Sylvie was never one to listen to gossip much. Spending her late teens with her aunts in Marseille, notorious tattletales and feared in much of the city because of it, has made her used to not believing a single word anyone says about anyone else; if there's truth to it, the truth will find a way regardless. Gossip notwithstanding. Being in a new country, speaking a new language, learning new customs and etiquette in itself makes gossip difficult to pick up on. The English have another way of going about things than the French, that much she has learned already. They're a little stiffer about everything, not that she would tell any Englishmen to their faces, now. She does have manners, her mother brought her up with that for as long as she was allowed to keep her. Eight years worth of good upbringing aren't worth nothing, she thinks.

It's coming into good use now, even if she can't make herself be quite as neat and orderly about things as the family she's staying with. Lord Melbourne should see her studio, the room that Countess Cowper has put at her disposal, not as lovely as the one Armand's family had, the inflow of light not as perfect, but it's big and it has seen the life of this family which in itself gives it a magical atmosphere of its own. It's disorganized and with her painting tools spread all over, she has made it hers, because the Countess has allowed her and it was the only way she could make herself at home here. Where she would very much like to be at home.

Turning slightly towards him, she fidgets a bit uneasily, her fingers rubbing over each other in an obvious display of nerves. She could account to him all the fun she's had painting the inhabitants of this house, how she has made good work on the background especially, how it isn't her usual style (no surrealism for the Countess), so she takes a bit more care... But what she really wants to tell him is something else. Something much less flattering.

"I deliberately work very slow," she finally admits, thinking it's better to be forthcoming. Her mother didn't bring her up a cheat or a liar. Her brother didn't bring her up at all, so she hasn't become either thing in the meantime, although he might be. Her fingers still their fidgeting and she looks up at the older man. "Because I dread the time when I will have to leave here."

Please ask why, her eyes beg. Although it's obvious why, his family is wonderful and lovely, isn't it, but she'd like him to ask anyway, as she'd like for her answer to interest him.

She'd like not to be totally on her own once more.