by Balogh, Mary
The need to step into Anna Snow’s shoes to discover what they felt like? What an absolutely ghastly thought. But if she stood out here any longer, she would lose her courage and find herself trudging back uphill, lost and defeated and abject and every other horrid thing she could think of. Besides, standing here was decidedly uncomfortable. Though it was July and the sun was shining, it was still only morning and she was in the shade of the building. The street was acting as a type of funnel too for a brisk wind.
She stepped forward, lifted the heavy knocker away from the door, hesitated for only a moment, then let it fall. Perhaps she would be denied employment. What a huge relief that would be.
Joel Cunningham was feeling on top of the world when he got out of bed that morning. July sunshine poured into his rooms as soon as he pulled back the curtains from every window to let it in, filling them with light and warmth. But it was not just the perfect summer day that had lifted his mood. This morning he was taking the time to appreciate his home. His rooms—plural.
He had worked hard in the twelve years since he left the orphanage at the age of fifteen and taken up residence in one small room on the top floor of a house on Grove Street just west of the river Avon. He had taken employment at a butcher’s shop while also attending art school. The anonymous benefactor who had paid his way at the orphanage throughout his childhood had paid the school fees too and covered the cost of basic school supplies, though for everything else he had been on his own. He had persevered at both school and employment while working on his painting whenever he could.
Often after paying his rent he had had to make the choice between eating and buying extra supplies, and eating had not always won. But those days were behind him. He had been sitting outside the Pump Room in the abbey yard one afternoon a few years ago, sketching a vagabond perched alone on a nearby bench and sharing a crust of bread with the pigeons. Sketching people he saw about him on the streets was something Joel loved doing, and something for which one of his art teachers had told him he had a genuine talent. He had been unaware of a gentleman sitting down next to him until the man spoke. The result of the ensuing conversation had been a commission to paint a portrait of the man’s wife. Joel had been terrified of failing, but he had been pleased with the way the painting turned out. He had made no attempt to make the lady appear younger or lovelier than she was, but both husband and wife had seemed genuinely delighted with what they called the realism of the portrait. They had shown it to some friends and recommended him to others.
The result had been more such commissions and then still more, until he was often fairly swamped by demands for his services and wished there were more hours in the day. He had been able to leave his employment two years ago and raise his fees. Recently he had raised them again, but no one yet had complained that he was overcharging. It had been time to begin looking for a studio in which to work. But last month the family that occupied the rest of the top floor of the house in which he had his room had given notice, and Joel had asked the landlord if he could rent the whole floor, which came fully furnished. He would have the luxury of a sizable studio in which to work as well as a living room, a bedchamber, a kitchen that doubled as a dining room, and a washroom. It seemed to him a true palace.
The family having moved out the morning before, last night he had celebrated his change in fortune by inviting five friends, all male, to come and share the meat pies he had bought from the butcher’s shop, a cake from the bakery next to it, and a few bottles of wine. It had been a merry housewarming.
“You will be giving up the orphanage, I suppose,” Marvin Silver, the bank clerk who lived on the middle floor, had said after toasting Joel’s continued success.
“Teaching there, do you mean?” Joel had asked.
“You do not get paid, do you?” Marvin had said. “And it sounds as though you need all your time to keep up with what you are being paid for—quite handsomely, I have heard.”
Joel volunteered his time two afternoons a week at the orphanage school, teaching art to those who wanted to do a little more than was being offered in the art classes provided by the regular teacher. Actually, teach was somewhat of a misnomer for what he did with those children. He thought of his role to be more in the nature of inspiring them to discover and express their individual artistic vision and talent. He used to look forward to those afternoons. They had not been so enjoyable lately, however, though that had nothing to do with the children or with his increasingly busy life beyond the orphanage walls.
“I’ll always find the time to go there,” he had assured Marvin, and one of the other fellows had slapped him with hearty good cheer on the back.
“And what of Mrs. Tull?” he had asked him, waggling his eyebrows. “Are you thinking of moving her in here to cook and clean for you among other things, Joel? As Mrs. Cunningham, perhaps? You can probably afford a wife.”
Edwina Tull was a pretty and amiable widow, about eight years Joel’s senior. She appeared to have been left well-off by her late husband, though in the three years Joel had known her he had come to suspect that she entertained other male friends apart from him and that she accepted gifts—monetary gifts—from them as she did from him. The fact that he was very possibly not her only male friend did not particularly bother him. Indeed, he was quite happy that there was never any suggestion of a commitment between them. She was respectable and affectionate and discreet, and she provided him with regular female companionship and lively conversation as well as good sex. He was satisfied with that. His heart, unfortunately, had long ago been given elsewhere, and he had not got it back yet even though the object of his devotion had recently married someone else.
“I am quite happy to enjoy my expanded living quarters alone for a while yet,” he had said. “Besides, I believe Mrs. Tull is quite happy with her independence.”
His friends had finished off the food and wine and stayed until after midnight. It had felt very good indeed to be able to entertain in his own rooms and actually have enough chairs for them all to sit on.
