Heiress in Red Silk (Duke's Heiress #2) - Madeline Hunter Page 0,112
cloth.
“Wait for it to stop bleeding,” Rosamund said, keeping an eye out while she worked. “We don’t want blood on that bonnet. Not even one drop.”
Lily set the bonnet aside and bided her time. She kicked her feet like a child and wound a finger in one of her long, unbound blond locks. Rosamund smiled at the image she made. Half child, half woman. Some hours one side showed and the next hours, the other.
“This is more fun than school,” Lily said. “Maybe I should stay here, or at the shop in London. I could be a milliner like you.”
“You will do better than that if I have a say in it.”
“I think school would be wonderful,” Molly said.
“You wouldn’t say that if you met the girls I live with. They are horrid and proud and conceited and—”
“And you have made two friends who are not,” Rosamund said. “One week more with me, then you are going back. We will stop in London on the way, and have some dresses made.”
New dresses ended the argument, as Rosamund knew they would. Lily was not truly unhappy at the school. She only complained like girls did at her age.
She had arrived without notice to take Lily away. She just needed Lily with her for a while. So much of what she had done was because of her sister. She needed to see Lily, and reassure herself that at least that part of it had been a good idea.
Lily came over to show the trimmed seam.
“The stitches are too big at the end here,” Rosamund said. “You will have to rip it out and do it again.”
“No one will notice those few stitches tucked under there.”
“One day your patron will be looking at the bonnet and she will see them. Then she will decide you are a careless milliner. We need to make every detail as close to perfect as it can be.”
The words echoed in her head, only now in Mr. Lovelace’s voice. That led her memory to the row with Kevin. A familiar, deep sadness spread in her.
During the day, she escaped that sickness of the heart. She kept busy at the shop. She remained close to Lily and enjoyed her company. It was at night, when she was alone, that she hurt the way she had when her father had passed.
She reminded herself now that she had not left London because of that row with Kevin. Not in itself, at least. They had had them before about the enterprise. Always about that.
She had always known he merely tolerated her as a partner too. It was something he could do nothing about, so he accepted it. But he didn’t like it. Still, she thought they had found common ground, especially after Paris. But maybe not. Perhaps desire and pleasure had blinded her, and him too.
The argument ran through her memory, word for word, his outburst at the end ringing loud and hard. Something had happened then. To her. It was as if she suddenly stood to the side and watched, and realized exactly what was really occurring in front of her eyes.
Mostly, she saw herself too clearly, from the prospect of her own heart as well as his words. That Kevin considered her an interfering, common hat maker, and mostly an irritation unless they were in bed—Possibly she could have accommodated that. She might have learned to live with it. However, knowing that he not only did not love her the way she loved him, but also that he probably never would—accepting that hurt badly. She had again experienced the humiliation she’d known in the garden with Charles.
She did not want to live like that, so aware that he scorned one part of her life. Their life. One part of her, really. It would affect everything, even the pleasure. Even now she was seeing some of the time they had shared differently.
Her thoughts distracted her. She pricked her finger, something she rarely did anymore. She set aside the hat and reached for the salve. At the other table, Lily had gone back to her own work.
She wrapped her finger and waited while she looked out the window at the sky. Blue today, after so much rain. The garden at Chapel Street probably had all its roses in bloom.
With time, maybe she would go back. Once she conquered the love. She had no intention of spending another five years living a dream, though. She was too old for that.