“Now I understand your need to access artists, and their, um, resources.” The mischievous spark was back in Miss Sedgewick’s eyes. “Though, of course, if your subject is female, might you not be your own resource?”
“It is not,” Lucy said, blushing fiercely.
Miss Sedgewick’s eyes shone, delighted, Lucy felt, at having discovered the scandal that hid under her quiet exterior. That her insides did not match her outsides was something Lucy herself was often acutely aware of. But this particular secret desire wasart, not anything licentious. She had no need to blush.
“Drawing from life is a central part of every artist’s education,” she defended herself. “Without it, one can never master the skills to be truly proficient in all forms. And yet women aren’t allowed to. We must content ourselves with flowers, fruit, landscapes. Or portraits—we can draw the face. We can draw clothed figures. But without a true understanding of anatomy, of bone, and muscle, and how joints move, how posture is formed, how are we ever to really draw a person in motion? A scene that haslife? It is like…like drawing marionettes and wooden puppets. And then they criticise women for being less skilled at depicting the human form, when we are forever denied even the chance to—”
Miss Sedgewick held up a hand. “I am already a convert to your viewpoint.”
“Forgive me. I was carried away.”
“No, no, don’t apologise. You’re welcome to get carried away on this subject. It’s your being carried away from London I’m trying to prevent. You won’t really leave, will you, and abandon all this ambition because of Eleanor Orton’s petty lies?”
Lucy flinched slightly at the name. And the recollection. “N-no… I do not want to, but…”
“And you can hardly think her brother will believe it. You and he are old friends, aren’t you? He must know you’ve never had a single thought in that direction.”
She spoke so baldly that Lucy could almost convince herself there was no mischievous sparkle in her eyes this time, but she still coloured, flustered, fidgeting once more with her gloves.
“Of course he knows there’s not.”
“Jack is not going to drive you from town,” Miss Sedgewick stated firmly.
Jack is not…Lucy’s thoughts began, attempting to repeat the sentiment.Jack is not…Jack is the same tormenting menace he ever was.
“How odd to see you again!”He’d been half laughing. “As though the last seven years hadn’t happened at all!”But theyhadhappened, and she’d grown up, even if he had not.
Jack was the past, just as much as that old Lucy was, the one who’d followed him around, hapless as a brown leaf in the heedless wind. Hadn’t she spent seven years learning to stand on her own two feet, to root herself and turn her face to the sky?
No, she wouldnotlet Jack or his sisters force her from London, where her only chance lay. But that didn’t mean she could accept Miss Sedgewick’s charity without question. The lady was a stranger, and Lucy was unsure whether her friendship with Jack was recommendation or not.
His voice, the faint colour on his cheek…“Caroline…”
Pressing the seam of her glove so it dug into the flesh by her thumbnail, she said, “What did you mean by a social experiment?”
Miss Sedgewick chuckled. “I knew that would catch your curiosity. Have you ever studied the science of chemistry?”
“No.” She frowned in surprise. “Or not beyond the little I know of blending pigments and glazes and the like.”
“Then I daresay you know more of it than I do, but I take great enjoyment in listening to clever people talk, and one of my friends is a keen student of chemistry. He once spent far longer than I deserved attempting to explain to me the nature of catalysts. Of how, when different substances are combined, they react in quite different ways, and how adding one new ingredient can change things utterly. My own expertise is in people, and I feel that there are a great many similarities. Combining certain people…mixing them liberally…it can lead to very dramatic results, don’t you think?”
“I suppose so.” Lucy was far from an expert in social matters.
“A sceptic!” Miss Sedgewick smiled at her doubt. “Never fear, for the wonderful thing about science is that I don’t need to argue my point but simply let the results speak for themselves. And my experiment is already underway. I predict wonderfully exciting things.”
“You do?” Lucy was as polite as her confusion allowed. “But what is my role in this experiment?”
“Nothing at all, other than to be here and be yourself.”
She almost queried the point further, but her whole life had been spent depending on the whims of others. She liked to pride herself on having developed a highly pragmatic outlook as a result. This little rented house seemed clean and well run. There had been a footman in the hall. There was the rumoured existence of an elderly chaperone. Miss Sedgewick was surely respectable, no matter her relationship with Jack, or else why would she have been at Almack’s?
Lucy looked around at the little pictures on the green wallpaper, at the granite fireplace with its heavy, old-fashioned mantel, the novel left on a side table, a tattered calling card marking the page. She looked at Miss Sedgewick and found shequite liked the knowing smile in her eyes. The woman knew she was being weighed.
Intelligent company? It would be a novelty at least.
So was this moment: being presented with a choice.
Stay or go? Here or there? She’d never once been asked.
