Page 52 of To Love and to Loathe
“Yes, madam.” He brushed past her to take a seat in the chair indicated, unashamed to admit that he walked significantly closer to her than was strictly necessary in the process. He did not think he had imagined her sharp intake of breath as he did so. He paused in the act of lowering himself into his seat. “Shall I remove the banyan, or…?”
She scrutinized him for a moment, her brow slightly furrowed. Perversely, he rather enjoyed this look—there was nothing remotely amorous in it, and he knew that, in that moment, she was examining him in a purely objective, aesthetic sense. But he liked watching her do it—he liked the faint line between her eyebrows and the way she tapped her chin gently with an index finger, her elbow cushioned in one palm. When she was in company, everything about her seemed oh-so-slightly calculated—her posture just so, the arching of an eyebrow in invitation. It was refreshing to see her like this instead, entirely unaware of her appearance, completely focused on something else.
Someoneelse, in this case: him.
“Leave it on for now,” she said after a few moments of thought. “I think it brings out the warmth of your skin.” She shrugged with a bit of a laugh. “Not that it matters terribly much at the moment—I’ll just be sketching you first.” She retreated to her easel and, ignoring the canvas, picked up a worn leather-bound notebook that he hadn’t noticed. She seated herself on a stool that he thought she might have purloined from her dressing table, picked up a worn stub of pencil, and opened the notebook. She lifted her knees so that her bare feet rested on an ottoman she’d placed before her and the notebook could perch on her knees; then she looked up and met his gaze. Her mouth twitched.
“You can relax a bit,” she said. “You look like a young lady at finishing school, about to be asked to walk about the room with a book on her head.”
He allowed his posture to slacken, sinking back deeper into the armchair. He was surprised at how uncomfortable he felt, fully clothed, sitting here before her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this nervous to be alone with a woman. “Do they really do that? At finishing schools, I mean?”
Her mouth quirked up on one side even as she lifted her pencil and began to make a series of rapid strokes. “Never having been to school myself, I can’t say for sure, but I’ve heard the anecdote from more than one lady of my acquaintance.”
“All private governesses for you, if I recall?” he asked—he found that filling the space between them with conversation made him feel less like he was a fish in a fishbowl.
“For a while,” she agreed, her eyes on the paper before her. “My uncle and aunt allowed me to be tutored with Penvale, until he wentaway to Eton—I think they didn’t want the expense of hiring a separate governess for me until it was necessary, but I had no complaint, since it ensured I received a far more useful education than I might have otherwise. Until he left, of course.” The movement of her hand paused for a moment and her eyes flicked upward to study him again. In the candlelight, they appeared more brown than hazel.
“Once Penvale left for school, they hired a governess for me for a spell—I was the daughter of a viscount, after all, and they didn’t want anyone to claim they weren’t giving me a proper education. I was taught watercolors. We continued with my study of French, and I dabbled a bit on the pianoforte. I was dreadful at it,” she added.
“Too impatient to practice?” he guessed.
She grinned at him, a lopsided grin that he’d never seen from her before. “Indeed. I caused my governess no end of despair—she couldn’t understand how I could hide myself away in the gardens for hours sketching the same flower over and over but couldn’t bear to seat myself before a musical instrument for more than ten minutes at a time.” She shrugged a bit, her attention once more on the sketch taking form before her. “I couldn’t explain it, either—when I have a pencil or charcoal or a paintbrush in my hand, everything around me goes still. It’s as though time slows to a trickle, and someone could be standing beside me speaking directly into my ear for some minutes before I realize they are there. Sitting at a pianoforte, by contrast, makes me feel like I’m about to climb out of my skin.
“They dismissed the governess after a while—I think they considered it a waste of money, and they felt that they’d already invested enough in Penvale and myself, considering that we weren’t exactly able to provide much in the way of funds.”
“Was there no money left over after the sale of Trethwick Abbey?”Jeremy asked. He had a vague notion of the situation from years of friendship with Penvale, for whom reclaiming ownership of the estate was something perilously close to an obsession, but he wasn’t sure he’d realized quite how desperate their situation must have been.
