Someone To Hold Part 17

He ought not to have done it, of course, but how could he have said no when it had been what he wanted too? Joel had no idea if her comings and goings had been noted by any of the neighbors on the street, but certainly this time they were fortunate inside the house. Either his fellow tenants were out, or they were occupying themselves quietly in their own rooms.

Camille made no pretense of having come with him for any other reason than the obvious one. Having removed and hung up her bonnet and shawl, she turned into the bedchamber and looked around. He was glad he had cleaned and tidied yesterday. He had even changed the bed linen.

She undressed herself today, methodically and efficiently, her back to him. They had scarcely exchanged a word since leaving that seat by the river. Her hair came down last. She drew out the pins, set them on the table beside his book, and shook her head. Her hair was dark and thick and shining and fell in waves almost to her waist. Despite the fullness of her figure evident through her clothes, one would never guess that she was so voluptuously beautiful. And young. In most of the personas she adopted for the outside world, she looked ageless, but certainly not youthful. Now she looked her age-she must be all of five years younger than he-and youthful and vibrant and so desirable that the blood seemed to be singing through his veins and filling him with an almost painful desire.

She drew back the bedcovers and lay down, apparently without self-consciousness as he finished undressing and joined her on the bed. She turned onto her side and reached for him. She had been a virgin the first time, of course, and somewhat pa.s.sive, though not by any means cold or shrinking. Today she made love with a fierce abandon that he soon matched, her hands, her mouth, even her teeth, all over him while he set about the wholly unnecessary task of arousing her. He rolled onto her and thrust into her far sooner than proper finesse would have dictated, but not too soon, by G.o.d. She was hot and wet and eager, and she matched him stroke for stroke with rolling hips and inner muscles and straining hands and twined legs until she cried out her release a moment before he spilled into her.

"Camille." He disengaged from her, moved to her side without taking his arms from about her, settled her hot, damp body against his own, and smiled as she sighed and slid into a deep, totally relaxed sleep.

He had enjoyed regular s.e.x with Edwina for two years or longer without ever feeling the need to examine his feelings or wonder about hers or consider his obligations. He did all three as he lay there, comfortable and sated and teetering on the brink of sleep but not quite falling asleep. She smelled of that faint fragrant soap he had noticed before-and of sweat and woman. She smelled wonderful.

She woke up sometime later and moved her head back far enough to gaze at him. He wondered if he was in for another stinging slap across the face, but no-she was the one who had asked to be brought here for just what had happened between them. Besides, she had explained that she slapped him that other time because he had apologized and thus cheapened what for her had been a lovely experience.

"I am not about to apologize," he said.

She smiled slowly. It began in her eyes and spread down to her mouth-a lazy, amused, happy smile. And oh, G.o.d, when had that ghastly Amazonian woman he remembered from a couple of weeks ago metamorphosed into this infinitely desirable woman in his arms and in his bed?

"A pity," she said. "I could have slapped your other cheek and evened things up a bit."

Camille Westcott making jokes?

He kissed her, moving his lips warmly, lazily over hers, and by unspoken consent they made love again, slowly this time, in no hurry to get where they were going, taking their time, enjoying every moment, every touch and caress along the way. And when it came time to join their bodies, he took her on top of him, drawing her knees up to hug his hips, and penetrated her before they rode together for long minutes of pure pleasure until desire turned the ride into something more urgent and they reached the climax together. He stayed deep and she clenched tightly about him and then opened as he spilled his seed into her once more.

He walked her home in the middle of the evening after they had eaten and talked and laughed and he had sketched her and she had pulled gargoyle faces-which he had drawn-and they had laughed more, like a couple of children, and they had made love once more, fully clothed except for essential places, on the sofa.

They would marry, he thought as they walked. They almost certainly would even apart from the fact that three separate times he had made it more likely that he had impregnated her. But he did not ask. He was not certain of her answer. And-foolishly-he did not know how to go about it. There was a great deal of turmoil facing him in the coming days. She had her family to be concerned about for the next week. He would wait. And there was no great hurry anyway. A baby took nine months to be born, did it not?

