Someone to Hold

by Mary Balogh

  He had actually been introduced to the two of them at an evening party given by the very Mrs. Dance whose portrait was now standing on the easel in his new studio. She had invited him to attend and to bring some of his smaller paintings to show off to her guests in a kind attempt to help him acquire more clients. He had never set eyes upon the other granddaughter—until now. He had assumed she was a recluse. She was certainly the plainer of the two—and plainer than Anna as well. She also looked dour.

  “How do you do, Miss Westcott?” he said.

  She was tall and built on a generous scale, though her full figure was well proportioned and elegant. She had dark hair and fine blue eyes, a well-defined jaw and a stubborn-looking chin. Bold features prevented her from being pretty. She was not ugly, however. Handsome might be a good word to describe her. She looked like a woman born to command. She looked, in fact, like someone who had lived most of her life as Lady Camille Westcott, elder daughter of an earl.

  He disliked her on sight. “I look forward to working with you.”

  “I have explained,” Miss Ford said, “that you usually come here two afternoons a week, Mr. Cunningham.”

  Miss Westcott did exactly what Miss Nunce had often done, though there was no longer a chalk line across the room. She moved away from the door and wandered among the easels, looking at the paintings over the children’s shoulders.

  “Olga’s teapot is smaller than her apple, miss,” Winifred informed her.

  Miss Westcott looked back at her with raised eyebrows, as though she could not believe the evidence of her own ears that a child had actually addressed her without being invited to do so. Then she glanced at the table where the still life had been set up, looked down at Olga’s canvas, and took her time perusing it. Joel could feel his hackles rise. Miss Ford folded her hands at her waist.

  “But the apple does look good enough to eat,” Miss Westcott said, “or maybe even too good to eat. Perhaps Olga sees it as the most significant object on the table. Were you instructed to paint the objects as you see them or as you feel them?”

  Irrationally, Joel felt even more annoyed. Was it possible that she got it, that she understood? Somehow he did not want that. He wanted to feel justified in disliking her. But was that just because she had been unkind to Anna? Or was it because she looked severe and humorless and he did not want her let loose upon the children here? Whatever had Miss Ford been thinking?

  “Mr. Cunningham don’t never tell us how to paint, miss,” Richard Beynon told her. “He makes us work it out for ourselves. He tells us he can’t teach us how to see things the way we want to paint them.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Thank you. And that should be ‘he will never tell us’ or ‘he won’t ever tell us.’ Have you ever heard the head-scratcher of the double negative actually making a positive?”

  Richard’s face brightened. “It does make you want to scratch your head, miss, doesn’t it?” he said, grinning broadly.

  Despite that exchange, she still looked severe and humorless when she returned to Miss Ford’s side. She walked with an upright, unyielding bearing, as though she had been made to walk around as a child with a book balanced on her head.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Cunningham, for interrupting your class,” she said. “I look forward to working with you too.”

  He expected her to extend a hand to be shaken. Instead she inclined her head graciously—a grand lady condescending to an inferior?—and left the room with Miss Ford, who smiled at him before closing the door.

  Now, what was that all about? he wondered as he frowned at the door panels. What in the name of thunder had put it into her head to apply to teach here of all places? In the very schoolroom where Anna had taught. In the orphanage where Anna had grown up. She had rejected Anna’s offer of affection. Yet she was choosing to come here?

  “She liked Olga’s painting, Winny,” Richard said, and he was poking out his tongue and crossing his eyes when Joel turned.

  “And she corrected your grammar, Richard,” Winifred retorted, scrunching up her face until her head vibrated.

  “If your eyes ever stay like that, my lad,” Joel said, “you are going to tire of having to gaze at your nose for the rest of your life. And if you keep doing that, Winifred, you are going to have a faceful of wrinkles and the permanent shakes by the time you are twenty. You all have five more minutes to finish painting and then we will move on to the discussion.”

  It was always an important part of his lessons, getting his pupils to look at one another’s work, not to rank them best to worst, but to see how the vision each had of a subject was very different from everyone else’s. Not necessarily inferior, not necessarily superior, just different.

  She was Anna’s sister. No, correction—Anna’s half sister. But how could there be even that close a relationship between the two women? Anna was all grace and light and warmth and laughter. Miss Camille Westcott was . . . different.

  Not inferior? Not superior? Just different?

  * * *

  Her grandmother and Abigail had returned from their outing by the time Camille arrived home, all flushed and breathless from the sun and the wind and her climb up the hill. They both came out of the drawing room to stand at the top of the stairs and stare down upon her in what looked like mingled consternation and relief.

  “Camille?” her grandmother asked. “Wherever have you been? Why did you not wait for the carriage and one of us to accompany you? You did not even take a maid. That is most unlike you.”

  It would have been most unlike Lady Camille Westcott, certainly. Grandmama did not seem to fully understand how everything had changed.

  “I have taken employment,” she told them, not even attempting to lower her voice so no servant would hear. They would know soon enough anyway. And this pretense of continued gentility must cease.

  “What?” Her grandmother’s hand went to her throat.