Now he strolled about his living and working quarters in the morning sunshine and reveled anew in the realization that all this space was his. He had come a long way in twelve years. He stood before the easel in the studio and gazed at the portrait he had been able to leave propped on it. Apart from a few small finishing touches, it was ready to be delivered. He was particularly pleased with it because it had given him problems. Mrs. Dance was a faded lady who had probably never been pretty. She was bland and amiable, and at the beginning he had asked himself how the devil he was going to paint her in such a way that both she and her husband would be satisfied. He had wrestled with the question for several weeks while he sketched her and talked with her and discovered that her amiability was warm and genuine and had been hard-won—she had lost three of her seven children in infancy and another just before he finished school. Once Joel had erased the judgmental word bland as a descriptor, he came to see her as a genuinely lovely person and had had great pleasure painting her portrait. He hoped he had captured what he saw as the essence of her well enough that others would see it too.
But though his fingers itched to pick up his brush to make those finishing touches, he had to resist. He had made arrangements with Miss Ford to go to the orphanage school early today, since he had an appointment with another client this afternoon, which he had been unable to shift to a different time. But even the thought of going to school early could not dampen his mood, for he would have the schoolroom to himself and his small group today and, if he was fortunate, for the rest of the summer.
While Miss Nunce had taught at the orphanage school, Joel and his group had had to squeeze into a strictly calculated third of the schoolroom—she had actually measured it with a long tape borrowed from Roger, the porter, and marked it out with chalk. They had crowded in with their easels and all the other necessary paraphernalia of an art class while she conducted her lessons in the other two-thirds. Her reasoning had been that he had
one-third of the total number of schoolchildren while she had two-thirds. The art equipment did not factor into her view. But last week, Miss Nunce had resigned in high dudgeon before she could be forcibly ejected.
Joel had not been there at the time, but he did not mourn her departure. It had not been beyond the woman to intrude upon his third of the room, stepping carefully over the chalk line so as not to smudge it, to give her verdict on the paintings in progress, and invariably it was a derogatory judgment. She was an opinionated, joyless woman who clearly despised all children, and orphans in particular. She appeared to have seen it as her personal mission to prepare them to be humble and servile and to know their place—that place being the bottom rung of the social ladder, or perhaps somewhat below the bottom rung. Sometimes he had thought she resented even having to teach them to read, write, and figure. She had done her utmost to quell dreams and aspirations and talent and imagination, all of which in her view were inappropriate to their parentless condition.
She had walked out after Mary Perkins went running to find Miss Ford to tell her that Miss Nunce was beating Jimmy Dale. When Miss Ford had arrived on the scene, Jimmy was standing in the corner, his back to the room, squirming from the pain of a sore bottom. Miss Nunce, it seemed, had discovered him reading one of the new books—unfortunately for him, one of the larger, heavier volumes—and actually chuckling over something within its pages. She had taken it from him, instructed him to stand and bend over his desk, and walloped him a dozen times with it before sending him to the corner to contemplate his sins. She had still been holding the book aloft and haranguing the class on the evils of the trivial use of one’s time and of empty-minded levity when Miss Ford appeared. Seeing her, Miss Nunce had turned her triumphant glare upon the matron.
“And this,” she had pronounced, “is what comes of allowing books in the schoolroom.”
The books, together with a large bookcase to display them, had been donated a short while ago by a Mrs. Kingsley, a wealthy and prominent citizen of Bath. Miss Nunce had been quite vocal in her opposition at the time. Books, she had warned, would merely give the orphans ideas.
Miss Ford had crossed the room to Jimmy, turned him by the shoulders, and asked him why he had been reading in class. He had explained that his arithmetic exercise was finished and he had not wanted to sit idle. Sure enough, all his sums were completed and all were correct. She had sent him back to his seat after first removing her shawl and folding it several times into a square for him to sit on. She had asked the day’s monitors to take charge of the room and invited Miss Nunce to step outside, much to the disappointment of the children. Joel would have been disappointed too if he had been there. But then, the incident would not have happened if he had been there. No child at the orphanage was ever struck. It was one of Miss Ford’s immutable rules.
Less than fifteen minutes later—the children and some of the staff in other parts of the building had heard the teacher’s raised voice alternating with silences that probably indicated Miss Ford was speaking—Miss Nunce had stridden from the building with Roger a few steps behind her to lock the door, lest she change her mind.
Joel had rejoiced, not just because he had found it difficult to work with her, but because he cared for the children—all of them. He had been greatly relieved too, because Miss Nunce had succeeded Anna Snow, who had left a few months ago, and who had been everything she was not. Anna had brought sunshine to the schoolroom.
It was Anna whom he loved, though he tried doggedly to use the past tense whenever he considered his feelings for her. She was a married lady now. She was the Duchess of Netherby.
READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM THE
THIRD NOVEL IN THE WESTCOTT SERIES,
Someone to Wed
AVAILABLE NOW FROM PIATKUS
The Earl of Riverdale,” the butler announced after opening wide the double doors of the drawing room as though to admit a regiment and then standing to one side so that the gentleman named could stride past him.
