Nearly a week later, Damien found her sketchbook left open on the garden bench where she’d forgotten it after being called inside for dinner.
When she remembered and hurried back out to retrieve it, she found him standing over it instead, carefully flipping through page after page.
“These are yours?” he asked, not looking up.
Her face went instantly hot.
“Yes.
Please, put it down.”
He didn’t.
He kept turning pages slowly, studying each sketch with an expression she genuinely couldn’t read, something serious and focused that made her feel oddly exposed, like he was seeing considerably more of her than a simple notebook full of drawings should have properly revealed.
“These are good,” he said finally, looking up at her.
“They’re just doodles,” she said, reaching to take the sketchbook back.
He held onto it a moment longer.
“They’re not just doodles, Silveria.
Have you ever actually designed anything real?
Fabric, construction, not simply paper sketches like these?”
“A few small things, back home,” she admitted, giving up on retrieving the book for the moment.
“Nobody ever took the work seriously enough to matter to anyone.”
“I’m taking it seriously,” he said, finally closing the sketchbook carefully and handing it back to her.
“Crew Enterprises owns a small fashion label.
It’s not large, but it’s growing steadily.
I could arrange a meeting, if you were properly interested.”
She stared at him, certain for a moment she’d somehow misheard him entirely.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because you’re clearly talented,” he said simply, “and it would be an obvious waste not to use that talent properly.
Consider it part of our arrangement, if that makes it easier for you to accept.
Keeping up appearances includes making certain my wife isn’t bored out of her mind, wasting away in this house with nothing but empty afternoons to properly fill.”
Something in his tone suggested there was more to the offer than simple practicality, though he clearly wasn’t ready to admit that outright, the same careful deflection she’d noticed in him before whenever a conversation touched somewhere he considered too personal to acknowledge directly.
“I don’t need charity,” she said carefully, some old pride flaring despite the genuine excitement building underneath it.
“I’m not offering charity,” he said, something almost impatient entering his voice now.
“I’m offering an opportunity, because I happen to believe your work deserves a real audience, not because I feel sorry for you in any way.
Those are two entirely different things, Silveria, and I’d appreciate you not confusing them.”
The correction, sharp as it was, settled something uncertain in her chest.
He wasn’t simply being kind out of obligation.
He genuinely believed in the work itself, enough to say so plainly, without softening the observation into something easier to properly dismiss.
“Thank you,” she said finally, meaning it far more than she’d initially expected to.
“I’d like that.
The meeting, I mean.”
“I’ll have Felix arrange it for later this week,” he said, already turning to head back toward the house, though he paused after only a few steps, glancing back at her with an expression she couldn’t quite categorize.
“For what it’s worth,” he added, “I meant what I said. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
About the work being good.
I don’t offer that kind of praise easily.”
“I’m starting to notice that about you,” she said softly.
He held her gaze a moment longer than the conversation strictly required before finally continuing on toward the house, and Silveria stood alone in the garden for a while afterward, sketchbook clutched tightly against her chest, something warm and cautiously hopeful blooming steadily in her chest despite every careful warning she’d given herself about not letting this particular man matter too much.
She spent the remainder of the week in a state of nervous anticipation, alternating between excitement at the possibility of finally having her work properly seen and anxiety that it wouldn’t measure up once it actually faced professional scrutiny.
She reorganized her sketchbook three separate times, trying to decide which pieces best represented her, second-guessing choices she’d been confident about only hours earlier.
“You’re overthinking this,” Sasha told her during one of her visits that week, watching Silveria rearrange the same set of sketches for what had to be the tenth time.
“Your work is good.
You know it’s good.
Stop trying to guess what someone else wants to see and simply show them what you actually do.”
“It’s easy for you to say,” Silveria said.
“You’re not the one about to have your entire creative worth judged by a stranger.”
“No,” Sasha agreed, “but I’ve watched you sketch for weeks now, and I can tell you honestly, there’s not a single piece in that book that isn’t worth showing.
Stop sabotaging yourself before you’ve even walked through the door.”
The advice helped, somewhat, though the nervous energy didn’t fully dissipate until the morning of the actual meeting arrived.
Damien insisted on accompanying her, despite her protests that she could manage the introduction alone.
“I know,” he said, when she pointed this out in the car.
“I’m coming regardless, if that’s alright with you.
I’d like to properly witness this, if you don’t mind the company.”
“I don’t mind,” she admitted, something warm settling in her chest at his insistence on being there.
“I think I’d actually feel steadier, having you there.”
