Page 58 of Passion Painted in a Lady's Heart
“I know what he said, uncle,” he replied, and without waiting for a response, he turned and walked back across the garden.
It was a small, but important, victory. Sebastian had no evidence of his uncle’s involvement with the tampered diary, the altered painting, or missing cigar case. But in relaying the strange occurrence of his meeting with Mr. Gerard, Sebastian had sent a warning to his uncle or whoever might be trying to deceive him.
“I’m not mad,” he told himself, as he made his way upstairs.
It was his intention to paint and alter Rosalind’s image to that he saw in his mind’s eyes. Her pretty face, her smile, the depth of her eyes.
“I’ll paint her just as she is, and this time, no one will alter it,” he said to himself.
In his studio, he closed the door, drawing the bolt across. He did not want to be disturbed, and looking around, he was satisfied nothing about the studio had changed. But going to the drawer where he kept his paint pots, intending to mix his palette with the colors for Rosalind’s eyes, he let out a cry.
There, in the draw, staring up at him, was the cigar case. He knew he had not put it there, for he had opened the drawer several times since the disappearance and knew it had not been there.
“I’m not mad,” he told himself, repeating the words, as he took out the cigar case and held up to his face, examining it in minute detail.
It was just a cigar case, but to Sebastian, it represented something more. Finding his sanity, and the conviction he was not mad, nor was he becoming so.
Chapter 24
“It was so good of Richard to invite you to picnic with him by the Thames. Riparian delights, how wonderful,” Rosalind’s mother said, as they drove in their carriage towards Thornbury House.
The duchess had talked of little else but Rosalind’s apparent fortune at being tossed a bone in the form of a picnic. She took it as a sign the two of them would soon be betrothed and had already begun discussing plans for the wedding at length.
Rosalind had not contradicted her mother, even as her experience of the picnic had only served to strengthen her resolve against marrying the Duke of Northridge, whose behavior on the riverbanks had only served to prove what Rosalind had already known.
His interest in her was secondary to his interest in the necessity of marriage for a man of his position. She was the chosen one, and feelings certainly not love played no part.
“Yes. Very riparian,” Rosalind replied.
Her mother swooned.
“Oh, to be young again, to feel the desire of a man,” she exclaimed,
Rosalind made a face. Her mother did not normally talk in such terms, and she was only glad her father was confined to an armchair by his gout that evening, and not present to hear it.
“Mother, please,” Rosalind said, and her mother laughed.
“Oh, Rosalind, aren’t I allowed to feel happy on my daughter’s behalf? I’m so glad you’ve seen the sense in marrying the Duke of Northridge. Didn’t I tell you he was the perfect match for you?” she said.
“Repeatedly, mother,” Rosalind replied.
She had given up arguing with her mother over who she was going to marry and who she was not. But the picnic had only served to strengthen her resolve against marrying the Duke of Northridge, even if it had also served to increase her sorrow over the situation with Sebastian. She could not marry him.
Not while he held back from courtship because of his own fears surrounding the madness he was so convinced of. It was an impossible situation, one Rosalind could only despair of.
“And so he is. The Duchess of Northridge…to think of it,” Rosalind’s mother exclaimed, looking out of the window with a wistful look in her eyes.
Rosalind groaned. But her mother did not hear her. She was too caught up in thoughts of marriage and title, and the talk centered around little else as they made the journey to Thornbury House for the midsummer s
oiree. They had reached the point in the season where the balls, dinners, picnics, and soirees all merged into one. There was little to differentiate between them. It was the same people, wearing the same dresses, having the same conversations, only against minimally different backdrops.
It was dull, and Rosalind would far rather have preferred to be painting, then preparing to endure another evening of forced frivolity. The only hope she held was to see Sebastian, even as she knew her mother would not approve. She had begun another painting of him, imagining him in the nude, sitting with his back to her, glancing over his shoulder.
But it was not his naked form she found most alluring, but his eyes. The eyes were far more attractive than the hidden parts of the body. The eyes were a window to the soul, and a single look could be enough to break or melt a heart.
“I’ve never liked Thornbury House,” Rosalind said, glancing out of the window, as the carriage approached what was effectively a townhouse, made to look like a country dwelling.
Everything was in miniature, the house itself being built narrow and tall, but detached, and surrounded by gardens and a high wall. Lady Thornbury was a woman with old money and new ambitions.
