No matter what tempting tableaus he conjured, there was always Angelica, lurking in the background. The trial in January would only mean an increase in newspaper articles, an increase in press coverage, which could easily reach Boston. She tried again. “You don’t know everything about me.”
“I know that you see everything that’s going on around you, that you’re able to sit still and observe in a way that few others do. I know that you miss your mother dearly, as I do my mother and father. I know that you’re able to mold yourself to please other people, like Miss Helen, but that isn’t the entirety of you. I know you like your coffee with milk but no sugar, and I’d be proud to have you by my side as my wife. I won’t stop until you say ‘yes.’？”
What was missing in his romantic narrative was that she wasn’t truly herself with him. She’d molded herself to fit his perception of her, just as she had for Miss Helen. “That’s not the half of it.”
“Where’s the other half? Please, Lillian, you are the sweetest, purest woman I know. If you like, I will break the news to Miss Helen about us today, so you can be free. I will go down on one knee right here, right now. Say you’ll marry me.”
He couldn’t do that. Someone would see. “Please, Mr. Danforth. That’s enough.”
“My dear Miss Lilly. Lillian.” He began to kneel, holding both hands over his heart. “Please marry me.”
This simply would not do. It was time he knew the truth. How he reacted would prove whether he truly loved her, or only loved the idea of her. She grabbed one arm and pulled him up to his feet. “Come with me.”
She brought him halfway down the driveway and turned back around, pointing up at the reclining figure carved in stone at the top of the porte-cochère. “Do you see that?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
“That’s me.”
She was taking a risk—he might go right to the police and turn her in. But she didn’t think it was in his nature.
He looked at the carving, then back at Lillian, and laughed. “Right.”
“Before I worked for Miss Helen, I was a model for artists. A successful one. For this particular piece, I was hired to pose as Truth for the sculptor Sherry Fry. Not my favorite, I’ll confess. That statue of Pomona you admired in front of the Plaza? Me as well. You were correct when you noticed the similar profile.”
“What? Why?” He seemed bewildered.
“Because I had to make money so my mother and I could afford to eat and pay rent.”
He looked up at the figure, back at her, studying her differently, objectively. Comparing the noses, the chins. “You were a model?”
“Yes. That was me. I was Angelica. I am Angelica.”
His face went slack with shock.
“Miss Lilly?”
Mr. Graham had appeared under the archway. He hadn’t been there a second ago. Had he been hiding in the shadows, listening in?
“Yes?” Panic rose like bile in her throat.
“Miss Helen is calling for you. Quite loudly, I might add. I’m sorry for interrupting.”
He had been listening; she was sure of it. He’d been there when Mrs. Whitney identified her, and now this. But she had more pressing matters to deal with.
She answered sharply. “I’ll be there in a moment. Thank you.”
After he disappeared, she turned to Mr. Danforth, who had been staring up at her stone image the entire time. “I’m sorry if you’re shocked, but I’m not sorry for having done it. Posing, I mean. I was a muse, you see.”
Mr. Danforth had turned bright red. “You would take off your clothes so men could paint you?”
“I worked mainly for sculptors. Not painters.”
“Your mother made you do it?” He was struggling for an excuse, a way to accommodate the new information. She almost felt sorry for him.
“Not really. We did it together. It was a successful business, you might say.”
“You did it, and you liked it.” A statement, not a question. A test.
“I made good money, and was the inspiration for great art. So yes, I liked it. I’m not ashamed.”
With that, he stepped back, clumsily. “I must go.”
As she’d feared, his interest in her had evaporated. If Mr. Danforth truly loved her, he wouldn’t judge her so harshly. He liked to think he wasn’t part of the New York elite, but deep down, he was. That would never change. He could never stoop to marrying a woman like Lillian.
Her first kiss, her first fleeting experience with love, had been crushed by the truth.