CHAPTER 17
At Gareth’s suggestion, they all planned a walk in the park during the fashionable hour. It took Sarah and Rebecca over an hour to prepare.
Eva waited on them in the sitting room while feminine talk and laughs poured out of Rebecca’s chamber.
Other than having the servant assigned to her fix her hair, and donning her best pelisse of light blue wool, she had made no special efforts.
When her sister and cousin emerged from the bedchamber, both eyed her critically, then shared a knowing, meaningful glance.
“Oh, I forgot something,” Sarah said, clapping her hand to her forehead. “Let me get it from my chamber.” She hurried to the door on the other side of the sitting room, ducked in, and came back holding a bonnet. It was the one Eva had tried at the milliner’s that day in Birmingham.
“I liked it so much I purchased it,” Sarah explained. “However, it looks far better on you, Eva. Why don’t you wear it today? The dark blue ribbon will even set off your pelisse nicely.”
“Yes, Eva. Why don’t you borrow it?” Rebecca encouraged.
Eva untied her own bonnet, and accepted the one Sarah held.
This was all a lot of bother over nothing.
Rebecca was the one to be put on display to lure a good husband.
Her own plans envisioned a different path devoted to her art, not matrimony.
In fact, working seriously as an artist required independence.
When she checked the bonnet in the looking glass, she had to admit it flattered her as much as she remembered.
In the reflection she also spied Rebecca’s relief being communicated to Sarah with another meaningful look.
She realized Sarah had not offered the bonnet to make her more attractive to potential suitors.
Rather, her cousin and sister did not want to walk in the park with an Eva turned out poorly.
The door to the sitting room opened and Gareth and Wesley walked in.
“France or the Netherlands?” Wesley was asking. “The French economy still suffers from the war.”
“There is money enough there, but the industries have not recovered, so it may actually be the better choice. You must go yourself and see how things lie, however.”
Wesley turned his attention to his wife. “Are you quite ready, Sarah?”
“Don’t I appear ready?” Sarah made a little turn on her toes.
“Ready and lovely, I would say.”
Eva agreed with the compliment. Sarah’s ensemble of greens and yellow set off her red hair.
She wore a darling hat that angled just so on her carefully clustered curls.
Rebecca’s muslin dress with the primroses had been transformed by a primrose pelisse.
Her bonnet played up her innocence and brought attention to her lovely face.
“I will be the envy of every man in the park,” Wesley said, offering one arm to his wife and one to Rebecca.
A different arm presented itself to Eva. “No, I will be,” Gareth said in her ear.
* * *
“They are all so beautiful,” Eva said. She moved her head this way and that to see the ladies in the carriages and along the path.
Gareth paced alongside her, in the wake of Wesley and the others. “They are more wealthy than beautiful,” he said. “A bit of silk, a bit of paint, a flattering dress and hat—they go far to create an illusion.”
“Perhaps, but some of these women are undeniably beautiful in their own right, and you know it.”
“Every woman is, in her own way, Eva.”
She smiled ruefully and shook her head. “You are a charmer, Mr. Fitzallen. There is no denying that.”
“I am too conceited to deny it. It comes naturally to me. Would that more people endeavored to be charmers. Charm is oil on the machinery of society.”
“That sounds philosophical. Take care or I will call Rebecca to join us and she can explain what every sage from Plato on said on the matter.”
Up ahead, the young lady in question was turning a lot of heads in the park. “Did she spend enough time with Mr. Mansfield while in Birmingham to numb his interest with her discourses?”
“Sarah fears so. My sister is normally not boring, so I think it was deliberate. I suspect when the poetic Mr. Trenton called on her, she did not mention Plato or Rousseau at all.”
“You will marry her off within the year, I am sure, unless she takes a dislike to the notion.”
“I hope so. I would not want her and me to become like the sisters Neville.” She regaled him with an accounting of the sisters’ bickering, mimicking the older sister’s booming voice and the younger sister’s tiny one, until they both laughed hard enough to make further speech impossible.
“When Rebecca marries the fine man you and Sarah choose, what will you do?” he asked when they could talk again.
Her eyes lit. “I intend to improve my art. You said I had talent, and Jasmine Neville agrees, but I have a lot of work to do, and a lot of catching up. Jasmine even gave me a letter of introduction to Mary Moser. Can you believe it? I wrote to her when I was a girl, and she even responded, so I think she is a kind person, but I will still be nervous making a call on such a famous lady painter.”
