Louisa let out a sigh. “The art here… it seemed to make him uncomfortable.”
Adele glanced down the hall at Apollo. “Is he bothered by male nudity?”
“He seems to think I should be.”
Grace laughed. “Youshouldbe, but he should know by now how much time you spend around fine art. I know some museums have added fig leaves, but that was not what the Greeks intended.”
Grace was a sculptor who sold her pieces under a male pseudonym, and although clay was her medium, she had an encyclopedic knowledge of all kinds of sculpture. She and Louisa had gone to the British Museum a few weeks before to look atsome new marbles in the collection, nude sculptures all, and Grace had also seemed unfazed by the art. It seemed she had many books in her personal library with sketches of some of the same statues; she claimed the sketches did not do the real things justice.
Louisa looked at the Apollo again. “Why, do you think, did they make so many nude statues?”
“The Greeks had less shame about the human body, I suppose,” said Grace. “They wanted to celebrate the body beautiful. We want to cover it up, lest any weak-willed individual be overcome with lust and act in a way that is unbecoming. Social mores change over time, I suppose.”
“I suppose if I were your future husband, I’d want to shield your eyes from depictions of the male physique, should my own physique fall short of the ideal,” said Adele. “I don’t think Rotherfeld will have that issue.”
“This is just…” Louisa gestured toward the statue. “All right. You two are married ladies and you both have children, so you have of course seen your husbands in the flesh, while I have only ever laid eyes on marble men, but I guess I don’t feel any shame, even if I probably should. I don’t think my looking at a statue will affect me much in any way.”
“Apollo is not driving you wild with lust?” Grace asked, a glint in her eye.
Louisa looked over the statue. “No, not really.”
“That is men’s fear, too. Both that they will prove inadequate, and that somehow seeing another man will corrupt their women.”
“I do not think that is the case.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you, I’m just explaining what men tend to think.”
Adele laughed. “Men are foolish creatures.”
Louisa, not for the first time, wondered if she was making a mistake with Daniel. “Do you think Rotherfeld is so insecure that he’d want to shield me from art?”
“Didhe shield you?” Grace asked.
“I suppose he didn’t. He just seemed extremely uncomfortable.”
“Perhaps he’s the one who feels shame.”
Louisa wondered what that said about Rotherfeld’s character. Women were supposed to be sheltered and protected from the horrors of the world outside the home—or so Louisa’s father had said on more than one occasion, although this was not something he enforced with much vigor—but it seemed like Rotherfeld was the one who had been sheltered. Was Grace correct? Was Rotherfeld worried about inadequacy? Was he worried looking at art would warp Louisa’s mind.
“Rotherfeld is a very handsome man,” said Adele. “I doubt you would find him wanting.”
Louisa laughed. “This whole conversation is absurd.”
Adele looked around. “Oh, dear. Is that my mother-in-law?” She was looking at the Gainsborough.
“I’m afraid it is,” said Louisa.
“She was pretty in her youth. I suppose pure evil hardens a woman’s features.”
Louisa laughed. “The Dowager is not evil.”
“She is a little bit. Hugh building her a home of her own was the greatest gift he’s ever given me, especially now that shehas stopped calling on us so incessantly. I only have to see her at luncheon after church on Sundays, and these days, mostly she ignores me, which I suspect is for the best.”
“You’ve been married for almost three years,” said Grace. “Has she not melted a little?”
“A tiny bit. She dotes on my son. He’s two and has the attention span of a house fly, but she still likes to lecture him on the importance of carrying on the grand Swynford name.”
“Seems like a good use of her time,” said Louisa.
