Chapter Four #3
Isobel swept Mr. Percy a grand curtsey, which looked very fetching.
Tonight she wore a light buttery-yellow colored dress, which, paired with her dark ringlets of hair, made her look very pretty, indeed.
Isobel’s low curtsy offered Mr. Percy an excellent view of her assets, which did not go ignored.
Sibyl looked away as George cleared his throat. “Yes, well. How do you do, Miss Blakeney?”
Isobel murmured the correct salutation and rose, smiling. “I never thought I’d meet more of Miss Clifton’s friends. And are you a great reader as well?”
“Me? Not at all. I mean, I read, but only when the occasion calls for it. I don’t read for pleasure. Haven’t the time. I’d much rather play billiards or hunt. Or shoot. Maybe fish. And yourself?”
“Dancing. I love to dance.” Isobel fluttered her eyelashes at him.
He tugged at his white cravat, which did look rather tight. “An excellent pastime. Ah, look. They’re just calling us for dinner.” He nodded. “Ladies.”
The women went before him and followed the group to the dining room, and Isobel whispered, “How handsome is he? And unattached, no doubt. Tell me, what is his occupation?”
“He studied divinity at university and is lately of the Navy, I believe.”
“Another soldier. I knew it. They are so dashing. Ah, I love a man in the Navy. Much better than in the army, don’t you think? Pooh to you, Sibyl, for keeping him from me. Especially when you know I’m looking for my future husband.”
Sibyl stared, noticing that the locket of Mr. Day’s hair was missing from Isobel’s neck. “I thought you were engaged.” And was not her Mr. Day in the king’s army?
Isobel waved a hand. “Sadly I am no longer. Mr. Day’s family did not approve of his marrying, especially when he could not afford to keep a wife.
I thought it better we end things now, rather than be stuck together in a long engagement.
I could never marry a pauper, you know. I was not raised to it, and I don’t see why I should lower myself to a state of poverty just because a man is handsome. ”
Sibyl blinked. Her friend didn’t even see heartbroken. Isobel was almost practical, but this reaction of hers struck her as mercenary. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
Isobel glanced at her. “I’ve been busy. Don’t look at me like that.
I know you think me heartless, but it’s both of our hearts I was thinking of.
Why should Mr. Day be stuck with a woman who wants more from life, like a steady income, when he could be setting his sights on a woman who would live more within his means? We were a mismatch, that’s all.”
“I didn’t say anything.” She had simply been thinking it.
“Well, keep your thoughts to yourself,” Isobel said breezily.
“I see no reason why I should be judged, when I am free and unattached once again. Why, it was all I could do to get an invitation to dinner. But then, anything is better than sitting at home with my aunt and uncle.” She walked off, taking a seat next to Mr. Percy.
Sibyl raised an eyebrow at this. She understood her friend was on the lookout for a new man in her life, but she hadn’t expected to see her so… focused. It surprised her.
Her mother pulled her away to introduce Sibyl to the hostess, the newly married Mrs. Jones. Her mother said, “I think you two will be fast friends. Sibyl reads, you know.”
Mrs. Jones was tall, blonde, with a round face and small bosom that looked strained and trussed up to within an inch of its life in her stays. But for all that, she looked Sibyl up and down. Her eyes took in Sibyl’s dress and hair with an overly pleasant smile. “You read? That’s nice.”
“I’m sure you’ll have lots to talk about. Excuse me.” Sibyl’s mother went off to join her friend, the elder Mrs. Jones, leaving them alone.
Sibyl tried to overcome her own shyness. “What do you like to read, Mrs. Jones?”
“Oh, ladies magazines, mostly. The Daily Star. I love the society columns. What about you?”
Sibyl wondered at the woman’s lack of mentioning any novelists or poets, but perhaps that would come up in conversation later.
She rattled off a few of her favorite authors and saw Mrs. Jones’s interest fade.
The young woman picked at a piece of stray lint on her dress.
She glanced away, toward the other people talking.
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, but I have to get back to my husband.
Being married keeps one endlessly busy.” She flounced away in a tight dress of pink satin.
Sibyl shut her mouth. She’d been so hopeful of making a new friend.
How wrong she had been. They barely had a shared interest at all.
She went into the dining room, steeling herself for an evening of disappointment.
