“My Lady?” Jane asked.
She looked up and saw her friend holding her meal and regretted not telling her not to bring it up from the kitchen. “You may take it back,” Rachel said. “I am not hungry. I’ll explain when you come back.”
Jane left the room with a nod, and Rachel went back to staring numbly at her book. If she had not known her parents to be the people that she knew they were, she would have been shocked to know that they were still going to marry her off to a man who had little respect for women. But she was not.
When Jane came back and sat with her, Rachel closed the book that she had not been reading and said, “They are going to make me marry him, Jane. They do not care that he is a patriarchist with little respect for women. He wants me as a doll, Jane. A pretty, submissive thing he can dress up and parade around.”
Her voice was hollow and resounded in her ear as empty and lifeless, but what could she do?
“I do not want to be a marionette dancing for him, but that is what they want from me, and I have no way to escape it. Strathmore will not see me as any sort of equal, nor will he listen to anything I have to say. I doubt that he has a fanciful, romantic bone in his body and though he admits to being adventurous, what will that give me? Adventure with little enjoyment? What is the sense?” Rachel ended.
“That is horrible,” Jane grimaced.
“If only I could escape it all,” Rachel mourned. “It so unfair, Jane. First, they hobble me with staying home so much, they embarrass me with these horrid dresses, and I do not know half of what I should know. Then they put me up on the marriage market like a lamb to slaughter because the one request I had, not to marry so soon, was rejected. What is there for me anymore?”
“Perhaps you can make the most of it?” Jane suggested. “You can try and change the Lord’s mind to being more progressive?”
She laughed hollowly. “The odds of me changing the mind of a man who is set in his ways, from a belief that has been grounded and indoctrinated inside him, is slim to none. And if I try, it might take me a lifetime to do so.”
“Is there anything you can do?” Jane asked.
“That is yet to be seen,” Rachel sighed.
***
Now, William found himself avoiding Rachel as he did not know what to do or how to tell her what her parents were planning for her. He knew that the longer he avoided her, the more the gap between them would grow.
Soon, he would have the drawing done, and they would choose from the three for the best one to put to the oils. Then, when that was done, he would be on his way. Those three things were absolute, but what would happen between those?
Would he be forced to suffer from standing by to see Rachel married off to a man she despised? Would he have to stand by and see the life and vivacity she had tried so hard to keep steady inside her be snuffed out like water being thrown on a candle?
It was night, but he had a lamp lit and was working on Rachel’s drawing by memory. It was not hard to bring up the image of her staring so dolefully into the distance, her gaze not truly resting on the roses.
He drew in lines and added shades to where the contrast was needed but then paused. He reached for another paper and placed it over the first to trace over the image to have the most vital lines in place. He set it aside to go back on the first image.
While he worked, a plan formed in the back of his mind for another portrait, one that would speak more to Rachel’s inner character than she would ever show them.
He worked until his eyes grew heavy and his hand began to cramp, so he stopped, stowed the two drawings in his folios, then went to bed. But Lady Hurstmere’s smug face stayed with him, and his anger grew. His life had been a hard one, but if fate had decided that his parents would have acted like Rachel’s, he was glad that he was an orphan.
No one deserved to suffer such betrayal so close to home.
Turning on his side, he sighed. The more he thought about Rachel, the more the desire smoldering inside his gut threatened to flare to life. The implied promise he had given her earlier that day seemed deemed to go unfulfilled.
Frustrated, he flopped on his belly to stifle the growing erection and warming need. He felt it disrespectful to pleasure himself to Rachel’s image as he wanted to share satisfaction with her. If by any miracle, it could happen.
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Chapter 15
“He is avoiding me,” Rachel mentioned to Jane after they came from a fourth session in the garden. “But why?”
“Perhaps you can ask him during tomorrow’s session,” Jane said as she went to get a new dress. “We have to prepare for Lord Strathmore’s visit.”
The mention of the man’s name had Rachel’s teeth gritting. Her mother was still going on with this farce. The only option she had was to be so unattractive that the man would find her unsuitable and move away before he even gave in to the formal engagement.
She donned the gown Jane handed her and sat to have her hair redone. “I cannot think why he would be avoiding me.”
Jane sighed while sliding a comb into her hair. “Do you remember when you were shying away from him? Perhaps it is something similar?”
