Sebastian’s lips quivered as he glanced over at Cecilia. But the Marquess of Shelburne’s sister was made of sterner stuff. Years of listening to her brother’s idle chatter had inured her to even his most outrageous compliments. She merely raised a quizzical eyebrow as she murmured, “That is praise indeed, even from Neville, for he sets the very highest of standards, you know. It took the greatest act of courage on his part to enter these hallowed portals holding the arm of a woman whose gown is quite two years out of date.”
Sebastian chuckled. “I am impressed that he convinced her to make her appearance here at all.”
Cecilia made a moue of disgust. “He caught me in a weak moment.”
“And here I thought that Lady Cecilia Manners never suffered from such a thing.”
“Not ordinarily.” She could not help smiling back at him. There was such a wealth of sympathy and understanding behind the teasing glint in his dark eyes. “However, Neville did point out that I had not quite got the eyebrows right on your fiancée and that the quickest way to rectify that was to join him here this evening, where I would have ample opportunity to observe her face in a variety of expressions.”
“Not got the eyebrows right? I should have thought that would have been done easily enough.”
“Neville maintains that they are extremely expressive and I have utterly failed to appreciate that fact.”
“Hmmm. Does he now?” The earl stared thoughtfully at Barbara and Neville who were now whirling gracefully around the floor.
“In this particular case, I do believe he has a point.”
Sebastian smiled down at her. “And are you always so enchantingly devoid of hubris. Lady Cecilia?”
She colored fiercely, not so much at his words as at the way he looked at her. The warmth of his admiration felt as intimate as a kiss, and it left her oddly shaken. “I... er... I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come now. Lady Cecilia. You are clearly a superior creature to your brother in any number of ways, and you just as clearly bear very little respect for his way of living, yet you refuse to dismiss his opinion out of hand simply because you cannot respect the rest of what he stands for. I find that as admirable as it is rigorous. It shows the mark of a true artist—one who is willing to learn whatever she can, regardless of the source, just so long as it improves her art.”
“Why ... why, thank you,” Cecilia responded slowly. She tilted her head to one side as she considered his words. “I had never thought of it that way, but yes, I suppose that is what I try to do; learn wherever and whatever I can from whomever I can.”
“Then I hope your coming here tonight has been worth it. I was not so sure of that when I first caught sight of you. You looked as thought you wished desperately to be almost anywhere else but here.”
“Did I?” She laughed. “I am afraid I am but a poor dissembler. My face has always betrayed my thoughts far too readily for my comfort.”
“I am glad of that.” Watching the sparkle in her eyes and the dimple that occasionally peeped out at the corner of her mouth when she smiled, Sebastian wanted desperately to think that she was enjoying herself now, at this moment, in his company. “But why do you dislike it here? Most young women would trade their souls to be seen here at the Marriage Mart.”
“That is because most young women aspire to nothing more than to be married,” she responded tartly.
“We have certainly established that you aspire to a great deal more, but surely you do not rule out marriage?” Sebastian had not the least notion why he had allowed the conversation to stray to such a personal topic. Ordinarily he was far more at ease talking of abstract subjects—mathematics, finance, even art were safely impersonal enough for him to discuss at length without becoming even the least bit involved.
“Quite simply, I have no need for it, and therefore no desire for it. Most women marry simply in order to be supported and taken care of by a man. I can support and take care of myself, and I prefer to do so. Furthermore, the fortune that so many young women hope to marry into can be gone in an instant, you know.” The defiant lift of her chin and the faintest trace of bitterness in her voice reminded him that something quite similar had happened to her in her life.
Again, the gaunt and haunted face of the previous Marquess of Shelburne flashed across Sebastian’s mind. For someone as disciplined and ambitious as Cecilia to have seen her father, mentor, and teacher, consumed by the fever of gambling must have been disappointing to the extreme. And again, Sebastian felt the stab of guilt and despair at the role he had played in the Marquess’s ruin.
“But what about love?” he heard himself asking.
“Love?”
Cecilia stared at him as though he had just sprouted wings or grown another head.
“Yes, love.” Sebastian could not help smiling at her patent astonishment. “Not everyone marries for a fortune. People do occasionally many for love, you know.”
