Page 41 of Passion Painted in a Lady's Heart
Rosalind was pleased to have been invited. An art exhibition would be a welcome distraction from her troubles, and she nodded.
“I’d be pleased to,” she said, and Elizabeth clapped her hands together in delight.
“Oh, how wonderful! I was worried I wouldn’t be able to go. I’d need a chaperone, and we can act as one another’s chaperone, can’t we?” she said.
Rosalind smiled. At the very least, her mother would not refuse her permission to go if she knew Elizabeth would be accompanying her. Elizabeth was held up to be a paradigm of virtue, and trust in her was absolute. The two women now took tea together, and Rosalind was questioned as to her feelings for Sebastian, even as she was not about to reveal the extent of their relations.
“It’s not going to be easy for you, Rosalind,” Elizabeth said, after Rosalind had given her a brief appraisal of events at Lady Clarissa’s ball.
“I know that. But I don’t even know what he intends,” Rosalind replied, referring to Sebastian, and this much was true.
A dance, sharing a conversation, an intimate kiss, none of it really meant anything without further declaration of intent. Rosalind feared her association with the Duke of Northridge was enough to prevent Sebastian from making any movement forward with a relationship with her. Any man would feel that way. And despite her own feelings towards him, it seemed as though she would be left with no choice but to forget the matter and await her fate.
“You can find out at the exhibition, perhaps,” Elizabeth replied, and Rosalind looked at her in surprise.
“Will he be there?” she asked, realizing there was perhaps more to the invitation than mere politeness.
“I’m sure he will. He’s John’s closest friend, isn’t he? He worries about him dealing with all this business over the family curse. The madness,” Elizabeth said.
There was a dismissiveness in her voice, as though the matter was of little importance, even as Rosalind sighed.
“He’s not mad,” she said, and Elizabeth shrugged.
“I don’t know. No one thought the king was mad, either, did they?” she said.
That much was true. When they parted ways, promising to meet on the steps of Somerset House the following day at ten o’clock, Rosalind found herself preoccupied with the thought of Sebastian’s madness. The thought she tried hard to push aside. If he was mad, she would not know until it was too late, and to marry a madman was surely as bad as marrying a man like the Duke of Northridge.
“But aren’t we all a little mad?” she asked herself, as she hurried home, hoping to avoid her mother and slip in through the kitchen door.
But the thought now plagued her, and try as she might, she remained doubtful as to her true impressions of the man she had kissed in the garden, the man on whom she had set her hopes, the man she really knew so little of.
***
“They said they’d be inside,” Elizabeth said, as Rosalind looked around her for a sign of Sebastian or John.
A considerable crowd had gathered outside the handsome neo-classical façade of Somerset House on The Strand, and Rosalind and Elizabeth were being jostled inside, caught up in a queue of people, many of whom were not yet in possession of tickets for the exhibition.
“There’s a steward here,” Rosalind said, taking hold of Elizabeth’s hand and pulling her through the throng.
The steward was a young, flustered looking man in a blue uniform. He took their tickets and ushered them beyond a barrier. There it wasn’t as crowded and a wide flight of steps led up to a gallery above where everything was marble. Here the onlookers spoke in hushed whispers, which was a marked contrast to the shouts and cries coming from outside.
“They’re like a pack of wild animals and all to see a few paintings,” another steward said, shaking his head, as he took the invitation from Elizabeth and pointed them along the gallery to a set of open doors at the far end.
“Has Lord Cuthbert arrived yet?” Elizabeth asked, and the steward nodded.
“And the Earl of Southbourne, too,” he replied, pointing again along the gallery.
At the mention of the earl, Rosalind’s heart skipped a beat, and she was under no allusion as to the intention of Lord Cuthbert in issuing the invitation. Her mother had agreed to it on the basis of Elizabeth’s accompaniment, even as she had made her feelings about art exhibitions clear.
“They attract a certain type of person, Rosalind. A type of person I don’t approve of,” her mother had said, though she had not elaborated further on just what that type was.
“This way, Rosalind. Let’s find them,” Elizabeth said, beckoning Rosalind to follow her.
The doors at the far end of the gallery opened into a large hall, with an ornately painted ceiling, around the edge of which were windows to let in the sunlight. The carpet was a plush oriental design, and benches were dispersed at intervals in a circular arrangement. But the paintings covering the walls drew the crowd’s attention. Every space was taken up with large frames, small frames, long frames, and portraits arranged as though in a great puzzle to fit together and cover every surface.
“Goodness, look at it,” Rosalind exclaimed, for it was a truly remarkable sight.
The subjects of the paintings ranged from mythical scenes to stiff portraiture. Men and women, gods and goddesses, animals, landscapes. There were depictions of Biblical parables next to the fading glories of ancient Rome, while mischievous looking children smiled from the backs of horses, and an underwater scene showed Poseidon in a watery lair.