They said good night when they reached the orphanage, and she let herself in with her key and closed the door behind her without looking back at him. He ought to have asked anyway. But it was too late now.

Did all men feel gauche and slightly clammy with panic when it came time to propose marriage?

He walked home with his head down and found himself longing illogically for his old life, just a couple of weeks or so ago, when the only complications to be dealt with were a leftover love he could not quite shake off and not enough hours in the day to paint all the portraits people wanted.

Nineteen.

Viola Kingsley, formerly Countess of Riverdale, Camille's mother, chose to accompany her own mother and Abigail to the Pump Room on Tuesday morning. It was a courageous move, since it was the first time she had appeared to Bath society, many of whose members knew her well, since the scandal of her invalid marriage had supplied enough gossip to keep polite drawing rooms abuzz almost to the exclusion of all else for a week and more just a few months ago.

She went because she could not hide forever and because her mother and her younger daughter had faced down the gossip before her and made her feel cowardly, and because her elder daughter had stepped out into the new world with incredible courage and determination to make it her own. She wondered how she could have given birth to such admirable children-Harry was on the Peninsula, fighting the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte and risking his life every day-and be so abjectly timorous herself, cowering in her brother's vicarage, where she was not really needed and where she was impeding his path to happiness with a lady who deserved him.

She was not received in the Pump Room with the flattering deference she had once commanded as a countess, but neither was she given the cut direct. A few of her mother's friends greeted her kindly and a few others nodded politely, while some simply pretended not to have seen her. Soon, however, her former mother-in-law, the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, arrived with Matilda and Louise and Jessica. The dowager countess, having received Abigail's bright smile and curtsy with a smile of her own, a hand beneath her chin, and a comment that she was looking as pretty as ever, linked an arm through Viola's, leaned upon it, and joined the morning promenade about the room with her, nodding graciously from side to side as they went. Matilda and Louise came behind them, all nodding feathered bonnets and benevolent hauteur.

Abigail, who had no young friends in Bath yet, Viola had learned since her arrival, happily made the promenade with Jessica, their arms linked, their heads bent toward each other, their smiles bright and genuine.

When Avery and Anastasia arrived a short time later, a buzz of excitement raised the noise level in the room. Avery was not only a duke, something that would have caused a stir in itself, but he was also . . . well, he was the Duke of Netherby, and no one played the part of bored, haughty, glittering aristocrat better than he. And everyone present knew the story of his d.u.c.h.ess, who had grown up and taught at an orphanage little more than a stone's throw from the Pump Room until it had been discovered earlier this spring that she was the legitimate daughter of an earl and wealthy beyond belief. Her story quite cast Cinderella into the shade.

They became the focus of everyone's admiring attention, though good manners prompted most people to keep their distance and content themselves with deferential bows and deep curtsies and warm smiles.

"How he does it, I do not know," the dowager countess said, nodding in Avery's direction, "since he makes no attempt to win the adulation of all around him but indeed looks as though he is almost too bored to live. Yet he has that incredible presence."

"He does," Viola agreed. "But I will always love him, Mother. He saved Harry from a dreadful fate after the poor boy rushed out to enlist as a private soldier. And he purchased Harry's commission for him. I think it was the best solution for my boy under the circ.u.mstances even though I suffer daily anxiety for his safety, as I daresay thousands of other mothers throughout the land do. Is he happy? Avery, I mean."

The dowager looked sharply her way. "I believe he is, Viola," she said. "He annoyed us all considerably, of course, when we were in the midst of making elaborate plans for their wedding and he simply bore her off one morning without a word to any of us and married her by special license in an insignificant church no one had ever heard of with only Elizabeth and his secretary for witnesses. But . . . well, if Louise is to be believed, and I daresay she is since she lives with them, they adore each other. Yes, he is happy, Viola, and so is she."

Viola nodded, and they proceeded on the their slow course about the room, nodding to people as they went, occasionally stopping to exchange a few words. When they had completed the circuit once, however, they came face-to-face with Avery and his bride, and Anastasia surprised Viola.

"Will you take a turn about the room with me . . . Aunt Viola?" she asked.