“Good,” he said simply, and reached over to briefly squeeze her hand, a small gesture that settled her nerves considerably more than she would have properly expected.
The meeting itself, when it finally happened, exceeded every hope she’d allowed herself to have.
Adriana, the sharp-eyed woman who ran the small fashion label, spent nearly an hour going through her sketchbook page by page, asking detailed questions about her design process, her inspirations, the technical choices behind certain silhouettes.
“This is genuinely exceptional work,” Adriana said finally, closing the sketchbook with obvious reluctance.
“I’d like to discuss a proper collaboration, if you’re interested.
Nothing enormous to start, but a genuine opportunity to see your designs properly realized.”
Silveria could barely manage a proper response, overwhelmed by the sudden, dizzying reality of her private hobby transforming into something genuinely possible.
“Yes,” she managed finally.
“Absolutely, yes.”
Damien watched the entire exchange with quiet satisfaction, and when they finally left the meeting together, something had shifted visibly in his expression, pride evident in a way he rarely allowed himself to show.
“I told you,” he said simply, as they walked back to the car.
“You did,” she agreed, still slightly dazed by the whole experience.
“Thank you for pushing me toward this.”
“You didn’t need pushing,” he said.
“You simply needed someone to properly open the door.
Everything on the other side of it was entirely your own doing.”
She looked at him properly then, something warm and grateful rising in her chest at the quiet certainty in his voice.
“My work, I mean.
You could have simply let me keep sketching privately in the garden, and none of this would have ever needed to happen.”
He considered the question seriously before answering.
“Because watching you talk about your designs, seeing how much they genuinely matter to you, it reminded me of something I’d nearly forgotten,” he said quietly.
“That people are allowed to want things for themselves, beyond simple survival.
I don’t think either of us has properly allowed ourselves that luxury in quite some time.”
The admission settled warm and significant between them, and Silveria found herself thinking, as they drove back toward the estate together, that whatever this arrangement had started as, it was becoming something considerably more meaningful than either of them had properly bargained for at the very beginning.
That evening, back at the estate, Silveria could hardly sit still through dinner, her mind still spinning through fabric choices and silhouettes for the small collection Adriana had proposed.
Damien watched her with quiet amusement as she absently rearranged her cutlery, clearly working through some design problem in her head rather than properly attending to the meal in front of her.
“You’re not actually eating,” he observed.
“Sorry,” she said, startled back to the present moment.
“I keep thinking about everything Adriana said.
There’s so much to properly plan already, and we haven’t even settled on the first piece yet.”
“Tell me,” he said, setting down his own fork.
“What are you thinking?”
She hesitated, unused to having someone genuinely interested in the technical details rather than simply the finished result.
“I want to start with something that reflects an actual transformation,” she said slowly, feeling her way through the idea as she spoke it aloud for the first time.
“Something that looks entirely ordinary from one angle, and completely different from another.
I keep thinking about how much has changed for me these past weeks, how differently I see myself now compared to when I first arrived here.”
“That sounds considerably more personal than simply designing pretty dresses,” he said, something thoughtful in his tone.
“I suppose it is,” she admitted.
“I’ve never really separated the two, if I’m honest.
Everything I design comes from somewhere real, even if nobody else ever properly notices that connection.”
“I’d notice,” he said quietly, and something in the simple statement settled warm in her chest.
“Would you want to see the sketches, as I work through them?” she asked, surprising herself with the offer.
“I know that’s not really part of our arrangement, but I think I’d value your perspective.”
Something flickered across his face, pleased and slightly startled all at once.
“I’d like that very much,” he said.
“If you’re genuinely certain you want my opinion on something that matters so much to you.”
“I am,” she said, and meant it completely.
“You have good instincts.
You saw something worthwhile in that sketchbook before anyone else properly did.”
“I simply recognized talent when it was directly in front of me,” he said, something almost bashful entering his usually composed voice.
“That’s not the same as having proper design instincts.”
“It’s close enough for my purposes,” she said, smiling, and for the remainder of dinner, they talked through her early ideas together, Damien asking careful, thoughtful questions that pushed her thinking in directions she hadn’t quite considered on her own, until the meal that had started with her too distracted to properly eat ended with both of them leaning eagerly over a napkin covered in hastily sketched silhouettes, the boundary between business arrangement and genuine partnership growing increasingly difficult to properly locate.
By the time they finally said goodnight, it was well past when either of them had intended to still be awake, Silveria carried the napkin carefully upstairs with her, tucking it into her sketchbook alongside the other pages, a small, imperfect record of the evening she suspected she’d want to remember for considerably longer than the collection itself would ever last.