The Duchesss Tattoo by Daisy Goodwin Read Free Book Online Page B

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    For the first time Cora looked nervous. ‘Mother will notice I have gone.’ She made a gesture as if to go back inside, but then she turned back and spoke to him in a torrent of urgency. ‘We could go now to the city and get married. Then she can’t touch me. I have my own money, Grandfather left a trust for me which is mine when I am twenty-five or when I marry. And I’m sure Father would give us something. I don’t want to go away.’ She was pleading now.
    Teddy saw that it had not occurred to her that he might refuse to accept her proposal.
    â€˜You are the one who is being disingenuous now. Do you really think that I can elope with you? Not only would it break your mother’s heart, it would surely break my mother’s too. The Van Der Leydens are not as rich as the Cashes but they are honourable. People would say I was a fortune-hunter.’ He tried to take his hands from her waist but she held them there.
    â€˜But they would say that about anyone. It’s not my fault I’m richer than everyone else. Please, Teddy, don’t be all…scrupulous about this. Why can’t we just be happy? You like kissing me, don’t you? Didn’t I get it right?’ She reached up to stroke his cheek. And then a thought hit her, amazing her with its audacity. ‘There isn’t someone else, is there? Someone you like more than me?’
    â€˜Not someone, something. I want to be a painter. I’m going to Paris to study. I think I have a talent but I have to be sure.’ Even as he said it, Teddy realised how weak he sounded against Cora’s passionate intensity.
    â€˜But why can’t you paint here? Or if you have to go to Paris, I could come with you.’ She made it all sound so easy.
    â€˜No, Cora,’ he said almost roughly, afraid she might persuade him. ‘I don’t want to be that kind of painter, a Newport character who sails in the morning and paints in the afternoon. I don’t want to paint pictures of ladies and their lapdogs. I want to do something serious and I can’t do that here and I can’t do that with a wife.’
    He thought for a moment that she would cry. She was waving her hands in front of her face as if trying to push away his words, swaying clumsily in her galleon of a dress.
    â€˜Honestly, there is no one I would rather marry than you, Cora, even if you are too rich for me. But I can’t now; there is something I want more. And what I need can’t be bought.’
    She looked back at him crossly. He saw with relief tinged with regret that she was not so much heartbroken as thwarted. He said firmly, ‘Admit it, Cora, you don’t really want to marry me as much as you want to get away from your mother. A sentiment I can fully appreciate, but if you go to Europe you will no doubt find yourself a princeling and then you can send her back to America.’
    Cora gave him an angry little shove. ‘And what, give her the satisfaction of being the matchmaker? The mother who married her daughter to the most eligible bachelor in Europe? She pretends she is above such things but I know she thinks of nothing else. Ever since I was born my mother has chosen everything for me, my clothes, my food, the books I can read, the friends I can have. She has thought of everything except me.’ She shook her head sharply as if trying to shake her mother out of her life. ‘Oh Teddy, won’t you change your mind? I can help you; it wouldn’t be so very terrible, would it? It’s only money. We don’t have to have it. I don’t mind living in a garret.’
    Perhaps, he thought, if she really cared for him…but he knew that what he principally represented to her was escape. He would like to paint her, though, angry and direct – the spirit of the New World dressed in the trappings of the Old. He couldn’t resist taking her face in his hands and kissing her one last time.
    But just