Chapter 17
Seventeen
Lucy was ready before Miss Sedgewick the next morning and went into the parlour to wait.
She stood by the window, its old, warped frame painted the green of dried, dusty sage, and watched the persons and carriages pass, smoothing the soft kid of her new gloves over her fingers.
The redness and pain had long gone, and her hands ached instead for her brush but there’d hardly been time to properly set up her studio.
She’d promised herself to start that afternoon.
At least today should salve the art-hungry keenings of her heart.
They were to visit Somerset House, and not just with Mr Warde and his friend Lord Kiethly, both of whom had insisted the visit should happen without delay, and both of whom Lucy had little inclination to know better, but with Mr Thornton and some of Miss Sedgewick’s other artist friends too.
Lucy knew Miss Sedgewick had invited them on her account, but her gratitude had an edge of guilt.
She needed to speak to Mr Thornton alone.
She needed to ask him…ask him… Her chest pinched with nerves.
Would she even have the courage to ask him about his studio sessions if the opportunity arose?
She was almost frightened that she would, that she really would go to his studio and take a step that couldn’t be undone.
One that would tarnish her reputation forever.
But the alternative… She frowned out at a passing farmer’s wagon with bleating, nervous sheep crowded behind the tumbril bars.
The alternative was to be safe and obedient.
And to live forever within a very small room.
And her whole life so far had been lived in a very small way.
The thought of her future being no bigger choked her. But to take that step…
“To become known as an eccentric, when you’ve little enough to recommend yourself to any man seeking a wife…”
Well! Jack could keep his warnings and dire prophecies.
She’d never sought a husband, real or otherwise, had always known she was alone in this world without true protectors.
Her father heedless and distant, her aunt selfish and cold, the Ortons feckless and self-indulgent, forgetting she existed the moment she was out of sight and then…
then…being so choking and clumsy and blind—
“This is exactly the sort of impertinent nonsense I want to save you from.”
Hah, that was the pot calling the kettle, Jack!
He was nothing but nonsense, but at least she had a shield now, in the form of Mr Simmons’s slight figure and embarrassed grace.
Jack had no right to interfere with someone else’s fiancée, boss them around, list all their shortcomings, all the reasons she’d never really be anyone’s wife…
She twisted the finger of her glove, looking down aghast as the seam gave way under her wretched fretting. Another pair ruined!
Guilt. Fear. They were sticky and hot on her shoulders, crawling down her spine.
Today’s visit to the Royal Academy exhibition at Somerset House should have filled her with pure joy, but she could only think of her conversation to come with Mr Thornton, her stomach knotting, but even that was better than thinking of the other thing…
A note had arrived late last night from Mr Simmons to Miss Sedgewick. From its tone, Lucy suspected Mr Simmons hadn’t meant for her to see it, but Miss Sedgewick, having read it, paused before giving a small shrug and handing it silently to Lucy.
It is done, George had written. At first I feared he meant some violence against my person, and then I feared the violence would be against himself.
But it is done, God save us. He rallied sufficiently to drink several toasts to our good health and happiness and then retired early to bed.
What mischief or misery we have unleashed, I dread to think.
Jack gone to bed early? Jack rattled enough to startle his friend? Miss Sedgewick had seemed grimly pleased by the note, folding it with calm precision when Lucy, pale, handed it back to her. She’d then consigned it to the fire.
Lucy wished its words could have been as easily removed from her heart, but they’d repeated there all night. She didn’t sleep, only imagined the scene Mr Simmons had sketched, inventing the expressions on Jack’s face, the words the two men said, and wishing none of it had happened at all.
So it was little surprise that her heartbeat stuttered like a candle in a storm when a footstep sounded at the door and Miss Sedgewick’s servant announced, “Lord Orton, ma’am.”
Lucy whirled to the door just as Jack’s tall, dark figure strode through it. He gave her a hard, glittering smile as he tugged his gloves off, shoving them into the pocket of his greatcoat—he hadn’t taken it off? He didn’t mean to stay? His hat was in his other hand.
“Well, Lucy.” He tossed the hat down onto an armchair. She stared at it. For all her thoughts of having a shield, she felt frighteningly exposed. “You’ve been busy, I hear.”
