Someone to Hold

“Half sister,” the woman corrected, giving the impression that as far as she was concerned, that was half a relationship too much. “How do you do, Mr. Cunningham?”

She was the elusive Miss Westcott, then, was she? Joel had seen the other one—the pretty one. Anna had been delighted when at the age of twenty-five she had at last discovered her family, but her half sisters had spurned her overtures of friendship and affection. To Anna’s deep distress, they had removed themselves, first from London and then from their erstwhile home in the country to take up residence here in Bath. She had worried about them and had written to ask Joel if he could possibly discover their whereabouts and find out if all was well with them, as far as anything could be well when the very bottom had just fallen out of their world. He had discovered who their grandmother was and had seen her on a few occasions with the other sister, going into the Pump Room to join the fashionable set, who went there daily to take the waters and exchange gossip.

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.”