Aunt Viola. Viola was no such thing, but Matilda and Mildred and Louise, her former sisters-in-law, certainly were Anastasia's aunts. The young woman had chosen to call her that, Viola supposed, albeit hesitantly, rather than address her by the only alternative, Miss Kingsley.

"Of course," Viola said, and they set off side by side. It was hard, so very hard, not to resent the girl, of whose existence Viola had been aware for years when she had a.s.sumed the girl was a by-blow of her husband's. She had even arranged for a generous settlement to be made on her after her husband's death, a gesture that had probably precipitated the discovery of the truth.

"I believe," she said stiffly, beginning the conversation, "I have you to thank, Anastasia, for the fact that my dowry has been returned with interest, enabling me to set up a home for myself and my daughters where we may live independently."

"You must know," Anastasia said, "that you are ent.i.tled to at least that much. What happened to you was insufferable."

"I will accept," Viola said, "because I agree that the dowry money ought to be mine. However, I doubt Mr. Brumford was the one to think of it. I believe that was you, and I thank you."

They were interrupted by two ladies who wished to pay their respects to the d.u.c.h.ess of Netherby . . . and of course to Miss Kingsley. The d.u.c.h.ess of Netherby returned their greetings amiably but showed no inclination to engage the two ladies in conversation. They moved on.

"I live at Morland Abbey with Avery," Anastasia said. "I will continue do so for the rest of my life, or at one of his other numerous homes, including Archer House in London. Yet I am the owner of Hinsford Manor and of Westcott House in London. I believe I have persuaded Alex that it would be appropriate for him to stay at Westcott House whenever he is in town since he is the holder of the t.i.tle. But Hinsford, which is extremely pretty, is uninhabited, and the people who live in the neighborhood are unhappy about it. They look back with nostalgia to the years when you and your family lived there."

Viola stiffened. "They would hardly be delighted to see the return there of Miss Kingsley and the Misses Westcott," she said.

"I do believe you are wrong," Anastasia said, nodding to a couple who would have detained them with the smallest encouragement. "Forgive me, but I understood from my one visit there that my father was never well liked. I equally understood that you were. Sympathy and understanding are very heavily on your side. Some of those I spoke with were cool toward me, a fact from which I took comfort rather than offense. Their loyalty lies with you, regardless of the change in your status, which they quite firmly attribute to my father."

"They are kind," Viola said, almost overcome with a great surge of nostalgia for home, or what had been her home for more than twenty years. And for her friends and neighbors there.

"Aunt Viola," Anastasia said, and then paused. "Oh, do you find it offensive when I call you that? I do not know what else to call you. I cannot address you as Miss Kingsley."

"I am not offended," Viola told her.

"Thank you," Anastasia said. "Aunt Viola, will you go back home? Please? It would mean so much to me. I do not suppose that argument will weigh a great deal with you, but . . . for Abigail's sake? I met some of her friends there, and they were genuinely melancholy about her absence and the reason for it. One of them even shed tears and dashed from the room while her mama tried to convince me that she was suffering a head cold. For Camille's sake too, though it would not surprise me if she chose to remain here rather than go with you."

Viola frowned and shook her head. "You will have children, Anastasia," she said. "Your eldest son will, of course, inherit from Avery eventually. But the younger ones will have to be provided for too."

"Avery will provide for them all, no matter how many children we have," Anastasia said. "He is quite adamant about it. He warned me you would be sure to use that argument. He told me to tell you to think of a more convincing one-if you could." She smiled, but there was anxiety in her eyes. "Please will you go home and consider it your own? I have drawn up a will, Avery having insisted that what I brought to the marriage remain mine to be done with as I choose. I am leaving Hinsford to Harry and his descendants. There will be no point in his arguing against it. It is done and it will remain so. So if you go home, you will be merely keeping your son's future home in good order for him."

Viola drew breath to speak, let the breath out, and drew it in again. "You have made it nearly impossible for me to say no," she said.

"You must say no, though," Anastasia said, looking stricken, "if you truly do not want to live there. But, please, do not refuse for any other reason. Do not punish me to that degree."

