Someone to Hold

“You will miss your tea if I keep you here any longer,” she said to Caroline as she got to her feet. “Do you wish to take your story with you to read and illustrate? Or shall we keep it safe on a shelf here until tomorrow?”

Caroline wanted to take it to read to her doll. And she would draw the pictures while her doll watched. She gave Joel a wide, bright smile as he opened the door to let her out, her story clutched to her chest.

“I am trying to coax her to read,” Camille explained when he closed the door again. “She has been having some difficulty, and I have been trying out an idea.”

“It looks as if you may have had some success,” he said. “She seemed very eager to take that story with her. In my day we would have done anything on earth to avoid having to take schoolwork beyond this room.”

Camille was feeling horribly self-conscious. She had not seen him since Saturday, when she had gone dashing along rainy streets hand in hand with him, laughing for no reason except that she was enjoying herself—and ending up alone in his rooms with him. And if that was not shocking enough, she had allowed him to kiss her and—perhaps worse—she had asked him to hold her. She had been plagued by the memories ever since and had dreaded coming face-to-face with him again.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, clasping her hands tightly at her waist and straightening her shoulders. She could hear the severity in her voice.

“I came to see if you were still in the schoolroom,” he told her, running his fingers through his hair, a futile gesture since it was so short. There was something intense, almost wild, about his eyes, she noticed, and the way he was holding himself, as though there were a whole ball of energy coiled up inside him ready to burst loose.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I went to call on Cox-Phillips this morning,” he said. “He had nothing by way of work to offer me. He is eighty-five and at death’s door.”

“That is rather harsh.” Camille frowned.

“On the authority of his physician,” he said. “He expects to be dead within a week or two. He is setting his house in order, so to speak. His lawyer was going to see him this afternoon about his will.”

“I am sorry it was a wasted journey,” she said. “But why did he invite you up there if he did not wish to hire your services as a painter? Why did he not stop you from going if he suddenly found himself too ill to see you?”

“Oh, he saw me right enough,” he told her. “He even had his valet pull back the curtains so that he could have enough light for a closer look.” He laughed suddenly and Camille raised her eyebrows. “He was going to change his will this afternoon to cut out the three relatives who are expecting to inherit. I am guessing Viscount Uxbury is one of their number.”

“Oh,” she said. “He will not like that. But what does this have to do with you?”

“Not here.” He turned sharply away. “Come out with me.”

Where? She almost asked the question aloud. But it was obvious he was deeply disturbed about something and had turned to her of all people. She hesitated for only the merest moment.

“Wait here,” she said, “while I fetch my bonnet.”

Ten

Joel grasped Camille’s hand without conscious thought when they left the building and strode along the street with her. He had only one purpose in mind—to go home. It was only as they crossed the bridge that he wondered at last why he had turned to Camille Westcott of all people. Marvin Silver or Edgar Stephens would surely be home soon, and they were good friends as well as neighbors. Edwina was probably at her house. She was both friend and lover. And failing any of those three, why not Miss Ford?

But it was for the end of the school day and Camille he had waited as he paced the streets of Bath for what must have been hours. She would listen to him. She would understand. She knew what it was like to have one’s life turned upside down. And now he was taking her home with him, even after what had happened there the last time, was he? His pace slackened.

“I ought not to take you to my rooms,” he said. “Would you prefer that we keep walking?”

“No.” She was frowning. “Something has upset you. I will go home with you.”

“Thank you,” he said.

A few minutes later he was leaning against the closed door of his rooms while Camille hung up her bonnet and shawl. It seemed days rather than hours since he had left here this morning. She went ahead of him into the living room and turned to look at him, waiting for him to speak first.

He slumped onto one of the chairs without considering how ill-mannered he was being, set his elbows on his knees, and held his head in both hands.

“Cox-Phillips is my great-uncle,” he said. “It was his sister, my grandmother, who took me to the orphanage after her daughter, my mother, died giving birth to me. She was unmarried, of course—her name was Cunningham. My grandmother was extremely good to me. She paid handsomely for my keep until I was fifteen, and then, when she heard of my longing to go to art school, she paid my fees there. She loved me dearly too. She watched me from afar a number of times down the years and was so deeply affected each time that she suffered low spirits for days afterward.”

“Joel—” she said, but he could not stop now that he had started.

“She could not let me see her, of course,” he said. “She could not call at the orphanage and reveal herself to me. I might have climbed up onto the rooftop and yelled out the information for all of Bath to hear. Or someone might have seen her come and go and asked awkward questions. She could love me from afar and lavish money on me to show how much she cared, but she could not risk contamination by any personal contact. Something might have rubbed off on her and proved fatal to her health or her reputation. I was, after all, the bastard child of a fallen woman who just happened to be her daughter and apparently of an Italian artist of questionable talent who lived in Bath for long enough to turn the daughter’s head and get her with child before fleeing, lest he be forced into doing the honorable thing and marrying her and making me respectable.”