‘I had better come with you,’ Jane said. ‘He is not going to be very trusting if you produce an even more unbelievable tale than the first one about your confused feelings for some country gentleman’s daughter.’
‘It would make you far too late returning to Batheaston,’ Ivo protested. ‘Besides, this is entirely my problem.’
‘Aargh!’ Jane threw up her hands, making the maid, who was approaching with a fresh jug of hot water, shy away. ‘This is exactly what I meant about not wanting to marry. Men are so unreasonable when you get a notion into your heads. This is our problem, not yours alone. It was my decision to pull you into the chaise, my misjudgement when I said to the chairmen that we were betrothed instead of supporting you and pretending to be your sister. My fault that I did not immediately correct the impression that the ladies and your friends formed.’
Ivo had that stubborn expression again—he certainly had the jaw for it. He was not going to allow her equal blame in this, or an equal part in setting it to rights. She tried another tack. ‘Besides, when Lady Tredwick looks up my family, as she surely will, she cannot fail to find the Dorset Newnhams with a daughter of my age called Jane. We, together, must tell your grandfather everything and then he, surely, can control Lady Tredwick’s propensity for gossip?’
‘But not today,’ Ivo said. ‘I will take you back to your cousin, then attempt to convince Grandfather that this is all a complete misunderstanding by telling him everything. If he still will not accept it, then I will come and collect you. He cannot fail to take a lady’s word on the matter.’ He gestured to the maid for the reckonin
g. ‘What will you tell your cousin?’
‘Everything,’ Jane said with a sinking heart. ‘Everything except my plan to be a painter.’
Ivo made a sound suspiciously like a growl.
Chapter Nine
First thing the next morning Jane asked permission to drive into Bath again with Charity the maid as chaperon. She would confess the previous day’s dramas when she had the facts about the painting scheme. Violet, frowning over a letter from her sister, nodded vague agreement. ‘Match me some of the lilac embroidery silk would you, dear? Hopkin’s Haberdashery just off Milsom Street, Charity knows it.’
Hopkin’s shop proved to be next to an elegant jewellers. Jane sent the maid in to buy the silk and announced airily that she would enquire about having a loose clasp repaired. Ten minutes later she emerged from the shop, clutching her reticule and decidedly shaken. The diamond set was, the jeweller said, not diamonds at all, but a very nice example of paste and would deceive anyone without a loupe to their eye. The pearls were just the thing for a young lady, but worth perhaps twenty guineas. Her nest egg was nothing of the kind.
Perhaps the shop rent would be very cheap, given its condition, she told herself, bundling a surprised Charity into the carriage and telling the driver to take her to Milk Street. It was certainly very low, the agent informed her, given the small size and poor condition. A positive bargain, in fact, he said, quoting an amount that made her gasp.
‘This is Bath, madam,’ he said reproachfully as she stared at him. ‘A bargain, I assure you.’
Jane did her calculations in the carriage driving back. Rent, repairs, redecoration, equipment, advertising, a maid, her own maintenance. It was impossible. Ivo had been right and thank heavens she had thought to check before she did anything irrevocable like sign a lease. She sat in the corner, staring at the figures until they blurred, gloom creeping over her, yet, strangely, she did not feel as disappointed as she would have expected. In fact, it was almost a relief.
* * *
Telling Cousin Violet about the argument with Ivo and the subsequent misunderstandings plunged her from gloom into misery. Violet was a tolerant woman and, in many ways, an unconventional one, but it seemed to Jane that morning that she had reached the boundaries of her independence from convention.
‘What your parents are going to say I cannot imagine,’ she said, tossing aside her embroidery after a luncheon they had both picked at.
‘They need never know, surely?’ Jane eyed her cooling cup of tea with distaste.
‘From the sound of it, letters full of gossip from Lady Tredwick and Lady Merrydew—most of it distorted—will be fluttering on to the tables of every one of their doubtless extensive Dorset acquaintance by the first post. Your mama will be receiving visits of congratulation from half the county within days.’
‘Lord Westhaven will stop them writing. He is a friend of Lady Tredwick and she and Lady Merrydew will hardly wish to displease him.’
Perhaps a biscuit? No.
Jane sipped tea instead. ‘Ivo—’
‘Ivo is an earl. He is going to emerge from this smelling of roses,’ Violet said, her voice bleak. ‘You will appear as the ambitious young miss scheming to ensnare a lord and he will seem to have been too chivalrous to have contradicted you in the middle of the street when you seized the opportunity to ensnare an exceptionally eligible husband.’
‘Oh.’ That was one hideous scenario that Jane had not managed to conjure up in the long watches of the night.
* * *
The afternoon dragged on. Surely Ivo would either send a note to say all was well or dispatch a carriage to take her to explain herself to the Marquess? Violet sat down to read a large pile of horticultural journals, apparently as a means of soothing herself, and Jane attempted two sketches, tore them both up and instead tried to write to her friend Verity, the new Duchess of Aylsham.
It took some effort to reduce the events of the past few days into any sort of coherent narrative, but finally she managed it. Then there was the more difficult part, admitting that she had been dazzled by the daydream of herself as a society portraitist, her work admired, people flocking to her studio in such numbers that she could support herself.
But I am not that good—not yet, she wrote, wondering if that was boastful, the assumption that she might, one day, achieve that standard. No, it was not, she decided. She was honest enough to know she could improve and ambitious enough to work to do so.
And I do not want to starve in a garret for the sake of my art while I learn and improve—not that I think I would improve, not under those circumstances.
How would I even buy materials?