“One of her pictures hangs in the gallery at Langley House. You can study it and ask her about it.”
“Do you think I can study the others too?”
“Spend as much time there as you like. Sketch if you want. I will tell the housekeeper to unlock the doors if you ask. It isn’t as if you are going to steal any of them.”
She gave him a peculiar look, then laughed. “Oh, goodness, of course not. I may be committed to disegno, but I would never have designs on Aylesbury’s old masters.”
“Since you promise to be good, I will see about obtaining entrance to some other private collections.”
Another odd look.
Suddenly, up ahead, Rebecca froze in her tracks. She pivoted and hurried back to Eva. “Hide me.”
Eva took her sister’s hand. “Whatever—?”
“He is here. Of all the bad luck.”
Gareth saw the source of Rebecca’s distress. He nudged Eva, and drew her attention to Sarah and Wesley. A man had just greeted them, and they now chatted with him. Mr. Mansfield. Gareth doubted Mansfield’s arrival in London had been a coincidence.
“You cannot be rude,” Eva said. “I am sure he will be on his way in a minute.”
Their steps brought them to Sarah, who beamed. “Look who is in town, too, Rebecca.”
Eyes downcast, Rebecca greeted him and made a small curtsy.
“It was very bad of Sarah to make him come,” Eva whispered. “Rebecca is quite vexed, and I do not blame her.”
“Your cousin is tenacious, that is certain.”
Not only tenacious. Sarah proceeded to prove she could best most mothers of the ton when it came to throwing a girl and a man together.
Somehow, and Gareth missed just how, Sarah and her husband walked on a few steps ahead of Rebecca and Mansfield, with Eva and he in turn following a few steps behind.
Which left Rebecca alone to chat with Mansfield.
Which in her pique she did not do.
“Oh dear, she is very, very vexed,” Eva whispered.
“The park is a rustic pleasure in town, is it not?” Mansfield said.
“For those who live in town I suppose it is a pleasure,” Rebecca said. “Since I live in the country, I do not appreciate the respite as much.”
“Surely nature is always a refreshing and welcomed experience,” Mansfield said. “I am told there are poets and philosophers who believe its contemplation can lead to a transcendent experience.”
Eva grasped Gareth’s arm. Transcendent? she mouthed.
“He has been reading up,” he murmured.
“There are indeed,” Rebecca said, sounding like a governess.
“It is an old idea born anew recently. It has had several periods of popularity, and derives from Neoplatonist philosophers who first wrote soon after Rome’s fall.
One of its proponents was Dionysius the Areopagite, whose works survived to kindle a revival during the twelfth century—”
Eva rolled her eyes. Gareth pantomimed sliding a noose over his neck and jerking up the rope. Eva bit back a laugh until her eyes teared. She then made the motions of loading a pistol with a ball and powder and turning it on herself.
Enjoying the park far more than poor Mr. Mansfield, they trailed in Rebecca’s wake while Rebecca droned on, giving Mansfield a most detailed lesson on Neoplatonism down through the ages.
* * *
Eva read a book after she prepared for bed. She anticipated enjoying the sleep of the righteous. She deserved some benefit from being good today.
Walking with Gareth in the park had been much harder than she had expected it to be.
She had known their affair could only be temporary, that each day it continued increased untold risks for her.
She had not known, however, that ending it would be so hard.
The more they laughed and joked like friends today, the less she saw him as a friend.
If he had taken her hand and dragged her away to have his way with her, she was not sure she would have found the strength to resist.
Not that he had done anything close to that, or even shown much inclination to do so.
Oh, there had been a few mildly flirtatious smiles and looks, and a few innuendos about their past passion, but on the whole, Gareth seemed to have swallowed his promise and their renewed “friendship” without any indigestion at all.
Despite being tired, she tried to focus her thoughts on her book. She feared that when she slipped into bed, a phantom Gareth would be there too. That ghost might invade her mind and arouse her body, and seduce her into thinking any risk was worth embracing the real man again.
A quiet knock on her door made her start.
She stared at it, and all the anticipation she had known with Gareth poured out of the past. She must upbraid him, of course, for breaking his promise.
She must send him away. Yet her heart urged that door to open, and for him to stride over and pull her into his arms and obliterate her arguments and good intentions with a kiss.