True, she did the drawing in a fit of impulse, but she had not meant it to be discovered. She couldn’t change that day, but she hoped using her talent for good, to give those without a voice a voice . . . perhaps it was atonement of some sort. Now her sketches appeared all over London. They turned up at balls, the opera, the dressmaker’s shop. She deliberately deposited them in the most public place. For the edification and titillation of the ton.
She adjusted her weight on the bench in front of her dressing table, hoping her skirts hid the pad from view. She’d barely had time enough to shove her sketch pad beneath her before Mama stormed into the chamber. It wouldn’t do for the Earl of Merlton’s sister to be unveiled as the artist responsible for the ribald cartoons that poked fun at so many members of the ton.
“Go on without me, Mama. I’ll be down directly.”
Mama gave her a lingering look before nodding. “Very well.” In a whisper of amber-gold skirts, she turned and left Aurelia alone in her chamber.
Aurelia returned her gaze to her reflection. Her dark eyes stared back at her pensively. She looked nothing like her fair-haired mother. Or her brother, for that matter. With her dark eyes and hair and skin, she looked more like a foundling her family had adopted into its fold. The bloodlines of her Spanish grandmother ran strong and true within her—a fact that did not win her much favor among the ton. Even her mother bemoaned her swarthy looks, though she had never been so unkind to voice such criticisms openly. No, she was more discreet than that. Instead she constantly supplied Aurelia with various powders to help dim her countenance.
Smiling wryly, she reached for a beaded bracelet and then set it back down with a sigh. A bracelet would make no difference to the night’s outcome. Another dinner party filled with empty chatter. And tomorrow morning she would wake to yet another day of activities planned by her mother. Luncheon with the ladies from one of Mama’s many charitable societies. Teas. Shopping. A ball or the opera or a dinner party in the evening. Her days stretched out before her in familiarity. All planned in the hopes that she would make a good match for herself. For the family. Even if she had not succeeded yet, it was expected she would.
Without her drawings, she would go mad. Her work gave her more than comfort. It gave her purpose.
Aurelia turned from her mirror and stood up from the dressing table, smoothing out her pale yellow skirts and trying not to think how poorly the color complemented her. Mama still tried to pretend she was a pale English rose who looked ethereal in all things pastel.
At least they needn’t travel from home tonight. If she grew weary of it all, she could simply escape upstairs to her chamber, change into her nightgown, climb into bed with her sketch pad. There was solace in that.
She glanced at her bedchamber window. Rain sluiced down the mullioned glass. Abysmal weather plagued London this season—even more than usual. Another advantage for staying in tonight.
Squaring her shoulders, she departed her chamber before Mama sent someone to drag her down to dinner like a recalcitrant child and not a woman full grown. Lifting her skirts, she descended the staircase. Voices and laughter floated up from the drawing room. Hopefully, she was not the last to arrive. It would make her goal of slipping inside and finding a chair in the corner to observe the guests Mama had seen fit to invite all the more difficult. She liked watching people, listening to them, memorizing their characteristics to later catch on paper.
It was a safe assumption that Mama had selected the guests. Her brother was a married man now. His wife was the new countess and, thereby, the new hostess over all events taking place beneath this roof. Only Mama sometimes forgot that fact.
Living in the same house with her brother and his wife—no matter how much she liked Violet—was awkward. Under normal circumstances, she and Mama would have taken up residence at another property . . . a dowager estate or town house. Only her brother had sold the additional town house in London. He had, in fact, sold all properties that were not entailed, to help satisfy the nasty debts Papa had left behind after his death.