Agnes and the Renegade (Men of Defiance) by Elaine Levine Page A

the time we can discuss it.”
    He nodded, studying her as he stood at the threshold. He murmured something in Lakota, which she didn’t understand and he didn’t translate, then he stepped outside to his waiting pony.

    * * *

    While Chayton ate the breakfast she made for him the next morning, Aggie went out to arrange things in the tent for the sitting. She put a stool against a section of the north tent wall. She wanted him to face east so that the light would be the most favorable during the morning. She’d set up the easel, prepared a canvas, and laid out her brushes, paints, and other supplies.
    The white canvas of the tent diffused the day’s bright light, casting a soft glow over Chayton’s features when he came out to sit for her. She stood next to her easel, considering him. “Could you turn toward me a bit more?” He inched around. Still, he wasn’t set up quite right. She went to adjust him. He wore his hair parted in the middle, loose except for two thin braids at the front. Two eagle feathers decorated the back of his hair. Both had thin strips of hair tied to their tips. She moved his hair so that it split over his shoulder, with the long braid nearest her visible. She closed her mind to its silky texture. She tapped his right thigh. “Raise this leg and lower the other.” His leggings had an intricate panel of beadwork along the seam that she wanted focus on.  
    She lifted his arm, adjusting where his wrist rested against his leg. The warmth of his bare skin and the weight of his arm made her aware of him in an uncomfortably intimate way. She glanced up at him, wondering what it was about him that was causing such a reaction within her. She’d painted men before, but hadn’t been aware of them except in the context of a composition—the colors that would be needed to express their image, how light played on their skin, hair, and clothes.
    With Chayton, it was something different entirely. He didn’t avoid her eyes. He had an unusual intensity about him, like a tree that was still when all the others around it fluttered in the breeze. She pulled her hands away from his arm and backed away, seeking the safety and distance her easel provided.
    With the way she worked, she didn’t need him to pose for long. It was nice, however, to have the luxury of a formal sitting so that she didn’t have to go through the exercise of rigorously committing her observations to memory. And with his consent to let her paint him, she hoped to have several sittings with him, each in different apparel so that she could paint him in a wide range of gear.  
    She focused on her work, separating herself from the strange sense of connection she felt with him. She sketched out on the canvas a rough, quick study of him. Then, on the hard board of her palette, she mixed the pigments that would give her his flesh tone, along with the colors she would need to create shadow and highlights, giving his body depth on the flat surface of her canvas.
    She had the odd sense that Chayton was being created anew as she painted him. Seeing his body take shape on the canvas, it was as if he was pushing through the fabric to stand before her. Each stroke began to feel as if she were touching him. She looked over at him, wondering if he felt the feathery touch of her brush.  
    His eyes held no emotion, and yet, somehow, every emotion. He was beautiful, powerful, knowledgeable. He was a force of nature that no one would ever know existed without her capturing him on canvas.
    Aggie refocused on her work, but it only intensified the strange feelings that were swirling around inside of her. Each brush stroke on the canvas felt as if she were learning him, tracing the curves of the lean strength in his arms with her fingers. After a time, the tent began to feel terribly warm. She’d worn a light muslin dress out of a sense of propriety, knowing she’d be spending the day in his company and the tent would likely be too warm. And even though