Someone to Hold

“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.