  “Oh, Cam,” Abigail cried, hurrying downstairs, both hands extended, “whatever have you done? What sort of employment?”

  “Not the school, surely,” her grandmother said. “Oh, I knew as soon as I read that notice in the paper aloud yesterday that I ought to have bitten out my tongue instead and thrown the paper on the fire. Not the orphanage school, Camille?”

  After Camille had returned from that first visit to the orphanage, she had mentioned telling Miss Ford that she might be interested in the post if it ever became available. Her grandmother had been aghast.

  “I have been there and spoken to Miss Ford,” Camille said. “She has agreed to take me on as the new teacher.” She did not add that the matron had been dubious about her qualifications and lack of experience and had finally agreed to give her a fortnight’s trial, with no guarantee that she would offer permanent employment at the end of it.

  Both her grandmother and Abigail argued and wheedled and cajoled and even shed tears for upward of half an hour after Camille had joined them in the drawing room.

  “You do not need to work for a living, Camille,” her grandmother argued. “I offered to make you both an allowance when you first came here, and you refused. Now I must insist that you accept, that you resume living in the manner to which you are accustomed. Your lives have changed, of course, but there is no reason in the world to believe they have been totally destroyed. Your mother was always held in the highest esteem as a Kingsley, and you and Abigail are impeccably well-bred, Camille. You are both young and accomplished and beautiful. You are my granddaughters. I am highly respected in Bath society and not without influence, you know. Your father’s relatives have not turned their backs on you either. On the contrary, they have all written to you, some of them more than once. There is every reason to believe you will both be able to make perfectly decent marriages, even if you must aim a little lower than the titled ranks of the nobility. Not only do you not need to work, Camille—you may actually do yourself re
al harm if you do. You may find that you will no longer be accepted for who you are.”

  “And who is that, Grandmama?” Camille asked. She was genuinely unable to answer the question for herself, though she had been asking it for a few months now. Her grandmother could not answer it either, it seemed, or perhaps she had realized the futility of arguing with the granddaughter she had always called stubborn even when Camille was a child. She got to her feet and left the room, shaking her head in clear frustration.

  And of course she left Camille feeling guilty. Perhaps Grandmama was right. Perhaps their lives—hers and Abigail’s—would settle into something resembling the way they had been if they effaced themselves and allowed family members to smooth the way for them to find a level of society where they would fit and husbands who would settle for their breeding and would not refine too much upon their birth. Perhaps Abby would be happy with that solution. Camille ought to be too. What was the alternative, after all?

  But she could not settle for a pale shadow of her former existence. Good heavens, she had been Lady Camille Westcott, daughter of an earl. She had moved freely among the highest echelons of the ton. She had been betrothed to the very handsome, very eligible Viscount Uxbury. Oh no, she would not settle. She would rather teach in an orphanage school.

  There was a loud silence in the room, she realized suddenly, even though she was not alone. But the silence would not have been loud if she had been, would it?

  “Cam,” Abigail said, a soft cushion clasped to her bosom, “why the orphanage? Why does it hold such an attraction for you? I agree it is time we softened our attitude to Anastasia. I thought we both agreed to that after she and Avery called here on the way home from their wedding journey. I think we ought to write to her occasionally and somehow hold out an olive branch. She is, after all, Avery’s wife and Jessica’s sister-in-law and none of what has happened is her fault. She is part of the family whether we like it or not. But why your fascination with that horrid place where she grew up?”

  Avery, the Duke of Netherby, was not strictly speaking a member of their family—of Papa’s family, that was. Aunt Louise, Papa’s sister, had married Avery’s father, and they had had Jessica, an undoubted first cousin. Abigail and Jessica, who was one year younger than she, had always been the closest of friends and still wrote frequently to each other. She was not Abby’s only correspondent, however. Letters flowed into the house in a steady stream, addressed to both of them. Once upon a time, in another lifetime, reading letters and replying to them at some length had been a regular part of Camille’s day, as it was for any genteel lady. Now she read the letters but replied to none.

  Her mother wrote of how busy she was at the vicarage, where she lived with Uncle Michael, and at the church and in the village. Her letters were full of cheerful news of a full, happy life. Camille could not bear to answer in a similar vein. Consequently she merely sent her love through Abby.

  The rare letters from their brother were disappointingly short—but what was one to expect of a man, and a young one at that? They consisted of cheerful news of marching with his regiment all over Portugal and even into Spain, seeking out the elusive French while the elusive French sought them out. It really was a splendid game and a great lark. He was surrounded by loyal, amusing friends and colleagues and was having the time of his life. He was already next in line for promotion from ensign to lieutenant, and did not doubt it would happen before autumn, though he had to wait for a suitable vacancy.

  Camille knew that officers acquired promotions far more quickly if they could afford to purchase them. Harry could not. She knew too how vacancies came about, and her stomach churned. Someone would have to die before Harry could be a lieutenant. Several someones, in fact, since the first to fill any vacancies were those who could purchase them. If Harry was close to being promoted anyway, men were dying in significant numbers. And that meant that at least occasionally the regiment caught up with the French, or the French caught up with it. And at least occasionally there were skirmishes, even pitched battles. Yet it was all such a lark, like a picnic. Camille could not bear to answer in the same light tone. She had Abby send her love.