"Punish you?" Viola frowned. "Is that what I would be doing? But I suppose you are right. I wish you were not such a . . . pleasant young lady, Anastasia. It would be a great deal easier to dislike you if you were not."

For some reason they both laughed.

"Yet the offer is made for selfish reasons," Anastasia said. "I want to feel happy about everything in my life, but at the moment I feel happy only about almost everything. I cannot close that gap unless I can somehow make amends for what I know was neither my fault nor yours. Think about it, Aunt Viola. Talk to Camille and Abigail about it, and to Mrs. Kingsley, if you will. Talk to Avery and all the others. It is your right to live in the home my father provided for you. It is not right that it be taken from you because of his wickedness. He was wicked, sad as I am to say it."

Viola sighed. "He was my husband, Anastasia," she said. "And though I know now that he never truly was, it is nevertheless hard for me to be disloyal to the vows I made him when I married him. He was as he was, and he did something right, at least. He fathered four fine young people."

"Four? You include me?" Anastasia glanced at her, her eyes suspiciously bright. But they had completed the circuit of the room and Avery was stepping forward to meet them, his lazy eyes taking in his wife's unshed tears. Viola felt a wave of envy for the sort of love she had known fleetingly once upon a time, before her father presented her with the perfect marriage partner.

"I will think about your suggestion, Anastasia," she said. "Avery, do I have you to thank for Harry's promotion to lieutenant?"

"Me, Aunt?" He looked astonished. "Harry made it perfectly clear at the start that he would allow me to purchase his commission but nothing else. I understood that he meant it, that he would be mortally offended if I were to intervene to purchase promotions for him. I took him at his word. And has he been promoted?"

"A letter arrived yesterday addressed to Camille and Abigail," she said. "He sounded quite excited. And thank you for not interfering. It is more important that he acquire a sense of self-worth than that he achieve high rank in his regiment."

"It is to be hoped that he will acquire both," he said. "I have great faith in young Harry."

Joel kept himself busy during the first half of the week in an attempt not to be overwhelmed by the new fact in his life. He did not want to be the sort who would dash out and squander a fortune on riotous living and ruin his own character in the process. And it would be quite easy to do, he had realized in alarm down by the river on Sunday. Money held immediate and almost overwhelming temptation.

He also did not want to think too much about Camille-or, rather, what he owed Camille. He owed her marriage. Having an affair with her was somehow quite different from having an affair with Edwina had been. With Edwina it had been like a game in which they both knew the rules and had no wish to change them. With Camille it was no game. He knew she had slept with him not just for the simple enjoyment of s.e.x. And it had not been just that with him either. The trouble was that he did not know quite what it had been. Love? But frequently she annoyed him enormously, and, to be fair, he believed he annoyed her too at times. Regardless of what it was between them, of course, he did owe her marriage. He just did not want to think about it yet. His head felt a bit as though it had been invaded by wasps or hornets.

But good G.o.d, the s.e.x had been enormously enjoyable.

He spent most of Monday working. He was at the house on the Royal Crescent during the morning, explaining to Abigail Westcott how he planned to pose and paint her. He sent her off to change into her favorite dress, not necessarily the most fashionable or the finest or the most admired or even the prettiest, but the one in which she felt most herself. In the meanwhile he chose a chair and its correct positioning with relation to the light and the other aspects of the room. Her mother was there, taking the place of the maid who usually sat silently in a corner as chaperon.

Abigail returned wearing a light blue cotton frock, which looked well-worn and slightly faded. Her mother looked at her somewhat askance, but Joel knew immediately that it was perfect. Her hair was dressed simply and took nothing away from the pure youthful prettiness of her face. He had had some doubt about the cheerful floral upholstery of the chair he had chosen, but when she sat in it, leaning slightly forward, and gazed at him with her happy, eager face and her sparkling, slightly wounded eyes, he knew that the painting he wanted was before his eyes and merely needed to be melded with the sketch he had made yesterday and then transferred to canvas in his studio.

