Someone to Hold

He walked her home in the middle of the evening after they had eaten and talked and laughed and he had sketched her and she had pulled gargoyle faces—which he had drawn—and they had laughed more, like a couple of children, and they had made love once more, fully clothed except for essential places, on the sofa.

They would marry, he thought as they walked. They almost certainly would even apart from the fact that three separate times he had made it more likely that he had impregnated her. But he did not ask. He was not certain of her answer. And—foolishly—he did not know how to go about it. There was a great deal of turmoil facing him in the coming days. She had her family to be concerned about for the next week. He would wait. And there was no great hurry anyway. A baby took nine months to be born, did it not?

They said good night when they reached the orphanage, and she let herself in with her key and closed the door behind her without looking back at him. He ought to have asked anyway. But it was too late now.

Did all men feel gauche and slightly clammy with panic when it came time to propose marriage?

He walked home with his head down and found himself longing illogically for his old life, just a couple of weeks or so ago, when the only complications to be dealt with were a leftover love he could not quite shake off and not enough hours in the day to paint all the portraits people wanted.

Nineteen

Viola Kingsley, formerly Countess of Riverdale, Camille’s mother, chose to accompany her own mother and Abigail to the Pump Room on Tuesday morning. It was a courageous move, since it was the first time she had appeared to Bath society, many of whose members knew her well, since the scandal of her invalid marriage had supplied enough gossip to keep polite drawing rooms abuzz almost to the exclusion of all else for a week and more just a few months ago.

She went because she could not hide forever and because her mother and her younger daughter had faced down the gossip before her and made her feel cowardly, and because her elder daughter had stepped out into the new world with incredible courage and determination to make it her own. She wondered how she could have given birth to such admirable children—Harry was on the Peninsula, fighting the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte and risking his life every day—and be so abjectly timorous herself, cowering in her brother’s vicarage, where she was not really needed and where she was impeding his path to happiness with a lady who deserved him.

She was not received in the Pump Room with the flattering deference she had once commanded as a countess, but neither was she given the cut direct. A few of her mother’s friends greeted her kindly and a few others nodded politely, while some simply pretended not to have seen her. Soon, however, her former mother-in-law, the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, arrived with Matilda and Louise and Jessica. The dowager countess, having received Abigail’s bright smile and curtsy with a smile of her own, a hand beneath her chin, and a comment that she was looking as pretty as ever, linked an arm through Viola’s, leaned upon it, and joined the morning promenade about the room with her, nodding graciously from side to side as they went. Matilda and Louise came behind them, all nodding feathered bonnets and benevolent hauteur.

Abigail, who had no young friends in Bath yet, Viola had learned since her arrival, happily made the promenade with Jessica, their arms linked, their heads bent toward each other, their smiles bright and genuine.

When Avery and Anastasia arrived a short time later, a buzz of excitement raised the noise level in the room. Avery was not only a duke, something that would have caused a stir in itself, but he was also . . . well, he was the Duke of Netherby, and no one played the part of bored, haughty, glittering aristocrat better than he. And everyone present knew the story of his duchess, who had grown up and taught at an orphanage little more than a stone’s throw from the Pump Room until it had been discovered earlier this spring that she was the legitimate daughter of an earl and wealthy beyond belief. Her story quite cast Cinderella into the shade.

They became the focus of everyone’s admiring attention, though good manners prompted most people to keep their distance and content themselves with deferential bows and deep curtsies and warm smiles.

“How he does it, I do not know,” the dowager countess said, nodding in Avery’s direction, “since he makes no attempt to win the adulation of all around him but indeed looks as though he is almost too bored to live. Yet he has that incredible presence.”

“He does,” Viola agreed. “But I will always love him, Mother. He saved Harry from a dreadful fate after the poor boy rushed out to enlist as a private soldier. And he purchased Harry’s commission for him. I think it was the best solution for my boy under the circumstances even though I suffer daily anxiety for his safety, as I daresay thousands of other mothers throughout the land do. Is he happy? Avery, I mean.”

The dowager looked sharply her way. “I believe he is, Viola,” she said. “He annoyed us all considerably, of course, when we were in the midst of making elaborate plans for their wedding and he simply bore her off one morning without a word to any of us and married her by special license in an insignificant church no one had ever heard of with only Elizabeth and his secretary for witnesses. But . . . well, if Louise is to be believed, and I daresay she is since she lives with them, they adore each other. Yes, he is happy, Viola, and so is she.”

Viola nodded, and they proceeded on the their slow course about the room, nodding to people as they went, occasionally stopping to exchange a few words. When they had completed the circuit once, however, they came face-to-face with Avery and his bride, and Anastasia surprised Viola.