Chapter 2

—Please lower your head a bit more.

At Gloria’s direction, Dale slightly shifted his head.

—That’s good.

Gloria alternated her gaze as she sketched the composition with graphite.

The reception room of Clyde manor, which she visited again, was quite different from her last visit.

Some of the furniture for guests had been neatly cleared away. In the spacious room, there remained only the table where Gloria and Dale had sat facing each other last time, two large easels, and an auxiliary desk for placing tools.

“Until the painting is completed, only you and I will enter this room.”

It was his own form of consideration. Gloria immediately understood why there were two easels.

The easels faced opposite directions. One with its back to where the model would stand, and one facing it.

Gloria placed the sketchbook she had prepared for conversation on the easel facing the model.

Dale nodded at the sight.

“Please use it if you need to give me instructions.”

—You seem familiar with modeling. Have you commissioned portraits before?

“It was when I was young.”

He stared briefly at where he would soon be standing and added quietly.

“My mother wanted to capture my growing appearance in paintings every year.”

Hearing his voice in the quiet room, Gloria stopped her preparations and turned to look at him.

‘A secret backstory I never heard in the original work.’

Her face remained impassive, but her heartbeat quickened slightly.

Of course, it wasn’t completely absent from the original work. Dale and Isabel had been friends since childhood and often visited each other’s homes, so she remembered a line about a painting of the two of them standing side by side as children hanging somewhere in Dale’s mansion.

—I’m glad to be part of that process.

“We don’t do it anymore. I’m fully grown now.”

Indeed. He had grown into not just an adult but a massive man.

Gloria gave a slight smile and placed the canvas she had sent ahead on the easel.

—Today I’ll just sketch the basic composition.

Dale stood in front of the window with curtains filtering the light, as they had discussed during their previous meeting.

Gloria briefly and quickly appreciated his appearance.

Though she would see him to the point of satiation, Gloria wondered if she would ever tire of that sight.

I could watch him all day and still find it interesting.

He wore a comfortable shirt with leather pants. His hair was neatly combed but not overly styled. His medium-length white hair reflected the light leaking through the window, creating a luminous outline.

‘He looks like an angel.’

Snow-white shirt and snow-white hair.

Even his tanned skin and red eyes could be understood as features of a somewhat unique angel.

After examining him thoroughly with the eyes visible between her hat and scarf, Gloria belatedly felt embarrassed and averted her gaze.

—Are you really comfortable standing?

“I’m fine.”

Despite standing motionless for hours being quite difficult, he insisted he was fine.

Gloria immediately picked up her graphite and began sketching lightly.

She recalled their conversation about the portrait from last week.

No matter how much freedom he gave her as an artist, Gloria needed to ask him a few questions.

Especially if the portrait’s purpose was a gift for his mother. She needed to ask the son who knew his mother’s taste best.

—Usually people wear formal attire or their favorite clothes for portraits, so please choose whatever you prefer, Sir Clyde.

She had temporarily sketched the framework of basic formal attire. However, surprisingly, what he had chosen to wear was just a white shirt.

When she asked if that would really be sufficient, he briefly answered that it was fine.

Of course, Gloria had no reason to object. This was magnificent in its own way.

Though it had enough thickness not to be see-through, his large build and solid muscles made it seem less like he was wearing clothes and more like fabric draped over muscles.

Either way, it was a jackpot for Gloria.

It was an outfit she could never see in an official setting between nobles.

Additionally, the simple attire had the artistic advantage of allowing her to focus on depicting his exceptional face.

After establishing the basic framework, Gloria stepped back half a step to alternately look at the canvas and the model.

—Is your mother tall?

Dale’s gaze moved briefly from the diagonal line down as he read the writing in the sketchbook. He seemed to be searching his memory.

“I don’t think so.”

After speaking, his head tilted slightly. Then suddenly he left his position and approached the canvas.

Gloria blinked a couple of times, and he was already standing right in front of her.