"No, ma'am," he explained when Miss Kingsley asked him if he would be painting here at the house. "When I paint from life, my mind becomes too caught up in getting every fine detail correct and my spirit is silenced. And my subject becomes stiff and wooden from holding a pose and an expression. No, I will sketch what I see now as quickly as I can and then paint in my studio. If I need to see the original again, as I probably will, then we will set up this scene again."

He spent all afternoon on the painting and the evening too until the light became too poor. He was a bit uneasy that it was all happening so fast. Each step of the process usually took him a great deal longer. But inspiration was something that must be trusted above all else. He had learned that over the past ten years or so. And he was inspired now. He saw the girl as she was and as she must appear on his canvas, and he could not paint fast enough so that he would not lose that spark in himself that would do her justice. How did one capture light and hope and vulnerability on canvas without losing the fine balance among the three and without giving in to the temptation to paint the merely mundane-a very pretty girl in her case?

A notice of the death appeared in the Bath papers on Tuesday morning and identified Joel by name as both the great-nephew of the deceased and the princ.i.p.al beneficiary of his will. Mr. c.o.x-Phillips was described in the notice as one of the wealthiest men in Somerset and, indeed, the whole of western England.

Joel went to the funeral. It was at a church in a village north of Bath, where apparently his great-uncle had worshipped regularly until the last six months or so, when deteriorating health had kept him at home. Joel was a bit surprised at how well attended the funeral was. He sat alone in a pew at the back, and he stayed behind the small crowd that gathered around the grave in the churchyard afterward for the burial. Uxbury was there, making a show of dignified grief, as were the two men with him. Joel did not think Uxbury had seen him until, just as Joel turned away at the end to return to his waiting carriage, the man leveled a steady look at him. Joel had not made any display of grief during the ceremonies, though he felt some. Perhaps, he thought in the carriage on the way back to Bath, it was the grief of regret for what might have been. If he had learned the truth a year ago, even six months ago, perhaps he could have had some sort of relationship with the man in whose house his grandparents and his mother had lived. Now it was too late.

He went to the offices of Henley, Parsons, and Crabtree in the afternoon. Mr. Crabtree seemed to take satisfaction in informing him that Mr. c.o.x-Phillips's relatives did indeed intend to contest the will with all the vigor of their combined influence. They would not succeed, he told Joel again. They had remained in Bath, however, though they had removed from the house. In the meantime, the solicitor produced some papers and spread them upon his desk, went into a lengthy explanation that Joel would have liked to have translated into intelligible English, and concluded with a rough estimate of the total fortune, which might have had Joel's jaw hanging if he had not been clenching his teeth so hard.

He would have painted himself into oblivion for the rest of the day if his door had not been almost constantly knocked upon from the moment he returned home. Everyone he had ever called friend, and a few who were mere acquaintances, came to commiserate with him at his loss and congratulate him upon his good fortune. Even Miss Ford came from the orphanage, accompanied for propriety's sake by Roger, the porter. She had closed the school for the rest of the week, she informed him. She supposed he would have more important things to do on Wednesday and Friday than teach his art pupils, and Miss Westcott certainly did. The Dowager Countess of Riverdale had arrived in Bath with her eldest daughter, Lady Matilda Westcott, and the family was busy celebrating and wished to include Miss Westcott in their activities. Miss Ford herself had been invited to join the family at the public tea in the Upper a.s.sembly Rooms on Thursday afternoon and to attend a private a.s.sembly there on Sat.u.r.day evening.

Anna and Netherby called at Joel's rooms too not long after Miss Ford left-the first time Anna had ever been there. She hugged him tightly while Netherby looked on complacently, exclaimed with delight at the size of his rooms, examined closely the portrait of his mother, and sat beside him on the sofa, patting his hand and a.s.suring him that if her experiences were anything to judge by, he would soon recover from his bewilderment and reconcile his life to the new reality without losing himself in the process.

"For that is one's greatest fear," she said, echoing what he had been feeling. "One starts to believe that one does not know oneself at all. It is a terrifying feeling. But of course you are who you have always been, and you will get through to the other side more or less intact."

"It is the less part that worries me," he said, and they both laughed.

