Page 51 of Passion Painted in a Lady's Heart
Chapter 21
Rosalind had hardly slept that night. The paintings at Somerset House had inspired her, and she had sat up late at her easel, attempting to recreate something of the nudes she had seen that day. But her thoughts constantly turned to Sebastian, distracted by the bitter taste left by Lady Helena’s words at Gunter’s.
She had felt terribly sorry for him, even as she had tried to tell him it did not matter what anyone else said. Rosalind did not care if Sebastian was mad, though she knew that was little consolation to him.
“I don’t care…oh, but I do care…I just…it doesn’t matter to me,” she said to herself, still wrestling with the matter when she awoke the following morning from what had been just a few short hours of sleep.
But like it or not, she had to care, and Rosalind knew the possibility of the earl’s madness was not the only barrier to them enjoying what had seemed almost possible at Somerset House. There, with Sebastian at her side, Rosalind had dared to picture a future for the two of them. But beyond the ideal of an artistic vision, a framed moment of happiness, there was little hope of that.
Whether mad or not, Rosalind knew her parents would object to any courtship with the Earl of Southbourne, not when the Duke of Northridge had let it be known he had every intention of marrying her as soon as possible for his own nefarious ends.
“You look exhausted, my Lady,” Molly said, when she brought Rosalind her morning tea.
Rosalind had just hidden her attempts at the nudes beneath her bed, knowing her maid would be shocked to see such depictions on canvas, even as she knew of Rosalind’s love of painting.
“Oh…I didn’t sleep well, Molly. I couldn’t stop thinking about the earl and his apparent madness. I don’t believe it,” she said. She knew the rumors about Sebastian were rife, both above and below stairs.
The maid looked at her sympathetically.
“Try not to worry, my Lady. I’m sure it’ll be all right. But he isn’t dangerous, is he?” she asked, looking fearful, even as Rosalind laughed.
“Dangerous? Good heavens, no. Why do you say such a thing?” Rosalind exclaimed.
It was one thing to speak of the earl having difficulties, but it was quite another to consider him dangerous. Certainly not to her, and not to anyone else, either.
“I’m sorry, my Lady. It was just something I overheard your mother saying,” Molly said.
Rosalind sighed. She could hear her mother saying that just to insinuate the earl was a danger to her daughter, even if it was the farthest thing from the truth.
“I’m sure it was. But no, he’s not dangerous. Far from it,” Rosalind replied, thinking back to the day she and the earl had enjoyed together at Somerset House and Gunter’s, where there had been no sign of madness, and no suggestion of danger, either.
Having washed and dressed, Rosalind went down to breakfast, hoping to dissuade her mother from such unpleasant thought. She knew her mind was made up. But as she entered the dining room, where the smell of deviled kidneys hung in the air, her mother looked up at her angrily.
“So, here you are,” she said, as Rosalind sat down at the table.
One of the footmen stepped forward to pour a cup of coffee, and Rosalind looked at her mother, wondering what she had done to elicit such a greeting at this early hour.
“I slept a little late, mother. I was tired,” Rosalind said, helping herself to a slice of toast.
Her father was reading a periodical, and he looked up at her and tutted.
“No wonder,” he replied, and Rosalind looked at both her parents in confusion.
“What have I done now?” she asked, for it seemed she was destined to be a perpetual disappointment to her parents, never capable of pleasing them and always in the wrong.
“Somerset House, Rosalind,” the duchess said, her face set in an angry expression, her lips then pursed.
Rosalind sighed.
“I went to an art exhibition with Elizabeth. There were hundreds of others there; most of the ton. I don’t see why you should object?” Rosalind replied.
She had not asked her mother’s permission to go, but neither had seen any possible objection to her doing so. Her mother banged her fist down angrily on the table.
“An exhibition at which you were seen by no less than a dozen of our acquaintances on the arm of the Earl of Southbourne, being led into an area of ill-repute,” her mother exclaimed.
Rosalind blushed. She might have known she would have been seen. It was one thing to attend an art exhibition, but to have passed beyond the red velvet curtain was bound to have caused gossip.
She had seen many of her mother’s friends at the exhibition, and it seemed they had been quick to relay their own sense of horror at seeing her enter into what they themselves dared not do. She sighed, not knowing what to say, even as she had no regrets in having done what she had done.