The announcement was not strictly necessary. Wren had heard the arrival of his vehicle, and guessed it was a curricle rather than a traveling carriage, although she had not got to her feet to look. And he was almost exactly on time. She liked that. The two gentlemen who had come before him had been late, one by all of half an hour. Those two had been sent on their way as soon as was decently possible, though not only because of their tardiness. Mr. Sweeney, who had come a week ago, had bad teeth and a way of stretching his mouth to expose them at disconcertingly frequent intervals even when he was not actually smiling. Mr. Richman, who had come four days ago, had had no discernible personality, a fact that had been quite as disconcerting as Mr. Sweeney’s teeth. Now here came the third.
He strode forward a few paces before coming to an abrupt halt as the butler closed the doors behind him. He looked about the room with apparent surprise at the discovery that it was occupied only by two women, one of whom—Maude, Wren’s maid—was seated off in a corner, her head bent over some needlework, in the role of chaperon. His eyes came to rest upon Wren and he bowed.
“Miss Heyden?” It was a question.
Her first reaction after her initial approval of his punctuality was acute dismay. One glance told her he was not at all what she wanted.
He was tall; well formed; immaculately, elegantly tailored; dark haired; and impossibly handsome. And young—in his late twenties or early thirties, at a guess. If she were to dream up the perfect hero for the perfect romantic fairy tale, she could not do better than the very real man standing halfway across the room, waiting for her to confirm that she was indeed the lady who had invited him to take tea at Withington House.
But this was no fairy tale, and the sheer perfection of him alarmed her and caused her to lean back farther in her chair and deeper into the shade provided by the curtains drawn across the window on her side of the fireplace. She had not wanted a handsome man or even a particularly young man. She had hoped for someone older, more ordinary, perhaps balding or acquiring a bit of a paunch, pleasant-looking but basically … well, ordinary. With decent teeth and at least something of a personality. But she could hardly deny her identity and dismiss him without further ado.
“Yes,” she said. “How do you do, Lord Riverdale? Do have a seat.” She gestured to the chair across the hearth from her own. She knew something of social manners and ought, of course, to have risen to greet him, but she had good reason to keep to the shadows, at least for now.
He eyed the chair as he approached it and sat with obvious reluctance. “I do beg your pardon,” he said. “I appear to be early. Punctuality is one of my besetting sins, I am afraid. I always make the mistake of assuming that when I am invited somewhere for half past two, I am expected to arrive at half past two. I hope some of your other guests will be here soon, including a few ladies.”
She was further alarmed when he smiled. If it was possible to look more handsome than handsome, he was looking it. He had perfect teeth, and his eyes crinkled attractively at the corners when he smiled. And his eyes were very blue. Oh, this was wretched. Who was number four on her list?
“Punctuality is a virtue as far as I am concerned, Lord Riverdale,” she said. “I am a businesswoman, as perhaps you are aware. To run a successful business, one must respect other people’s time as well as one’s own. You are on time. You see?” She swept one hand toward the clock ticking on the mantel. “It is twenty-five minutes to three. And I am not expecting any other guests.”
His smile disappeared and he glanced at Maude before looking back at Wren. “I see,” he said. “Perhaps you had not realized, Miss Heyden, that neither my mother nor my sister came into the country with me. Or perhaps you did not realize I have no wife to accompany me. I beg your pardon. I have no wish to cause you any embarrassment or to compromise you in any way.” His hands closed about the arms of his chair in a signal that he was about to rise.
“But my invitation was addressed to you alone,” she said. “I am no young girl t
o need to be hedged about with relatives to protect her from the dangerous company of single gentlemen. And I do have Maude for propriety’s sake. We are neighbors of sorts, Lord Riverdale, though more than eight miles separate Withington House from Brambledean Court and I am not always here and you are not always there. Nevertheless, now that I am owner of Withington and have completed my year of mourning for my aunt and uncle, I have taken it upon myself to become acquainted with some of my neighbors. I entertained Mr. Sweeney here last week and Mr. Richman a few days after. Do you know them?”
He was frowning, and he had not removed his hands from the arms of his chair. He still looked uncomfortable and ready to spring to his feet at the earliest excuse. “I have an acquaintance with both gentlemen,” he said, “though I cannot claim to know either one. I have been in possession of my title and property for only a year and have not spent much time here yet.”
“Then I am fortunate you are here now,” she said as the drawing room doors opened and the tea tray was carried in and set before her. She moved to the edge of her chair, turning without conscious intent slightly to her left as she did so, and poured the tea. Maude came silently across the room to hand the earl his cup and saucer and then to offer the plate of cakes.
“I did not know Mr. and Mrs. Heyden, your aunt and uncle,” he said, nodding his thanks to Maude. “I am sorry for your loss. I understand they died within a very short while of each other.”
“Yes,” she said. “My aunt died a few days after taking to her bed with a severe headache, and my uncle died less than a week later. His health had been failing for some time, and I believe he simply gave up the struggle after she had gone. He doted upon her.” And Aunt Megan upon him despite the thirty-year gap in their ages and the hurried nature of their marriage almost twenty years ago.