“Enough to pay for Penvale’s Eton fees, and to set aside for a pathetic dowry for myself, but nothing else,” she said. “My aunt and uncle paid for the entirety of the cost of clothing and feeding us, for launching me into society. Penvale borrowed blunt from my uncle for his Oxford fees, and paid him back as quickly as he was able—he said it was smart investing, but I suspect the gaming tables were the real source of that particular windfall.”
Jeremy held his tongue, not wishing to betray any confidences by telling her that her guess was entirely correct.
Instead, he asked: “Was it so dreadful, with your aunt and uncle?”
She did not reply for a long moment, her eyes fixed upon the page before her, her hand moving rapidly. He did not prompt her further, merely waited her out.
“No, and yes.” More silence, even as the hand continued in motion. After several seconds had elapsed, however, her hand stilled and she looked up once again.
“They were never unkind to us, you understand. This isn’t some tragic tale out of a penny novel. They always provided for us, as far as their means allowed. We had new clothes each season, and plenty to eat, and essentially free rein of the house and grounds. We had a tutor, and of course we had each other.”
“But?” he asked, after a lengthy pause. She had not resumed her drawing and was staring past him, at some point in the middle distance, and he was certain she was not seeing anything physically in the room at all. Her gaze was distant, and there was a look in hereyes—not pained, exactly, but somehow forlorn nonetheless—that he had never seen there before.
“They never said anything explicitly, but Penvale and I were somehow always made to understand that we were a burden,” she said at last. “We were never allowed to forget that our parents had left us with very little in the way of inheritance, and that most of what was left to us would have to be spent on Penvale’s schooling. Anytime he did poorly on an exam, he returned home to be reminded that he was wasting the bulk of our inheritance if he was not excelling at school. And I was always on the receiving end of… comments.”
“What sorts of comments?” Jeremy asked with more calm than he felt at the moment. Indeed, he felt a peculiar sensation growing within him, rather as though something were slowly coming to a boil.
“Just remarks in passing, now and then. Comments that it was a mercy I’d such a pretty face, since I’d likely need it. Gratitude that my looks would make an advantageous marriage likely, so I wouldn’t have to remain at home beyond my first Season. Nothing that was overtly cruel, you understand, just a steady litany that made me understand that my face was my only asset, and I was to use it as soon as possible to cease making myself an inconvenience to them.”
“The bloody buggering nerve,” he said, not bothering to apologize for his language. He realized, with a strange sort of removed tranquility, that he was really quite angry. “You were their family—your aunt’s own flesh and blood—and you were orphaned, left in circumstances that were no fault of your own.”
“And I’m sure if anyone had ever made such a comment to them, they would have agreed wholeheartedly,” she said, looking at him steadily. “I don’t even know that they were truly aware they were doing it. Which might be even worse, I think—if they were making us feelunwelcome, a burden, without even trying to do so at all. Careless cruelty is the worst sort, I sometimes think.”
“This explains why you were so determined to marry well your first Season,” he said slowly. At the time, he had understood that she had a small dowry, that she was going to have to rely on her face and figure and charm to land a husband of means. But he hadn’t understood quite why she was so desperate—her aunt and uncle seemed to lead a comfortable enough life as middling members of theton; surely she did not need to be quite so mercenary?
But now it made perfect sense. Of course she did not wish to remain in a home with these people a moment longer than necessary. Of course she wanted to find a husband wealthy and staid enough to ensure security, stability, a permanent place.
Of course she had no desire to marry a profligate, debt-ridden marquess.
“It felt as though I could never breathe deeply,” she said softly, her hazel eyes locked with his blue ones. “As though my entire life, I’d been wearing the tightest corset imaginable, taking shallow little breaths, never able to get quite enough air. And that first night of my marriage to Templeton—even having married someone so much older, someone I knew wanted me for my appearance alone, as some sort of prize—it felt like I was at last able to inhale properly. It was dizzying.” She took a deep breath, as if to illustrate her point.
