Someone to Hold

by Mary Balogh

  “No,” she said, realizing that Abigail was anxiously awaiting an answer to her question. “I doubt Mama will come.” Their mother was not related in any way to the Westcotts, even though for almost a quarter of a century she had borne their name and been apparently daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, aunt, or cousin to every one of them.

  “You are not happy about their coming, Cam?” Abigail asked.

  They had been kind and supportive from the start. Both Grandmama Westcott and Aunt Louise had offered them a home—even their mother. Mama had turned her back upon them, however, taking Camille and Abigail with her. Now they were coming to Bath. But could they not see that Mama had done the only possible thing? There was not a one of them who did not have a title—except for Cousin Althea, who nevertheless now had the distinction of being the Earl of Riverdale’s mother. All of them were of impeccable lineage. All of them had regarded Anastasia with outrage when she had been shown into the salon at Avery’s house on that most infamous of days. They would have continued to do so, even after knowing she was Papa’s daughter, if she had also been his illegitimate daughter. They could not seem to see that that was exactly what Camille, Harry, and Abigail were. Viscount Uxbury had seen it in a heartbeat. So would the rest of the ton have done if they had been given the chance. There was no way back for them. It was illusory to think there might be. It was actually almost cruel of them to come and raise Abby’s hopes.

  But how could she, Camille, impose her own sense of alienation upon her sister? Who had made her God? “I am delighted for your sake,” she said, forcing some warmth into her smile. “You have been missing Jessica in particular, have you not?”

  “I miss Mama,” Abigail said, looking so bleak suddenly that Camille felt as though the bottom had fallen out of her own stomach. But it was a momentary lapse on Abby’s part, and she smiled brightly again. “I miss them all, not just Jessica, and it will be lovely to see them again and perhaps be included in some of the celebrations. Is it not wonderful that they have chosen Bath? Do you suppose it is at least partly because of us?” Her voice was wistful.

  Clearly Camille had not fully understood the depth of her sister’s suffering. Abby was almost always placid and cheerful. It was easy to assume that the change in their status and way of life had not affected her very deeply. After all, she had never been presented to polite society and therefore did not know the full extent of what she was missing. But of course she was suffering. She had in effect lost both Mama and Papa within the last year—and she was only eighteen. She had been disappointed when Papa’s death had forced the postponement of the come-out Season she had been expecting this past spring, though she had never complained about it. Instead she had turned her thoughts to next spring and looked forward with great eagerness to her belated debut into society and the chance it would give her to be seen and wooed and wed by some gentleman of high estate. Those hopes and dreams had been cruelly dashed, and all she had to look forward to now were promenades in the Pump Room with their grandmother and the occasional concert and even less frequent invitation to a private home. And the faint chance that she would make a few young friends here eventually and perhaps, if she was very fortunate, find a respectable beau who would overlook the stigma of her birth. Was it any wonder she was so excited about the family’s coming here?

  “I do not know why they have chosen Bath,” Camille said. “Perhaps they all agree with Aunt Matilda about Grandmama’s health.”

  Grandmama Kingsley must have decided it was time to change the subject. “Elaine Dance told us at the concert the other evening that Mr. Cunningham was about to deliver her finished portrait,” she said. “This morning she invited us to go and see it.”

  “It is amazing, Cam,” Abigail said, brightening again. “I could not take my eyes off it. I wanted to gaze at it forever.”

  At a painting of Mrs. Dance?

  “Elaine was not the prettiest of girls even when she was young,” their grandmother said, “and she has let herself go in recent years and gained weight and a double chin as well as wrinkles and faded hair. And all of those things appear in the portrait. Nothing has been disguised. Her chins have not been reduced to one. Her hair has not been painted a darker or a glossier shade. And yet she looks . . . What is the word for which I am searching, Abigail?”

  “Beautiful? Vibrant?” Abigail suggested. “He has painted her from the inside out, Cam, and she really is the kindest, most amiable of ladies. Mr. Cunningham has captured that, and it transcends her outer appearance. I have no idea how he did it.”

  “I sent off a note to him on our return,” Grandmama said, “inviting him to call here tomorrow afternoon. I have portraits of your grandpapa and myself and of your mother a year before her wedding and of your uncle Michael and aunt Melanie—it was painted four years ago, not long before she died. I have none of any of my three grandchildren, however. I should like to commission Mr. Cunningham to paint the two of you, and perhaps Harry too when these wars are over and he comes home.”

  It was the final straw for Camille. Just a week ago today she had taken control of her own destiny, casting aside everything that was familiar from her past in order to forge a new life. Now Papa’s family was about to descend upon them en masse, doubtless with the idea of somehow tucking them back into a life of gentility in some form. And Grandmama Kingsley was going to have them painted by Bath’s most fashionable portrait painter and no doubt displayed in a prominent place for Bath society to come and admire. She doubted Bath society would be impressed.

