Chapter Three
Daniel Woodbine, the Duke of Rotherfeld, had done everything right.
He’d courted Louisa in the most formal, polite way possible, taking her for walks in the park or slow rides around London in his carriage, always with a chaperone present.
He kept conversation to safe topics—news of the day, books Louisa had read, art she liked.
Their engagement would last about six weeks, overall, which felt hasty, but Louisa’s own father insisted it was all right.
Nothing inappropriate had happened.
Was it wrong for Louisa to have wanted it to?
She had needs and desires, after all. She knew it was unladylike to express them, but she’d spoken with her married friends and knew some of their secrets.
The small ache in her chest whenever Daniel walked toward her, when he smiled at her…
that was something important. She was fond of him, yes, but he was attractive, too, and if sometimes she wondered what it would be like to kiss him or what he looked like under all his layers of clothing, well, that was perfectly natural.
But he’d been the perfect gentleman.
Today, he’d accompanied her to an art show put on by the Countess of Devonshire, who was an avid art collector. Her son had just returned from his tour of the Continent with several important pieces, including a Caravaggio and a striking Rubens that depicted Venus in all her nude glory.
“It seems inappropriate for young ladies to see art like this,” Daniel said, his posture tight as he looked around.
“It is fine art,” Louisa pointed out. “The Venus is…that is, if it makes you uncomfortable, I’m also very interested in the Gainsborough paintings Lady Devonshire has collected and we can go look at those, but please know, Your Grace, that I am not so very young, and I am in fact in possession of a female body and know what they look like in the nude. ”
Daniel frowned at that. “Yes, of course.” He gestured at the Caravaggio. “There is something… raw about this painting, too, though.”
Louisa looked at it. Daniel had said raw like it was a bad thing.
The painting was of a young man, perhaps one barely past being a teenager, holding a basket of fruit.
He wore an open white shirt that was falling off, such that it revealed a nude shoulder and a muscular arm.
The man’s lips were parted in a way that Louisa found sensual.
Like perhaps he had some sexual desire for the viewer, or for the man painting him.
Louisa may not have had much physical experience herself, but she understood desire.
Still, she said, “Perhaps we should move on.”
Daniel seemed relieved to be leaving the presence of Lady Devonshire’s racy new paintings and into the safer world of her collection of portraits.
One of the Gainsborough portraits was of the Dowager Duchess of Swynford, back in her youth, perhaps immediately after her wedding.
In it, she wore a pink gown under a heavy-looking fur-lined coat and had her hair teased up into an elaborate powdered coiffure with feathers decorating it.
Louisa found it curious that the portrait was here and not in Swynford’s house, but it was also widely known that Lady Devonshire loved to collect Gainsborough portraits, and that she and the Dowager were cousins.
“This is an impressive collection,” Daniel said to Lady Devonshire, who’d been hovering as they perused the portraits.
“Thank you, Your Grace. And Lady Louisa, you are an appreciator of art. What did you think of what my son brought back from the Continent.”
“He has a fine eye, my lady,” Louisa said. She looked down the corridor and spotted a marble statue. “Oh, is that the Apollo?”
“It is! Would you like a closer look?”
“Lord Devonshire has such exquisite taste,” Louisa said, mostly to Daniel. He seemed unconvinced.
“This man is naked,” Daniel said.
“He is nearly two-thousand years old,” Lady Devonshire said. “My son bought him in Greece. Is he not spectacular?”
Daniel looked wary. “Should this be on display with all these young ladies about?” He looked around at the small gathering of women who had come to appreciate Lady Devonshire’s collection. “It seems questionably appropriate—”
“Oh, I will try to steer the unmarried ladies from the sight of young Apollo’s manhood, but I know Louisa to be a great appreciator of art and mature enough not to swoon at the hubris of this statue.”
Louisa laughed. “Thank you, my lady.”
“It just seems—”
But Daniel was cut off by the arrival of Adele, the Duchess of Swynford, and Grace, the Countess of Caernarfon. They walked in, arm-in-arm. Daniel must have recognize them as Louisa’s friends, because he muttered something that sounded like, “Oh, thank god,” and then smiled at the new arrivals.
He looked at his pocket watch. “I am afraid I have an appointment with my man of business and must depart. But I’d hate to deprive Louisa of her time spent with fine art. Can you ladies see to it that she makes it home?”
“Of course,” said Adele. “There is plenty of room in our carriage. She can ride home with me, Your Grace.”