Netherby informed him that he had better attend the public tea in the Upper a.s.sembly Rooms on Thursday so that they could all boast of an acquaintance with the man who had become the sensation of Bath.

"There is nothing like the background of an orphanage upbringing to lend an irresistible aura of romance to a story like yours," he said with a weary-sounding sigh.

Anna laughed at her husband. "And you must come to the a.s.sembly on Sat.u.r.day too," she said to Joel. "Camille has taught you to waltz, and I simply must see for myself how apt a pupil you have been."

"I can go up and see the house whenever I wish," Joel said impulsively. "I believe I would rather not go alone." But, no, it would not do to invite Anna to accompany him-or even Anna and Netherby. "The gardens seem extensive and well tended, and the view is spectacular. Perhaps some of your family would like to come up there with me-for a picnic, maybe, which I will provide, of course. On Friday afternoon?"

He was struck by the dizzying fact that he could afford such an extravagance.

"Oh, Joel," Anna said. "That would be wonderful. Would it not, Avery?"

"I can confidently predict," Netherby said, "that your newly acquired property will be mobbed by Westcotts on Friday, Cunningham."

That was settled, then, it seemed.

Camille did not come to his rooms. But of course she did not. Had he expected she would? It seemed to Joel far longer than two days since he had seen her. Now, with school canceled for the rest of week, he would not see her until Thursday afternoon. It seemed like an eternity away.

He did not go to her either. He did not know why. He felt a bit . . . shy? That was not at all the right word. But something had happened on Sunday to change everything, and he was feeling a bit-well, panicked. And he was feeling too overwhelmed by everything else to sort out his feelings for her and do what must be done. Except that it was not just what must be done, was it? Surely, it was what he wanted to do. Quite frankly, he did not know anything any longer, least of all the meaning of love. And his obligation to Camille was not only about love, anyway. She might be with child by him. And even if she was not . . .

And so his thoughts chased one another about in his head.

On Wednesday morning, not in the finest of moods, he took himself off with firm step and gritted teeth to a tailor and a bootmaker and a haberdasher.

Twenty.

Camille half expected to see Joel on Monday while telling herself she did not expect him at all. She more than half expected him on Tuesday after her attention was drawn to the death notice in the morning paper. It was also the day of the funeral, she knew. He did not come, even though Miss Ford told her she had been to call upon him and that she had seen the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Netherby's carriage approaching the house as she left. Miss Ford also told her that she had canceled school for the rest of the week so that Camille could spend time with her family during their brief visit to Bath.

He would not need to come on Wednesday, then, with the school closed. And, indeed, he did not come. Camille tried to tell herself that she was not disappointed. She tried, in fact, not to think of disappointment as a possibility. Why should he have come at any time during those three days, after all? Just because she had invited him to take her to bed and he had obliged her?

Ah, but it had not felt as sordid as that at the time. And at the time-or, at least, between times-they had talked and laughed and even been silly and had behaved like the best of friends.

Oh, she knew nothing! He did not come.

She was busy during those days. She taught on Monday and Tuesday. The main focus of attention was the knitted blanket, which had fired the children's imaginations. Some of the girls wanted to learn to crochet so that they could help weave the squares together eventually and make a pretty border about the finished product. A few wanted to learn to embroider so that they could implement the idea one of the boys had to st.i.tch the name of each knitter across the relevant square. A few of the boys dashed away to measure the babies' cots and work out the size of each square and how many they would need to knit in order to make a blanket of the right size. Another of the boys made a design for the blanket, using the four colors of wool they were working with. During their knitting sessions the children took turns reading stories to the others.

Camille played with Sarah as often as she was able and gave some attention to Winifred, having realized that that was what the girl craved. She walked to the Royal York Hotel on Monday afternoon, having received a note from Aunt Louise to inform her that her grandmother and Aunt Matilda had arrived. She went to a reception her maternal grandmother gave Tuesday evening and surprised herself by almost enjoying it. It felt treacherously like old times to mingle and make polite conversation with Grandmama's carefully selected guests.

Her mother took her aside late in the evening, and they sat together on a love seat while her mother told her she was going to return to Hinsford.

"To live?" Camille frowned.