“I…” She was too stunned for speech, too busy searching his face to know her own thoughts. Did he look tired? Perhaps. There was a tightness to his jaw, a cool glint in the usually laughing eyes. If anything, he looked…angry. Her heart gave a nervous kick. One she felt all the way down to her toes.
“But that is an unhandsome way for me to offer my congratulations. My apologies.” He gave her a sharp bow. “My earnest wishes for the happiness of the future Mrs Simmons.”
“Th-thank you.”
“And I really do mean that,” he said, stepping closer until he stood just before her, looking down on the blushing face she’d have far rather hidden. “Are you going to be happy, Lucy? That is what I want—need—to know.”
The words were kind, but his manner was still hard and angry, his grey eyes, stormier than ever, pinning her like prey in an eagle’s claw.
“George is an excellent, kind, generous man,” he went on, searching her face until she had no choice but to look away, down at the threadbare carpet, the toe of his boot; it was only inches from hers.
“But…Lucy…you do not know him. How can you possibly know him? Or he you? You have met him two or three times by my reckoning.”
“P-perhaps…sometimes…that is enough.”
Jack’s jaw twitched, and he turned away, running a hand through the dark hair his valet had no doubt been at pains to arrange only an hour or so before.
When he turned back, he was rumpled, artless, much more like the boy she used to know.
He sighed, studying her anxious expression, then gave a short, humourless laugh.
“Forgive me. I should be happy for you. But it is a shock. You can hardly conceive how much of a shock it was…” He shook his head, dazed, with another small laugh.
“Is this why my proposal in the park yesterday so horrified you? You should have said, Min! Lucy. I beg your pardon. But I can hardly understand how it happened. You must have met George more times than I knew. How and where? And how did you get to be so sure of your heart in just a matter of days? Are you sure?”
She looked at him for a moment the way a raindrop snags on its way down the glass, caught by something invisible.
But the downwards pressure always wins. She addressed herself to the gleam of his boots.
She could almost see herself in it. A pale, wishy-washy blob, the brighter light of the window behind her.
But her shoulders were set, her chin tucked tight. His boots couldn’t show that.
“Sometimes… Sometimes people can know each other for years and hardly know each other better than they would after two days.”
He looked at her for a long moment. She could always feel it when his eyes were on her, even though she didn’t risk raising her head.
It was a buzzing feeling, faint, like bees in a meadow.
And like bees and flowers, it was as old as the earth; it was the burning sun, coaxing buds out of the dirt…
He kept on looking, and she kept her head down, her heart bleeding out of her eyes.
A motion made her glance up. Jack shaking his head, turning away with a frown. He looked deep in thought—but they were only the thoughts of a man who’d lost his favourite watch, trying to recall where he’d last seen it.
“I wish George were a scoundrel. I wish he were wicked and I could warn you away. But he truly is the most excellent of men, and so all I can do is congratulate you on your good fortune. And he on his. And…and get used to the idea, I suppose.” He dragged a hand through his hair again, staring blankly across the room.
There was nothing there but the wall. “Though I confess a sound thrashing at Jackson’s fists would leave me less dizzy in my mind.
And why I’m so shocked, I hardly know. Only it is so sudden…
And you…” He scrutinised her again, as though she was a room he’d already searched and he thought he might be going mad, but he might as well search it one last time…
“To me, you’re still my little Minnow and hardly fit to be out in society, let alone getting married and setting up your house. ”
Lucy stiffened. “I am three-and-twenty.”
“I know. And I’m six-and-twenty, and I still have no idea how that happened.”
He gave a rueful breath of laughter. A crooked smile. One last studying sweep of his eyes up and down her form. “This is a very nice outfit you have on. I spot Miss Sedgewick’s eye at work.”
He’d given up, then. No watch lying conveniently where he’d last put it. Too much effort to pick up the sofa cushions and really look.
“I’m sure you are very familiar with Miss Sedgewick’s eyes.”
The acerbic note surprised them both.
Jack raised his brows, then laughed and rubbed his jaw, somewhat sheepishly, as Lucy spun away, giving the ruptured seam of her glove a fierce study. Her fretting made it worse.