough to reassure her of his intentions. Perhaps he simply thought her attractive; he would hardly be the first to be interested in her body and completely unconcerned with her heart. Such a one-sided sort of affair would be enough to break her completely, she knew; the depth of her regard for him would not survive a bout of simple lust. What she needed then was proof, not just of his desire but of his love, his affection, his longing. But then, she asked herself, how could she go about getting it?