Sibyl briefly locked eyes with Kate, who had also joined the party, and curtsied in greeting, but Kate barely looked in her direction.
Sibyl felt a trifle hurt by the snub but decided she was better without the woman’s company.
She’d have to talk to her, and that was a decidedly unpleasant endeavor.
But then at dinner, over her bowl of soup and bread rolls, Mrs. Jones set down her spoon and said, “I have heard the most exciting news.”
“What is that?” the elder Mrs. Jones asked, amongst a polite murmuring by the others at the dinner table.
“That the artist Phillippe,” Mrs. Jones said. “You know, the French one, who came over here five years ago? He has now found his latest muse.”
“His ‘muse’?” one older gentleman said, stroking his gray beard. “What do you mean?”
“The man is an artist, Mr. Cullen. He paints people. He’s a portrait artist.”
“So what is all this muse business?” Mr. Cullen asked, scratching his chin. “He chooses women to paint?”
“Exactly,” Mrs. Jones replied. “But he’s very particular. He doesn’t ask just any woman to be his muse. She has to be a darling of society.”
“And just what makes a woman a society darling?” George asked, winking at Sibyl. She smiled at him in return.
“She has all the graces of a woman of style,” Mrs. Jones said. “She talks well, moves delicately, and dances as if she were born to it.”
Isobel beamed at this, raising a spoonful of cream and watercress soup to her mouth.
“But surely, she also reads and is knowledgeable about the world,” Mr. Percy said. “She might speak foreign languages, and sing, or play music, too.”
Mrs. Jones waved her hand airily. “Perhaps. But whatever her talents, she must have that certain something, that art about her person, an elegance of character, that makes her so worthy of being Phillippe’s muse.”
Sibyl sipped her wine and studiously avoided her mother’s eye. What would Mrs. Jones say if she knew the truth?
“I cannot imagine anyone here being worthy of the title,” Mrs. Jones said callously.
“My dear…” Mr. Jones said, glancing at the lady guests present.
She blinked. “Oh. You mistake my meaning. All the ladies here are married already or they are already spoken for, surely.”
Sibyl met Isobel’s blank gaze across the table and shared a polite smile. The newly married Mrs. Jones may have liked reading women’s magazines, but socially tactful, she was not.
“Well, I don’t care what people say,” Mr. Cullen said, drinking more wine. “As long as the man paints credibly, that’s all I would care about.”
“But don’t you see, Mr. Cullen? It’s exciting. It’s a mystery. He’s not named who the muse is. Only that he has found a new one, and she is breathtaking.” Mrs. Jones took in a deep breath. “I’d love to know who it is.”
“Why do you care, my dove?” Mr. Jones asked. He was of an average height for a man, very thin, with a long, reddish beard, small, dark eyes. But he dressed well and clearly cared for his new wife.
“Because she will be society’s darling. She will move in the best circles and lead the way in taste, art, fashion, dress, music.
Everything. She will be a tastemaker, and the ladies’ periodicals will write about her.
She will show society how beautiful young ladies are to move in society, and I cannot wait to meet her. ”
Sibyl inwardly quailed at this. She liked her quiet, private life.
Her stories. Was her life about to change due to her sitting for Phillippe?
She’d imagined her portrait might hang in a corridor of the Lyon’s Den and interested men might see it and ask to make her acquaintance, Nothing so grand or as public as how Mrs. Jones was describing.
Her, a tastemaker? She’d much rather stay home with a good book.
“You plan to meet this woman?” Mr. Jones asked.
“Yes. Of course. As one woman of society to another, she will want to meet more people who move in the right circles.”
Sibyl blinked and could hardly believe what she was hearing. She knew well that some people were fixated on social class and standing, but to hear it spoken of so openly, she didn’t care for such conversation at all.
She eyed the dining room they were in. All she had known before entering the household was that Mrs. Jones and her mother-in-law were acquainted with her mother.
She had not known if the home would belong to a particularly affluent family or not.
She rather thought that the best way to engage with others in life was to treat people similarly, be they a tradesman or a duke.
But that was not a view that many other people in society shared, and she knew that.
Still, she disliked the new Mrs. Jones. The woman had seemed less interested in her and more fascinated by people who were in society’s eye or had been written about in the local papers.
She wanted to associate with people who were talked about, she realized.
Was that really something a person of quality would gravitate to?