  She did not want any of it. She particularly did not want Mr. Cunningham painting her. She could not imagine anything more humiliating. And she was not being self-pitying. She wanted to be left alone to wrestle with her new life.

  “Let him paint Abby,” she said. “She is the beautiful one.”

  It was the wrong reason to give. “Oh, Cam,” Abigail cried, jumping to her feet and coming to sit on the arm of Camille’s chair before wrapping both arms about her and resting a cheek against the top of her head. “You are beautiful too.”

  “I cannot have one of you painted without the other,” their grandmother said. “And I have always thought you particularly handsome, Camille.”

  Unfortunately there were some bonds that could not be severed simply because one wished to be left alone. If Mr. Cunningham accepted the commission, she was going to have to sit very still for hours on end while he turned those dark, intense eyes on her and gazed upon all her imperfections and painted every one of them, just as he had apparently done with Mrs. Dance. Oh, it would be intolerable. She would be totally at his mercy. She would die.

  No, she would not. She would sit stony faced for as long as it took and dare him to try painting her from the inside out, whatever that meant. He did not know anything about her inner self, and he never would know. She would see to that.

  She felt as resentful toward Mr. Cunningham as if he had been the one to suggest painting her portrait.

  * * *

  Joel had received two letters from prospective customers that morning. One was from a Mr. Cox-Phillips, who lived up in the hills above Bath, where most of the houses were mansions inhabited by the very rich. Joel would have to hire a carriage to take him there, but he would write back later and suggest one day next week. The other letter was from Mrs. Kingsley, who wanted him to call this afternoon at half past four to discuss the painting of her two granddaughters. Anna’s younger sisters, that was. Or her half sisters, to be precise. The younger of the two was the very pretty Miss Abigail Westcott, whom he had met briefly at Mrs. Dance’s a few weeks ago. The other was the Amazon of the orphanage school. He wondered if she knew what fate awaited her. And he wondered if he wanted the task of painting her. Having to share a schoolroom with her two afternoons a week might be as much of her company as he could tolerate.

  He would call upon Mrs. Kingsley, however, because there was one thing about the possible com
mission that attracted him. Most of the subjects of his portraits, as might be expected in Bath, were middle-aged or even elderly persons, none of whom were renowned for their beauty. He had even been a bit uneasy at first about agreeing to paint them, for he had feared he would disappoint the recipients and ruin his reputation even before he really had one. He would not paint vanity portraits, ones that would flatter the subject, and he always made that clear in advance. He would paint the person as he saw him or her. He had surprised himself by actually liking older subjects, who invariably had a depth of character developed through years of experience. He loved talking to people as he sketched them, watching their faces, observing their hands, their eyes, the language of their body and mind—and then deciding just how he was going to capture the essence of them on canvas. And he was pleased with the results so far.

  However, he did sometimes long to paint someone young and lovely, and Miss Abigail Westcott was both. Unfortunately, he would not be able to paint her without also painting her sister. As he trudged uphill to keep the appointment, though, he was forced to admit that there was something about her that intrigued him at the same time as she irritated him. It would be an interesting challenge to try to capture on canvas the essence of Miss Camille Westcott, whom he had expected to be one of the world’s worst teachers, while in reality it was altogether possible she was one of the best, and who seemed haughty yet had chosen to teach at an orphanage school. Perhaps she would have other surprises in store for him.

  Mrs. Kingsley’s house was almost in the middle of the Royal Crescent. He rapped the knocker against the door and was admitted into a spacious hall by a butler who made him uncomfortably aware of the shabbiness of his appearance with one sweeping head-to-toe glance before going off to see if Mrs. Kingsley was at home—as though he would not have been perfectly well aware of the fact if she were not. Besides, this was the precise time she had requested that he call.

  A couple of minutes later he was escorted upstairs to the drawing room, where the lady of the house and the younger of her granddaughters awaited him. There was no sign of the elder, though she ought to be home from school by now. Mrs. Kingsley was on her feet, and with the practiced eye of an artist, Joel took in her slender, very upright figure, her elderly bejeweled hands clasped before her, her lined, handsome face, the half-gray, half-white hair coiled into an elegant chignon. She herself would be interesting to paint.

  “Mr. Cunningham,” she said.

  “Ma’am.” He inclined his head, first to her and then to the younger lady. “Miss Westcott.”

  “It is good of you to have come promptly on such short notice,” Mrs. Kingsley said. “I realize you are a busy man. My granddaughter and I saw your portrait of Mrs. Dance yesterday morning and were enchanted by it.”

  “Thank you,” he said. The granddaughter was smiling at him and nodding her agreement. She was as he remembered her, small and slender and dainty. She was fair-haired and blue-eyed and exquisitely pretty. She resembled Anna more than she did her full sister.

  “You captured her kindly nature as well as her likeness, Mr. Cunningham,” she said. “I would not have thought it possible to do that with just paint.”

  “Thank you,” he said again. “A portrait is of a whole person, not just the outer appearance.”

  “But I really do not know how that can be done,” she said.