“Love is for those who can find no other interest or passion in life. It is the merest excuse to feel strongly about something.”
“I cannot agree with you. I feel sure that—”
But she was not to hear what he felt sure of, for at that precise moment Barbara and Neville, nearly overcome with laughter, returned from the floor.
“Did you ever see such a shocking quiz of a turban in your entire life?” Barbara gasped.
“No, never—except when she wore it last year. I thought I had never seen anything uglier then, but to try to disguise it with diamond aigrettes and plumes? It has only made an ugly thing uglier.” Neville’s eyes were dancing with suppressed laughter. “And yet she lords it over everyone as though she were the superior creature instead of an heiress with nothing to recommend her but her fortune, or a woman who confuses sparklers with style.”
Barbara let out another delicious peal of laughter and Cecilia; watching the two of them, thought she had never seen Miss Wyatt so animated—or her brother either, for that matter.
“Your brother swears that you do not care for dancing, Lady Cecilia, but you really must insist on his leading you to the floor just once. He is the very essence of grace, and he dances divinely.” Barbara turned to her fiancé with a coquettish smile. “If only you would learn from him, Charrington, I am persuaded you would quite enjoy it. You must accompany me to my next sitting, and while I am being immortalized, you can learn the finer points of dancing.”
The earl smiled indulgently at his fiancée. “Are you sure it is not because he enjoys dancing that Shelburne does it so well? I, as you often like to tell me, am an old sobersides, and therefore something as exuberant as dancing is quite foreign to my nature. Though I would be delighted for an excuse to attend your next sitting, I do not think that Shelburne, for all his skill, is likely to improve my dancing. And how does the portrait progress. Lady Cecilia?”
“For the amount of time she spends in her studio, it ought to be nearly finished by now.” Neville scoffed. “She says she wishes to get the sketch absolutely perfect before she begins to apply the paint, but it is my belief that she works at it so she does not have to enjoy herself.”
He turned to Barbara. “You must teach her something of that during your sittings. Miss Wyatt, for you are one of the few people whose portrait she has painted, besides Emily Cowper and Dorothea Lieven, who is not a bluestocking or dangerously close to it. You may call Charrington an old sobersides, but mark my words, he is nothing compared to Cecy. Why, she even pays the tradesmen’s bills on time, if you can believe such a thing.”
“But here”—Neville held out his arm to his sister—”I shall do as Miss Wyatt suggests and ask you to dance. No, don’t glare at me, for I shan’t take no for an answer. You had one of the best dancing masters in all of Italy, so I know you can dance.”
Cecilia could hardly refuse without appearing churlish in front of the earl and his fiancée, so, with as good grace as she could muster, she allowed her brother to lead her onto the floor.
“Really. Neville, it is too bad of you. You know I don’t care for it,” she began crossly.
Her brother opened his blue eyes wide. “But why ever not? You are quite good at it, you know. And you cannot complain about your partner’s lack of conversation, because you already know I have none, or at least not the sort you enjoy.”
“You know that I enjoy conversation that is useful—the sort where I can learn something from someone.”
“Like Charrington? No, don’t poker up at me, Cecy, you look like an ape leader. There, that is better. Thank heavens it is a waltz and you will be forced to enjoy yourself.” And clasping her hand in his, her brother glided them smoothly onto the floor.
“Actually, you and Charrington seemed to be having quite a pleasant conversation. It would do you good to smile more, the way you were then; it would wipe away that dreadful scowl you always wear.”
“I don’t scowl!”
“Don’t you? Actually, I expect you don’t consider it a scowl, just a frown of concentration—but let me tell you that the effect it has is the same, and it does your face no good. You will be wrinkled before your time.”
“And I expect that vacuous expression that Miss Wyatt wears will keep her young.”
“Well, it won’t give her wrinkles, at any rate. Cut line, Cecy. I don’t expect you to be like Miss Wyatt, but you don’t have to be a dragon either. Where is the harm in taking a little pleasure in life?”
But Cecilia was too annoyed with her brother to reply, so they were silent for the rest of the dance as she struggled to think up an appropriately blistering retort. The more she thought, however, the more the music sounded in her ears and the more they whirled around the floor, faster and faster, until, by the time the dance ended, she couldn’t remember what they had been arguing about.
