Page 4 of A Lady's Propitious Match
Clara smiled and took her seat in the drawing room. It was not long before they had been served with tea and cakes. Not that Clara had an appetite anymore. the lunch with her mother had truly taken it out of her.
“So, how are you doing, Clara?”
Clara sighed. “I am struggling very much, Imogen. The expectations are really starting to weigh down on me this season.”
Imogen frowned. “Is this because of Lord Caldwell?”
“Yes. My mother insists that he truly is the best match for me. She wants us to be engaged by next month, and thinks that I need to put more effort into him, to encourage his attachment. She wants me to spend more time on him than on my art.” Clara laughed mirthlessly, recalling the way her mother called it a ‘silly hobby’.. “She does not seem to understand that I can not stand him. He has nothing interesting to say at all. The fact that he does not understand art at all is utterly devastating. How am I supposed to make any conversation with a man who does not appreciate creativity?”
Even though Imogen was not as excited by art as Clara was, she still understood her friend’s need to create, more than anyone else. “So, what does he like to talk about?”
Clara huffed with irritation. “He is extremely interested in the most wealthy men in London to the point I would say that he is obsessed with how they run their businesses and spend their money. To speak candidly, I possess no inclination whatsoever towards such a matter. Most people are born into money, are they not? All they have to do is make sure that they do not gamble the money away and ruin their family name. That is not interesting to me.”
“Men and their money,” Imogen laughed. “Sometimes I wonder if anything is quite as important to them. Even their wives and family. It is madness. I have never been able to understand it, but we are to simply accept it is the way they are.”
That little joke made Clara’s heart sink further. She did not wish to be an ignored wife, sat at home with the children while she had no idea where her husband was.
She wanted love, she wanted to be cared for, to have the sort of love that she had only read about in books. When she tried to tell her mother this, she was dismissed for being silly and romanticizing everything in her mind.
Perhaps to others, real life was not like that, but to her…
“He might not be quite so bad, if you give him a chance,” Imogen offered, clearly trying to make her friend feel better about the uncomfortable situation that she found herself in. “He might not be so dull during courtship…”
Her words trailed off as she spotted the expression on Clara’s face. Clara already knew she would not get along with Simon, ever. There was nothing underneath the surface of that man. She could not even bear to imagine being forced to spend more time with him.
“Well, maybe your parents will start to see how boring he is, and they will change their mind about him. Have they even spent any time talking to him?”
Clara shook her head. “They are more concerned with his title and status. They think he will be able to provide me with the sort of life I need.” She threw her hands in the air in frustration. “As if I only need a giant empty home to live in. As if I do not wish for more.”
“Oh, your home will never be totally empty,” Imogen teased. “Because I will always be there to visit you. In fact, I might not bother to get married at all. I may decide to come and live with you forever. I can watch you paint all day, every day, it shall be delightful.”
Clara could not help herself. She burst out laughing at her friend’s outlandish suggestion. Her friend’s parents had high hopes for her future husband also. There was no way that she would be permitted to simply come and live with her, as tempting as it sounded.
They talked for a little while longer about the upcoming balls and what each one was likely to be like. Clara wanted to get into the spirit of things, she wished that she could be as enthused as Imogen, but there was a dark cloud hanging over her head.
She would always have this while societal expectations pressed down on her. How could she feel free and happy, when the constraints of others would never leave her side?
Clara might have spent all morning painting vibrant and exciting works, but she knew that once she could retreat to her art room again, she would return to a painting she had managed to put aside for a while. A melancholy landscape, in which her heart felt trapped in a cage. The landscape in which she feared living in.
The landscape that she was sure she would be living in if she was forced to marry the Marquess of Carldale, Simon Caldwell.