  She was even prettier when her face was flushed and animated, as it was now. The sight of her made him even more eager for the chance to paint her if the commission was indeed formally offered. But even as he was thinking it, the door opened behind him and Camille Westcott stepped into the room, seeming to bring arctic air in with her. He turned and inclined his head to her.

  She was wearing yesterday’s brown frock and yesterday’s severe hairstyle, both tidy today but paradoxically even less appealing. She also had yesterday’s severe, quelling look on her face.

  “Miss Westcott,” he said, “I trust your day went well? Did the children buy everything in sight?”

  “Oh, many times over,” she told him. “Morning and afternoon. At lunchtime the cook had to send an emissary to threaten dire consequences if the dining room tables were not fully occupied in two minutes or less. I spent my day preventing fights over groceries in the nick of time or breaking them up after they had started, and over bills too, for the shopkeeper’s sum of what was owed for a transaction was quite often different from what the shopper was offering, and of course both insisted they were right. The shoppers argued with great ferocity, even when the shopkeeper was demanding less than he or she was offering.”

  Joel grinned. “It was a great success, then,” he said. “I was sure it would be.”

  “When you were buying sweets in the market,” she said, frowning at him, “you ought to have counted out the exact number for each child to purchase one. You actually bought three too many and caused no end of squabbling until Richard had the brilliant notion of taking them to three toddlers who do not attend school yet. He even insisted upon using three of his precious ha’pennies to buy them and so put all the other children to shame. As a result, they were less than delighted with him. So was I when he murdered the English language at least three times while being so kindhearted.”

  “Camille,” her grandmother asked, “what is this about a shop?”

  “You really do not want to know, Grandmama.” She moved past Joel and took a seat. “It was just an ill-conceived lesson idea of mine.”

  Miss Camille Westcott, Joel thought, looked a great deal more handsome when she was ruffled. And a great deal more starchy and stubborn chinned and thin lipped too. Those children had probably not had more fun for a long time—or learned as much.

  “Do sit down, Mr. Cunningham,” Mrs. Kingsley said, indicating another chair. “I hope to persuade you to paint my two granddaughters, though I am well aware that your services are in high demand at present.”

  “It would be my pleasure, ma’am,” he said. “Did you have a group portrait in mind or individual portraits?”

  “My grandson is in the Peninsula with his regiment,” she said. “If he were here, I would choose the group portrait of all three. As it is, I would prefer my granddaughters to be painted separately so that a portrait of Harry may be added after he comes home.”

  The grandson, Joel remembered from Anna’s early letters, had lost his earl’s title and fortune on the discovery of his illegitimacy and had fled England to fight in the wars. She had been very upset by it all. Her good fortune had been ill fortune for her brother and sisters, and she had not been as exuberantly happy as might have been expected when the dream of a lifetime had come true for her.

  “I do not wish to sit for a portrait, Mr. Cunningham,” the elder Miss Westcott informed him. “I will do so only to please my grandmother. But I do not want to hear any nonsense about capturing my essence, which is apparently what you did or tried to do with Mrs. Dance. You may paint what you see and be done with it.”

  “Cam,” her younger sister said reproachfully.

  “I am perfectly sure Mr. Cunningham knows what he is doing, Camille,” her grandmother said.

  Miss Westcott looked at him accusingly, as though he were the one arguing with her. He wondered what she had been like as Lady Camille Westcott, when almost everyone would have been her inferior and at her beck and call. She must have been a force to be reckoned with.

  “I will sit for you, Mr. Cunningham,” she said, “but I trust it will not be for hours at a time. How long does it take?”

  “Let me explain something of the process,” he said. “I talk with the people I am about to paint and observe them as I listen. I get to know them as well as I can. I make sketches while we talk and afterward. Finally, when I feel ready, I make a final sketch and then paint the portrait from that. It is a slow and time-consuming process. It cannot be pushed. Or varied. It is a little chaotic, perhaps, but it is the way I
work.”

  Indeed, there was nothing orderly about the creative process. One could commit the time and the effort and discipline, but beyond that one had little control over the art that came pouring out from one’s . . . soul? He was not sure that was the right word, but he had never been able to think of one that was more accurate, for his art did not seem to come from any conscious part of his mind.

  Miss Westcott was looking very intently at him.

  “Paint Abby first,” she said. “You may observe me two afternoons a week in the schoolroom and get to know me that way. You may even present me with a written list of questions if you wish and I will answer all that I consider pertinent. I will allow you to discover all you can about me, but do not expect ever to know me, Mr. Cunningham. It is not possible, and I would not allow it if it were.”

  She understood, he realized in some surprise. She knew the difference between knowing about someone and actually knowing that person. She was beginning to intrigue him more than a little.

  “Will you accept the commission, then, Mr. Cunningham?” Mrs. Kingsley asked him. “And begin with Abigail? I will have a room set aside here for your use. Perhaps we can agree to a schedule that will fit in with your other commitments. And to terms of a contract. I assume you would like something in writing, as I would.”