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Chapter 59
Aunt Joan and Lucy sat in their parlour. Aunt Joan was working on a bit of sewing, and Lucy was sketching. They both had steaming cups of tea on the coffee table between them.
Jocasta the kitten was nowhere to be seen, off wandering the house somewhere in search of the mice that were nowhere to be found. She was getting larger, no longer the tiny ball of fur that Lucy could hold in the palm of her hand.
It was silent, except for the tick of the clock, and the sounds of passersby outside. Lucy let the stillness of the room seep into her veins. If she could bottle this up, she would.
“Have you heard anything from Miss Sweet?” Aunt Joan asked. “I know she said that her brother was going to come and explain himself.”
“And yet, he has not,” Lucy said. “I don’t know that I should have gotten my hopes up.” Again, Silas had failed her. It didn’t make any sense, why he would have Dinah ask her to let him come. A full two days had passed, with no sign of him. The only conclusion that she could come to was that he wasn’t actually going to show up.
“I’m so sorry,” Aunt Joan said. “I thought he was a kind gentleman. I must say, I am surprised at how things turned out.”
“I am, as well.” Lucy was tired of feeling hurt and sad over everything that had occurred. She couldn’t help that she still was. But she was weary of it.
If only I had never gone to that party at Thornbridge Manor. I would still be content with my status.
To have known what it was like to love and be loved so passionately, and then to have it torn from her so certainly was devastation beyond compare.
Once they were done with their tea, Lucy went to her room. There, she had all of her paintings set out. She looked at all of them, marvelling at how much they had changed. She had gone from stale, light-drenched still lifes to the baroque painting of the lovers in the woods, then back to still lifes, yet again. But now, there was a more immediacy to them. There was a feeling evoked in the work of the pears and the daisies. There was a sense of suffocation. She felt proud of her progress.
She looked closely at the one of the two lovers. She couldn’t believe how fanciful she had been. She wished that she hadn’t known that it existed within her to love, and to experience passion. Now that all of her hopes had been dashed for a second time, she knew the other side of that far too intimately. And the grief that came after.
Well, at least the painting wouldn’t be here for too much longer. She planned to give it to Dinah, still. For, no matter what the sins of the brother were, she would never again ruin another friendship over a man.
It was Lucy’s only solace. That even though things had ended with Silas, she still had her friendship with Dinah.
