Page 21 of Seductive Reprise
She decided to deflect instead. “And you? What’s gotten you all hushed?” Her friend was usually off and running from the moment he arrived, filling the studio with his worries about his parents, the sketch on his easel, or whether his new hat was too much, or worse, too little.
Howard drew out a long, humming sigh. “Remember I said I felt like I was on the outs with everyone?”
He paused long enough that Rose stepped back from her work to watch him. “Yes?” she said, getting impatient.
Howard gave his sketch a strained, closed-mouth smile before turning his crayon on its side to make a long shadow. “And you mentioned you’ve been cut out?”
“Just out with it, I haven’t got all day,” Rose exhorted, raising her voice just enough that Miss Sykes leaned around her easel across the room to give her a pointed look. Rose mouthed an apology to her, and she retreated with a dubious look.
“Well…” Howard started, then leaned down to wipe some imaginary smudge from his forest green and mustard yellow checked trousers. She hadn’t seen him wear those before.They must be new, she thought. And quite dapper. Suddenly Rose was acutely aware of how worn her own garments were; she’d donned the exact same scarlet garibaldi shirtwaist she was currently wearing the last time she’d seen Joseph. Had he noticed how shiny and thin the fabric had become at the elbows? Her cheeks heated, and she thought of the earl’s cheque, still intact and now skulking in her valise, tempting her.
“We’re meeting at The Nag’s Head for luncheon. All of us.” He looked at her now with a pained smile under his thin, wispy whiskers.
Her body tensed. “And Silas?”
“Him as well,” Howard said, making the three words sound as apologetic as he was able. Which, irritatingly, was quite a bit.
Rose drew a deep breath, briefly closing her eyes as she forced her shoulders to relax. “You know what? I don’t care. Not a whit.”
“You don’t?”
“Not at all.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but closer than it might have been weeks ago, before her silly displeasure at being cast aside by a self-absorbed fellow artist had been overshadowed by the deep-seated quarrel she held with a devastatingly handsome aristocratic bastard, both literal and figurative. Her heart tumbled at the thought of Joseph’s apology to her, paltry though it was.
“Besides,” she said, forcing herself to leave the memory and the unwelcome excitement it roused in her behind, “I’ve got to head to Tooth & Sons. I would do well to sell something.”
Howard, obviously delighted to escape whatever censure of hers he expected, happily nodded. “Did your housemate sit for you once more?”
“No,” Rose admitted. “She thinks it’s indecent, and I’ve little to induce her.” She had nothing by way of cash at the moment, which had pushed her to complete the little experiment she had abandoned months ago. The piece sat inside her valise now, a token of integrity nestled next to the cheque of ignominy. “It’s, well, I suppose one could call it a street scene. A view of the outside, but from within the window.”
“You painted the window?” The curiosity in his voice irritated her.
“Yes,” she said, not wanting to explain further than that. It didn’t seem particularly outlandish; she recalled seeing a collection of Japanese prints recently that had used similar perspectives.
“Let’s see it, then.”
“Ha,” she scoffed, setting back to work on her own sketch before the model switched poses. “You’ll just have to visit the gallery after your luncheon.”
Although Rose had claimed she didn’t care about Howard sharing a meal with Silas and her former friends, the tight, hungry knot of her stomach certainly did a few hours later as she walked to Haymarket. Pressing one hand against her belly, she tried to think of other things. Unfortunately, that turned up only Joseph.
It seemed unfair—preposterous, really—that she put herself so at odds with him. Especially as she’d once fancied herself in love with him. But that was before she’d known how cruel and unfair the world was, and how cruel it could make some people. How cruel and unprincipled it had madehim. He hadn’t always been that way. Or maybe he had, and he’d just disguised it well. Heaven knows that one December, when she was seventeen and he kissed her for the first time, he’d been someone else entirely. Not the cold, cunning man watching her from across the Hartleys’ front parlor. Just a kind young man, trying to discover his place in the world.
But when she had so desperately wanted to know him, anything about him, all those years ago, he had instead told her about herself. Something she had never wanted to know.
Standing in front of Arthur Tooth & Sons, she banished Joseph from her mind. He had chosen his way, as she had hers. And here she was, making her own way with a small painting in her bag, and without an earl placing his finger on the scale. With squared shoulders and a steely resolve, she strode confidently inside.
The gallery was blessedly empty, although that didn’t stop the attendant, Jones, from flashing her a disparaging look. She hoisted her valise, holding it against her middle as if she were defending it from some ruffian, rather than the bespectacled,pinched-faced clerk. He made a beeline for her, no doubt ready to toss her out on her ear. Thankfully, recognition finally hit him as he approached, and his face softened ever so slightly.
“Ah, Miss Verdier. Pleasure to see you.” Jones extended a hand toward a long table near the back. “I assume you have a piece for us?”
Rose gave the now polite clerk a severe look, then followed him.
She’d been selling to Arthur Tooth & Sons for some time now; their more progressive approach included displaying a rotating array of small pieces from unknown artists in the back of the gallery. And she could never hope to even get her foot through the door of a place like Goupil’s. No, here was the perfect opportunity for her and her peers to turn what was untried and unknown into something, albeit a pittance. For without any momentum or a wealthy patron behind her, there’d be no hope for her to have a showing all her own. She hadn’t even displayed at the Royal Academy, something that pained her very much. For now, though, the only pain she could hope to soothe was the very real gnawing in her belly.
She set her valise down on the table and opened it, clumsily spilling the contents in her rush to retrieve the small canvas.
“Oh dear,” she muttered, darting her hand out to pick up a nearly empty tin of hairpins. It rattled as she tossed it back in. Her cheeks warmed. Why did she have to be such a cloddish, draggle-tailed mess all the time? With a more sedate movement she retrieved her horn comb, which made her think about how much of a mess her hair must be.
Jones joined in half-heartedly, a blank look on his face as he gathered a disarray of leaflets, blank sheets, and drawings.
