Page 15 of Passion Painted in a Lady's Heart
“Mother, I didn’t want to dance with the Duke of Northridge. Why do you think I disappeared?” she demanded, and her mother gave an exasperated cry.
“Rosalind, what are you talking about? He was expecting you to dance with him. Look, there he is, talking to your father. Go apologize to him at once, and we might just save this sorry situation,” she exclaimed, tutting and shaking her head.
Rosalind sighed, glancing hopefully back towards the throng of guests, all now unmasked. But there was no sign of the stranger, even as Rosalind could picture him vividly in her mind. Her thoughts lingered on his touch, on the paintings, on the possibility of their…
“There you are, Rosalind. I was looking everywhere for you. I thought you promised to dance with me,” the duke said, looking at Rosalind with a sulky expression on his face.
Rosalind felt exasperated. Was he a child? He was certainly behaving like one, with his arms folded and a scowl on his lips.
“I didn’t promise anything,” Rosalind replied, even as her mother gave her an angry look.
“Rosalind, really,” she hissed, but the duke continued to sulk, even as Rosalind’s father promised him a further audience in the coming days.
“Call on us whenever you wish,” he said, but the duke appeared put off, giving a vague promise of doing so, before calling for a carriage to be summoned to take him home.
“What were you thinking, Rosalind?” her mother exclaimed, as they rode home in their own carriage a little later.
On her part, Rosalind could only feel pleased to think of how the evening had transpired, though she could not help but feel a touch of sadness as to the cutting short of her encounter with the art loving stranger.
She had avoided the Duke of Northridge and discovered an acquaintance in a man possessed of the same love of art as herself. But how she wished she had caught his name, and now she wondered if there was not someway of discovering it.
“The man I danced with, do you know him, mother?” she asked, trying to change the subject.
Her mother looked at her angrily across the candlelit compartment of their carriage, her features extenuated by the flickering shadows.
“No, Rosalind, I don’t know him, and I don’t wish to know him. What I want is for you to take the matter of your betrothal seriously,” her mother retorted.
Rosalind was under no illusions as to the seriousness of the matter. She took the question of betrothal very seriously, and she was not about to find herself betrothed to the Duke of Northbridge. He was a man for whom she could summon nothing but thinly veiled contempt.
His sulky reaction to her not having danced with him at the ball was proof enough she was right to hold such an opinion. Her parents only insisted on the match because he was their friend, giving no thought to Rosalind’s own happiness, or her opinion.
“I take it very seriously, mother. But I don’t want to marry him, and that’s that,” Rosalind replied.
Her mother’s eyes narrowed.
“Where were you all evening? And who was the man you danced with? Did he proposition you? Did he make advances? Tell me, Rosalind,” she said, as now the duke, too, fixed his gaze on Rosalind, who folded her arms and stared back at them defiantly.
“We looked at the paintings together. The Marquess of Graystone was a collector of fine art, and this gentleman, whoever he is, was a collector, too. We appreciated the art together,” Rosalind said.
There was no scandal in it; not at face value, at least. A woman at a masquerade could admire a set of paintings. Her mother tutted.
“And why didn’t he introduce himself?” she asked.
“It was a masquerade, mother. We waited for the right moment, and then you dragged me away to speak to that man, who was nothing but a sulk and a bore,” Rosalind replied.
The carriage had just pulled up outside their London townhouse, and Rosalind was relieved to think the argument could now wait until the morning, even as she knew she had not heard the last of it.
“It all sounds very exciting, my Lady,” Molly said, as she helped Rosalind get ready for bed a short while later.
“Oh, it was,” Rosalind said, even as she feared the chance of making any further connection with the strange was gone.
But as she lay in bed, her mind swirled with thoughts of the stranger and what might have been had her mother not dragged her away.
“I wonder who he is?” she asked herself, caught up in the memory of his brief touch, and the feelings it had given rise to.
Chapter 7
“Who was the woman you were dancing with tonight, Sebastian?” Victoria asked, as the two of them rode home together in their carriage after the masquerade had come to an end.