At the suddenly narrowed distance, Gloria forgot even to breathe, but Dale remained lost in thought.

Then he finally spoke.

“She would be slightly shorter than you, teacher.”

‘Wow, geez. You startled me.’

As abruptly as he had approached, he returned to his position.

He had merely come closer. Nevertheless, Gloria felt like saying, ‘Please don’t do that again.’

She took a quiet deep breath and placed the graphite vertically on the canvas to draw a straight line.

With cold sweat forming, she pulled her scarf up to just below her eyes, wanting to throw it off, and continued drawing the angle of his face.

※※※

Gloria admitted it.

She had taken this job too lightly. Of course, that’s why she had thought to appear before him in such casual attire. She had thought that once she passed this hurdle, she could whip up the portrait easily.

To put it bluntly, this was t*rture.

She had once heard of a t*rture method where water drops were regularly dripped onto the forehead.

What initially feels like nothing becomes increasingly sharp and painful as it repeats.

Gloria felt her situation was similar to that.

At first, making eye contact with him didn’t affect her much.

Just a slight jolt? A sinking heart and an itchy nape?

But while painting, she often had to appreciate—no, observe him. And he happened to be facing exactly forward, which meant looking directly at her.

This meant their eyes had to meet inevitably.

Making eye contact was a very dangerous act.

They say eyes are the windows to the soul, don’t they?

From head to toe, Gloria had only her eyes exposed. Having to continuously show them felt like exposing a vital point.

‘I never knew painting could be such a dangerous activity.’

As she hid a self-deprecating smile under her scarf while organizing her art supplies, Dale, who had approached her at some point and was watching, spoke to her.

“May I ask you something?”

Gloria was so startled by the fact that ‘he spoke to her’ that she almost opened her mouth without thinking. Fortunately, she bit her lip just before a foolish sound escaped.

—Yes.

After showing him the hastily scribbled writing, he asked.

“Do you naturally use your left hand?”

Gloria thought that if she was going to be startled like this every time, she should just leave her heart in the studio next time.

‘Did he not ask about you being left-handed?’

‘He seemed completely uninterested in me.’

She had boasted to Peter like that. One might ask what the big deal was about inquiring if she was left-handed.

‘But you’re not supposed to ask.’

The man was cold-blooded to everyone except Isabel.

“If it’s uncomfortable, you don’t have to answer.”

When the silence stretched too long, he concluded with those words. Gloria, belatedly realizing she had frozen at the question, quickly wrote.

—Yes, that’s right.

Gloria had always written and drawn with her left hand from the beginning. Having answered in writing what was obvious to see, Gloria added a line below to make her response seem less inadequate.

—I’ve always been this way.

“You don’t use your right hand at all?”

At the follow-up question, Gloria again swiftly wrote with her left hand.

—I learned how. But my left hand is more comfortable. Is this your first time seeing it?

“It is my first time. Everyone is educated to use their right hand from the beginning.”

It made sense that those born into nobility would have received thorough etiquette lessons from childhood. Nobles couldn’t eat if the positions of fork and knife were merely switched.

—My parents also tried hard to correct it. But it didn’t work well. Did you know?

Dale raised his head after reading the writing in the sketchbook. Gloria found herself grinning without realizing it. Not that he would see it anyway.

—All left-handed people are stubborn. The weak-willed left-handed ones were all corrected, you see.

The previous Gloria had also been right-handed like other nobles. But after the transmigration, she had somehow reversed the awkward sensation, so now she was left-handed. Kang Jae-hee was also a stubborn person.

At that moment, Gloria clearly saw it. The corners of Dale’s mouth turned up slightly after reading her words. She thought she might have seen wrong, but that faint smile lingered on his lips for quite a while.

“I think it’s a necessary virtue in life.”

After the conversation ended, he burned the paper they had conversed on, just like last time.

Gloria quietly paid her respects to Dale before leaving the mansion.