  And there were all the letters of which her grandmother had just reminded her from people who used to be her family and still were in a strictly technical sense. They were her father’s family, including the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, Papa’s mother; and Aunt Matilda, his unmarried sister. The dowager always seemed to Camille to be in robust health, though Aunt Matilda chose to believe otherwise and sometimes seemed determined to fuss and worry her into an early grave. Then there was Aunt Louise, the Dowager Duchess of Netherby, who liked to set herself up as family leader, though she was the middle of three sisters. And Cousin Jessica, her daughter, Abby’s particular friend, Avery’s half sister. And there had been letters from Aunt Mildred, the youngest of Papa’s sisters, and Uncle Thomas—Lord and Lady Molenor. The only relatives who did not write, in fact, were their three sons, all of whom were still at school and wrote to no one except, apparently, their papa when they needed more money. All the others wrote with unrelenting cheerfulness of happy lives.

  Even Cousin Alexander, the new Earl of Riverdale, had written one brief letter of courteous pleasantries and polite inquiry into their health and happiness. He had signed the letter merely Cousin Alexander, with no mention of the title that Harry had so recently lost to him. His mother, Cousin Althea Westcott, and his sister, Cousin Elizabeth, the widowed Lady Overfield, had also written kindly and cheerfully about nothing in particular.

  Everyone wrote cheerfully. Nobody wrote any significant truth. As though denial could eliminate reality. As though tiptoeing about a disaster would leave it forever undisturbed. Camille sensed a great embarrassment in her erstwhile family. Not hostility or rejection, but just . . . awkwardness. She answered none of the letters. She sent her regards with Abby.

  There were no letters from anyone outside the family. None from any of the myriad ladies who had once been her friends.

  And none from Viscount Uxbury. Now, there was a surprise.

  Abigail had abandoned her cushion and gone to stand at the window, looking out. The silence had stretched for rather a long time, Camille realized. Her sister had asked her why she was so fascinated with the place where Anastasia had grown up.

  “I do not know, Abby,” she said with a sigh. “I suppose there are various ways of coping with the sort of change our lives have undergone in the last few months. One can accept and move forward, trying to keep one’s new life as similar to the old as it can possibly be. One can deny reality and carry on regardless. One can hide away and close one’s mind to what has happened—which is what I have been doing until today. Or one can step out and explore the new reality, try to make sense of it, try to begin life again almost as though one had just been newly born, try to . . . Ah, I do not know how else to explain it. I only know that if I am not to go mad, I must do something. And somehow that involves going right back to the beginning or farther back than the beginning to what happened before I was even born. Why did he do it, Abby? Why did he marry Mama when he was already married to someone else?”

  Abigail had turned from the window and was regarding her sister with troubled eyes. She offered no answer.

  “But of course, it is obvious,” Camille said. “In those days he was extravagant and impecunious and our grandfather was still alive and had cut off his funds but promised to restore them if he married advantageously. And Grandpapa Kingsley was eager to marry Mama to a future earl and offered a dowry with her hand that was irresistible. I suppose Papa must have faced a nasty dilemma when his first wife, his real wife, died and left him with Anastasia. What he did was heinous for everyone concerned, including the as-yet unborn—us. Had he admitted the truth then, perhaps he could have remarried Mama and they could have brought his daughter up as their own and we too would have been born within wedlock. How different all our lives woul
d be now if he had only done that. Why did he not?”

  “Perhaps there would have been legal difficulties if he had admitted to bigamy,” Abigail said. “Would there have been? Is bigamy a crime? Would his title have protected him from punishment? Oh, I know nothing about such things. Perhaps he was just too embarrassed to admit the truth. But that is all history. We cannot change it by agonizing over it or imagining how different everything might have been. Why do you need to go to that orphanage, Cam? Are you trying to . . . punish yourself somehow for the fact that it was she who grew up there when strictly speaking it ought to have been us?”

  Camille shrugged. “I cannot explain it even to myself more clearly than I already have,” she said. “I just know I must try it, and I actually feel better since going there, even though I know I have upset you and Grandmama. I feel—invigorated.”

  “But how will you be able to teach?” Abigail asked. “Where will you begin? We had a governess, Cam. We never even went to school.”

  “Miss Ford gave me a copy of the course of studies I should use as a guideline,” Camille said, “and she talked to me about it and about the children who attend the school. There are more than twenty of them, and they range in age from five to thirteen. I can do it.” Actually the prospect terrified her—yes, and invigorated her too. She had not lied about that. “And the duties will be light for the next month or so. It is summer and I will be expected to do lots of recreational things with the children and take them out as often as I can.”

  “Oh, Cam,” Abigail said.

  “It does not seem like an oppressive place,” Camille told her. “There is an art teacher who comes in two afternoons a week to teach those who are interested—Mr. Cunningham. He was there this morning, though that was apparently unusual. I looked at some of the children’s paintings and I could see that he allows them to use their imaginations in interpreting a subject.”