She waited for a beat, not wanting to make eye contact with him until he’d finished reading the letter. But as soon as he became transfixed on the message, Irene took the opportunity to finally look at him. With all her practice of observing people sitting for portraits, it had become easy for Irene to glean a wealth of information from a simple glance at a stranger. She would never admit this to a client, but asking them various questions while they sat for portraits revealed more than they probably would have willingly revealed to any other stranger on the street. With friends and loved ones, it was far easier to do so, but with soil still streaked on the knees of his trousers and the slight flush in his cheeks, it wasn’t hard to guess that Elias had come in from the garden. She even thought she saw a hint of a tan on the back of his neck just above his collar, and she made a mental note to stop by Evergardens the next time she was in London. The Sprouts’ magical floating leaf umbrellas that the welcome witch occasionally hadned out would provide the perfect amount of shade.

Her heart had been fluttering in her chest ever since she sat down. It stopped momentarily at the smile as he started reading, and then picked up in pace as Irene watched him slowly make it to the end of the page. There — she could see it in his posture that there was a slight shift in his demeanor as he reached the end. She could only cast him a grimace as he finally looked up to her. In her nervousness, she caught her bottom lip with her teeth, nodding tentatively. “I looked into the references he included.” She pointed at the extra pages, only taking the top letter in case he might want to peruse the extra leaflets.

“They’re all in order. What’s more, the professor that I had back in Paris remembers Mrs. Shaw well, and has talked to her at a few functions.” To think that she’d been so closely connected to a distant relative, and she hadn’t even realized it…Irene was still recovering from the residual shock. She stood up finally, leaning against the workbench and crossing her arms. “Mrs. Shaw and I are only related by marriage. Her husband apparently is — was — my mother’s distant cousin.” Yet another deceased relative in the family, Irene now realized with an unpleasant jolt. “I don’t really have the money right now to have it legitimized further, but I figured —” Here, she gave a shrug, her eyes downcast. “—I haven’t been to Italy in a long time. It might be worth looking into.”

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