“There, see, I knew you would enjoy yourself,” Barbara remarked as they rejoined her and Sebastian. “One cannot help it with someone like your brother. Yes”—she paused to eye Cecilia critically—”your complexion has definitely improved. Does she not look quite lovely, Charrington?”
“Quite. But then I have always thought Lady Cecilia to be quite lovely.”
Chapter Thirteen
Cecilia might have forgotten what she wished to say to her brother during their dance at Almack’s, but she did not forget it the next morning when she received the haberdasher’s bill. “Twenty cravats, Neville? But you just purchased a dozen of them from Beamon, Abbott, and Davison less than a month ago.”
Neville laid down his fork. “There, I have told you not to look at bills at the breakfast table. It quite puts one off one’s feed. Besides, you would not have your brother appearing in public with a soiled cravat, would you? Clean linen is the essential mark of a gentleman. Furthermore”—he leaned forward to look at her intently—”if you continue harping on such paltry topics, you will become a dead bore.”
“Well, someone must, or we shall find ourselves in the poorhouse.”
“If you applied yourself to finding a suitable husband with the same energy that you applied to your painting and your bill-paying, we should all be a good deal better off.”
Cecilia ground her teeth. “Have care, Neville—it is portraits of people like Miss Wyatt that are keeping you in cravats. And while we are on the subject of Miss Wyatt, I should like to know what your intentions are in that direction.”
Neville picked up his fork and knife and slowly, deliberately placed a slice of bacon topped with egg into his mouth, and chewed meditatively. He swallowed, and a slow smile spread across his handsome features. “Why, what do you mean, sister?”
“Only that I have never seen her so animated as she was last evening in your company. Have care what you are about, Neville. It is all very well for you to charm dashing young matrons or fashionable dowagers, but Miss Wyatt, who clearly yearns to make a name for herself in the
ton,
is not yet firmly enough established to risk the least whisper as to the nature of her reputation.”
Her brother’s blue eyes widened enormously. “And here I thought you considered such things to be a most trivial waste of one’s energy.”
“
I
do, but Miss Wyatt does not, and it is not fair of you to... to...”
“Relax, Cecy, I was only providing her with amusement for the evening, which is more than she gets from that old stick of a fiancé of hers. And if you were not fast becoming an old stick yourself, you would see that. Miss Wyatt is simply a person who likes to enjoy herself, and I tried, as any gentleman would, to do my level best to assist her in achieving her goal.”
“Now.” He rose. “I am off to enjoy myself, and I suggest that you do the same. You will never catch a husband if you continue to wear that Friday face of yours.”
“And I tell you”—Cecilia also rose, clutching the pile of bills that had been delivered in the morning post—”that I have no intention of catching a husband.”
“Have it your way, then, but if you had a husband, you would not have to spare a thought for those.” And with an airy wave of his hand Neville indicated the sheaf of bills that she held, and then left her to fume silently.
Cecilia stalked off to her studio where she mixed pigments furiously for some time. Then, drawing a deep, steadying breath and slowly, deliberately picking up her brush, she began to apply the first daubs of paint to her portrait of Miss Wyatt.
Cecilia worked steadily to the point where she could do no more until the paint dried. Then, wiping her hands, she picked up her chalk and her half-filled sketchbook, flipped to a blank page, and began drawing feverishly, hoping against hope that sketching out her ideas for a possible large-scale painting of Cupid and Psyche would distract her from angry thoughts of Neville, her father, and the uncertainty of life after one’s family had lost a fortune and one was forced to depend on the vagaries of public taste for one’s livelihood.
When the idea for a painting of Cupid and Psyche had first come to her, Cecilia had been pleased with it—a young girl faced with insurmountable tasks that she accepted without complaint or self-pity—not to mention the god who loved her. But the more she sketched, the more dissatisfied she became with her product. No matter what she did or how hard she tried, Psyche remained looking downtrodden and submissive, while Cupid stayed stiff and godlike, rendering the entire scene lifeless and utterly devoid of passion or interest. In a fury of exasperation Cecilia flung the sketchbook across the studio.