Someone to Hold

He would call upon Mrs. Kingsley, however, because there was one thing about the possible commission 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?”