She slid her gaze to Mr. Grenville. No. She wouldnotmiss him, she told herself firmly. How could she miss something she’d never truly had?
As they made their way into the gallery, Lady Roundtree and Mr. Grenville were bombarded on all sides by well-wishers.
The baroness lamented her splint to anyone who would listen, and Mr. Grenville charmed the rest with little compliments or inquiries about their hobbies and loved ones.
The worst were the debutantes. He couldn’t go three feet without one of them fairly swooning into his path with flirtatious comments and a flutter of her eyelashes.
Thatwas the sort of young lady he would choose. Moneyed, beautiful, secure in her superiority over the rest.
The debutantes fell over themselves to tell Mr. Grenville they had read about the picture gallery in this lady’s magazine or that newspaper. They knew a thousand little details that Nora would find fascinating if she weren’t so jealous over her inability to have read such articles for herself.
How she wished she could have done so! Instead of blushing her way through the carriage ride, she could have regaled Mr. Grenville with topical insights and trivia relevant to their outing.
Instead, she had said nothing because girls like her had nothing to say.
She looked away. All the money in England wouldn’t make her the intellectual equal of any of these vapid coquettes with the French modistes and personal Latin tutors, because Nora’s brain didn’t work the same way. It never would.
“Did you know that a Swiss painter was one of the first collectors behind this gallery?” one of the debutantes asked Mr. Grenville.
“Of course he knows,” said another. “Didn’t you hear him mention that a dealer of French art had worked in tandem with another collector?”
“Your details are so fascinating,” another said, batting her eyes at him. “I positively adore history when it’s you that tells it.”
Nora tried not to gag.
If Mr. Grenville was bothered by the constant stream of pretty young things vying for his attention, he did not show it. Nor did he express any exasperation at the surprising number of fine ladies and fancy gentlemen sidling up to whisper in his ear about a problem they hoped he could solve, careful not to let anyone overhear.
No one except Nora, because Nora was no one.
She clenched her teeth, annoyed with the universe. Enough. She had got the message the day she arrived. Stark status differences splashed in her face every hour of every day. Just because she had an active imagination did not mean she confused reality with what could someday happen.
The other women were foreground.
She was background.
“This way,” Mr. Grenville murmured, leading Lady Roundtree and her footmen away from the crowd. “These salons seem less crowded.”
Was he ever right. Not only was the next salon far less crowded than the others, there were even a few artists with easels, making sketches or doing watercolor reproduction of the art on display.
Nora’s mouth fell open. How she wished she were one of them! Her heart twisted with longing. The richest spectators in the gallery were not those with the most extravagant gowns, but those who had brought a sketchbook and a bit of graphite to take advantage of the location.
Not for the first time, she wished her brother had never sent her caricatures to a printing house. If she had not been launched along that path, she could be here sketching with the others.
Her stomach twisted. She had cheated herself out of her favorite pastime. Now that the caricatures were famous, she didn’t dare sketch in public lest a witness put two and two together. She might assume she was too invisible for someone to make such a leap of logic, but it was not a risk she was in any position to take.
Still, Nora’s fingers itched for a drawing pencil.
“You two go ahead,” Lady Roundtree waved her hand in Mr. Grenville’s direction. “I see some old friends that I absolutely must catch up with before I lose them in this crowd.”
Nora hurried toward her. “Don’t you want me to come with you?”
“And make it even harder to push our way through?” Lady Roundtree gestured toward her broken leg. “It’s hard enough to navigate about with this bother. Having to worry about you two will only make it worse.”
Before Nora could object further, the baroness turned away and motioned for her footman to push her in the opposite direction.
Nora stared at the retreating baroness, marveling that it was less worrisome to leave her unmarried cousin alone with a gentleman than to have her companion accompany her.
But she and Mr. Grenville weren’t alone, were they? Nor was Nora here as a cousin, but as a servant. Perhaps these class differences afforded her a freedom she hadn’t fully realized. Had Nora come to visit as a cousin, she might not have been permitted to stroll the gallery unattended with a gentleman caller.