“Then I leave her in your capable hands.” He turned toward Louisa. He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “When shall I see you next, my love?”
“The opera tomorrow night. You agreed.”
“Indeed I did. Mozart, I believe.” His tone indicated she’d asked him to eat rotten fish, and he was steeling himself for it.
“Yes,” she said. “Le Nozze di Figaro.”
Daniel nodded, albeit without much enthusiasm. “Then until tomorrow, my lady.” He bowed, gave Lady Devonshire a cursory bow, and then departed.
“Did he leave…hastily?” Louisa asked her friends.
“A bit,” said Grace.
Louisa let out a sigh. “The art here… it seemed to make him uncomfortable.”
Adele glanced down the hall at Apollo. “Is he bothered by male nudity?”
“He seems to think I should be.”
Grace laughed. “You should be, but he should know by now how much time you spend around fine art. I know some museums have added fig leaves, but that was not what the Greeks intended.”
Grace was a sculptor who sold her pieces under a male pseudonym, and although clay was her medium, she had an encyclopedic knowledge of all kinds of sculpture.
She and Louisa had gone to the British Museum a few weeks before to look at some new marbles in the collection, nude sculptures all, and Grace had also seemed unfazed by the art.
It seemed she had many books in her personal library with sketches of some of the same statues; she claimed the sketches did not do the real things justice.
Louisa looked at the Apollo again. “Why, do you think, did they make so many nude statues?”
“The Greeks had less shame about the human body, I suppose,” said Grace. “They wanted to celebrate the body beautiful. We want to cover it up, lest any weak-willed individual be overcome with lust and act in a way that is unbecoming. Social mores change over time, I suppose.”
“I suppose if I were your future husband, I’d want to shield your eyes from depictions of the male physique, should my own physique fall short of the ideal,” said Adele. “I don’t think Rotherfeld will have that issue.”
“This is just…” Louisa gestured toward the statue.
“All right. You two are married ladies and you both have children, so you have of course seen your husbands in the flesh, while I have only ever laid eyes on marble men, but I guess I don’t feel any shame, even if I probably should.
I don’t think my looking at a statue will affect me much in any way. ”
“Apollo is not driving you wild with lust?” Grace asked, a glint in her eye.
Louisa looked over the statue. “No, not really.”
“That is men’s fear, too. Both that they will prove inadequate, and that somehow seeing another man will corrupt their women.”
“I do not think that is the case.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you, I’m just explaining what men tend to think.”
Adele laughed. “Men are foolish creatures.”
Louisa, not for the first time, wondered if she was making a mistake with Daniel. “Do you think Rotherfeld is so insecure that he’d want to shield me from art?”
“Did he shield you?” Grace asked.
“I suppose he didn’t. He just seemed extremely uncomfortable.”
“Perhaps he’s the one who feels shame.”
Louisa wondered what that said about Rotherfeld’s character.
Women were supposed to be sheltered and protected from the horrors of the world outside the home—or so Louisa’s father had said on more than one occasion, although this was not something he enforced with much vigor—but it seemed like Rotherfeld was the one who had been sheltered.
Was Grace correct? Was Rotherfeld worried about inadequacy?
Was he worried looking at art would warp Louisa’s mind.
“Rotherfeld is a very handsome man,” said Adele. “I doubt you would find him wanting.”
Louisa laughed. “This whole conversation is absurd.”
Adele looked around. “Oh, dear. Is that my mother-in-law?” She was looking at the Gainsborough.
“I’m afraid it is,” said Louisa.
“She was pretty in her youth. I suppose pure evil hardens a woman’s features.”
Louisa laughed. “The Dowager is not evil.”
“She is a little bit. Hugh building her a home of her own was the greatest gift he’s ever given me, especially now that she has stopped calling on us so incessantly. I only have to see her at luncheon after church on Sundays, and these days, mostly she ignores me, which I suspect is for the best.”
“You’ve been married for almost three years,” said Grace. “Has she not melted a little?”
“A tiny bit. She dotes on my son. He’s two and has the attention span of a house fly, but she still likes to lecture him on the importance of carrying on the grand Swynford name.”
“Seems like a good use of her time,” said Louisa.
“At least she is not lecturing me.”
Lady Devonshire had wandered off somewhere but now returned and said, “Would you ladies like to see the new paintings?”
“Are they scandalous?” asked Adele.
“One is a female nude,” said Louisa.