“I will call on you when you return home, unless you forbid it. We are still friends, I trust,” Gareth whispered just before Wesley sat in the chair on his other side.
“I do not think you should,” she whispered back. “You must not.”
But he had already turned toward Wesley by then, and she did not know if he had heard her.
***
That night while Eva prepared for bed, Sarah slipped into her bedchamber. “If Rebecca ruins this chance with Mr. Mansfield, I will be very vexed, Eva. I chose him with great thought and care.”
“We are both so grateful to you that I am sure neither of us wants you vexed. However, you speak of a chance when there is no indication at all that the man favors her any more than she favors him. I do not think he will call.”
“Nonsense. He will be here tomorrow. He knows you are both supposed to leave in two days. If he comes as I expect, you must leave Rebecca here with me at least a week longer. You can stay, too, of course.”
“I should return home. There are things I must do there. If Rebecca wants to stay, however, I will permit it.”
Content with her plans, Sarah turned to the door.
“I still think you are being too optimistic about Mr. Mansfield,” Eva said.
“He makes her uncomfortable, Eva. Those were her words. When he looks at her, she isuncomfortable. She is too young to know what she is really feeling. Oh, you do not know either, do you? Trust me that her discomfort is not the normal kind, but speaks well of the prospects.”
“I understand what you refer to, Sarah. However, it is Mr. Mansfield whose interest I doubt. Among other things, he probably will care when he learns she has almost no fortune. For another, he made it clear tonight that he does not approve of clever women, and Rebecca is very well-read and quite opinionated.”
“Oh, Eva, you are adorable. She has rare beauty, and she has gentle blood. He would want her even if she were a confirmed radical and bluestocking and owned one dress. Tonight all he is thinking is how he can claim the prize before the serious competition understands a contest is at hand.” She opened the door.
“If you anticipate callers, what time do you think it will be? I want to buy some canvases and brushes to take home with me tomorrow morning.”
“He will be early, but not too early. Two o’clock I would think. Why do you want painting materials? Do you dab?”
“It is my favorite pastime. I want to start some views very soon.”
“Take the carriage, then. I will have no use for it tomorrow.”
After Sarah left, Eva got into bed and gazed up at the canopy. She had not even tried to paint a view for over a year, after it became obvious that Mr. Stevenson’s patrons had no interest in them. Her last visit to his shop hardly encouraged her to take them up again.
All the same, she itched to paint one, even though it made no sense financially. It would be her own creation, not a copy of someone else’s. She experienced much more drama when doing her own work. Copying produced pleasant melodies in her heart. Her own compositions played like symphonies. She missed that, and since she had enough money to buy an extra bit of canvas, she could afford to indulge herself.
Mr. Stevenson’s glee about the recent big sale entered her mind. So did the sight of him counting out twenty pounds. She needed to continue the copies, too, of course. Which meant she needed a new source of paintings, now that Gareth lived at Albany Lodge. She thought she knew where she might find some others to borrow. As soon as she returned to Langdon’s End, she would take steps to arrange that.
Thinking about the paintings led her to thinking about the ones she had already borrowed, which in turn led her to thinking about the day she had returned the last one. She cursed as her body came alive in the night, reliving too well the sensations Gareth had called forth. She dared not close her eyes, because if she did, she saw him standing there, his chest bare, then wearing nothing at all as she peered around a doorjamb. Her body’s sensitivity grew while fantasy hands caressed her most indecently.
He had taunted her at the music performance after she said she had not enjoyed his kisses. Even as he apologized, he made sure her body admitted the lie. Damn him and his conceit. He did not only guess what she suffered if she allowed the memories to have their way. Heknew.
CHAPTER11
Mr. Mansfield indeed called at Sarah’s house at two o’clock. Eva received him along with her cousin and Rebecca. What followed could kindly be described as a mildly awkward half hour.
His interest in Rebecca could not be mistaken. He addressed most of his conversation to her. She thus had no choice except to respond. By the end of his visit, the exchanges turned less formal and stilted. Rebecca even laughed at a bit of wit he tried inserting. Unfortunately, Rebecca had prepared herself for the meeting, and just when things were getting friendly, she launched into a lecture on what Voltaire and Rousseau had written about education. For twenty minutes everyone in the room except Rebecca listened to a philosophical comparative analysis with frozen smiles on their faces.
When Sarah finally interrupted—“You must feed me such elevated thinking in small pieces, dear, and allow me to digest this latest morsel now”—Mr. Mansfield even thanked Rebecca, and promised to give the question some thought. Despite his patience, by Rebecca’s later accounting it had all been a waste of time.
That evening Sarah posed her idea that Rebecca stay on as her guest. Rebecca quickly accepted, but only, Eva suspected, because she hoped the poet would also call, and becauseanything would be better than returning to the boredom of Langdon’s End.
“Leave her to me, Eva,” Sarah said quietly while they kissed good-bye the next morning. “We may not have a proposal in hand when I send her back to you, but we will be very close, I think.”
Rebecca loitered in the doorway, watching her leave. Eva waved through the carriage window. Her small trunk, rolls of canvas, and new boxes of pigments and brushes rode atop the vehicle.
She had hired this carriage so that Sarah could use hers to take Rebecca around town to show her off. Eva suspected Sarah intended to chance upon Mr. Mansfield.
