Someone To Hold Part 10

Camille looked at him in some surprise. He was not quite as tall as the viscount, and he did not have such a splendid physique or as obviously handsome a face. Indeed, he looked even more shabby than usual in contrast to the splendor of Lord Uxbury's Bond Street tailoring. But he looked suddenly very solid and immovable. And he looked in no way cowed at having been called a fellow and a riffraff pet.i.tioner. He spoke with quiet, firm courtesy.

"If this is not the first time you have come to pester my cousin," the viscount said, "then it is a very good thing I came when I did. And Miss Westcott is not fit company for anyone in this house or any other respectable dwelling."

"You have come back, then, have you?" the elderly gentleman said from beside the fire. "You have changed your mind, have you?"

"I have not, sir," Joel a.s.sured him. "I have come on a different matter."

"Do not distress yourself, Cousin," the viscount said, his manner transformed into something altogether more soothing and deferential. "I shall escort this fellow and his . . . doxy out to-"

"I will distress myself, G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Uxbury," the old man said irritably, "if you continue treating me as though I had more than just one foot in the grave. How dare you treat me as if I have an imbecile mind, and not more than half an hour after you set foot in my house? Uninvited, I might add. Go and find yourself a guest room to stay in for a few nights if you must stay while you still have first choice. I daresay the other two claimants to my fortune are springing their horses in the hope of getting here as fast as they can."

"I will see this fellow and his woman out before I do so, Cousin," Viscount Uxbury said. "Your physician would not wish you to-"

"My physician," the old gentleman said, one of his hands closing about the k.n.o.b of a cane by his side and banging it feebly on the floor, "would not want me to be plagued to death a few days earlier than I will be popping off anyway by relatives who pretend to believe that they have my best interests at heart. And I pay a butler to show guests in and out. I believe I pay him handsomely. Do I, Orville?"

"You do, sir," his valet a.s.sured him.

"Out." Mr. c.o.x-Phillips raised his cane a few inches from the floor and waved it in the viscount's direction. "And you two, come forward and have a seat."

Joel and Camille stood aside to let Viscount Uxbury pa.s.s. He looked haughtily and with considerable venom from one to the other of them as he did so, and Camille could not resist expressing some spite of her own.

"I hope you did not take any permanent harm from the kick you took to the chin, Lord Uxbury," she said.

His jaw hardened, and he strode from the room. Camille met Joel's eyes briefly, and it was possible she saw the hint of a smile there. But then he gestured toward the heavy sofa that faced the fireplace adjacent to Mr. c.o.x-Phillips's chair. She went and sat down, and Joel took his place beside her.

"May I present Miss Camille Westcott, a friend and colleague who was kind enough to accompany me here today, sir?" Joel said.

The gentleman's eyes turned upon Camille and examined her closely from beneath bushy eyebrows. "I do not have an imbecile mind, young lady, despite my age and infirmity," he said. "You were once betrothed to that relative of mine, I recall. Riverdale's daughter, I believe-the late Riverdale."

"That is correct, sir," she said. "I broke off the engagement after it was discovered that my father was already married when he wed my mother and that my sister and brother and I were therefore illegitimate."

"Hmm," he said. "That was the reason, was it? It was unsporting of Uxbury to call you a doxy just now, though I am not surprised. A nasty little weasel of a child, he was, I remember. Not that I saw him often. I took pains not to. Families tend to be pestilential collections of people who just happen to share some blood, but mine was always worse than most. Or do all people think that? What is your connection to Cunningham? The word colleague is meaningless without an explanation."

"I teach school at the orphanage where he grew up," she explained. "He volunteers his services as a teacher there too. I offered to accompany him here when he decided to return."

"You convinced him, did you," he said, "that he was an idiot to turn down the chance of inheriting the bulk of my fortune just because of a bit of pride?"

"I did no such thing, sir," she said.

"And yet," he said, "you could have had a splendid revenge upon Uxbury by talking your colleague into doing him out of what he thinks to inherit." His nightcap had slipped down almost over one of his eyes, and his hand had slid off the head of the cane, which fell to the carpet. "Orville, rearrange those d.a.m.ned cus.h.i.+ons behind me. Where are they?"

The valet plumped up the cus.h.i.+ons behind and to both sides of the old gentleman, moved him gently back against them, straightened his nightcap, tucked the blanket more securely about his waist, and picked up his cane.

"I came back," Joel said when the valet had resumed his place behind the chair, "to find out more about my mother and my grandmother, sir. And there has been no mention of my grandfather. But perhaps you are not feeling well enough-"

"A worthless waste of s.p.a.ce and air," Mr. c.o.x-Phillips said. "Henry Cunningham inherited a tidy sum of money and sat on it for the rest of his life without either enjoying it or investing it-or spending any of it on my sister or my niece. An amiable idiot who came to stay here for a week soon after his marriage and left here almost twenty years later in his coffin. I was happy to spend much of that time in London."

"Henry," Joel said. "And what was my grandmother's name, sir? And my mother's?"

"My sister was Mary," the old man said. "My niece was Dorinda. She must have been named by her idiot of a father. Who else would have named a poor girl Dorinda?"

"What can you tell me about her?" Joel asked. "What did she look like?"

"Not anything like you, young man," Mr. c.o.x-Phillips a.s.sured him gruffly. "She was small and blond and blue eyed and pretty and as silly as girls come. She led my sister a merry dance before she took after that foreign painter fellow, but the dance became less merry when he disappeared off the face of the earth and she started growing plump and denying everything under the stars that could be denied. When denials were no longer of any use, she swore to her mother that he was not the one, but she would not say who was. If it was not the painter, though, then there must have been another Italian in Bath. There is no mistaking your lineage."

"You do not remember his name?" Joel asked.

"I never made the smallest effort either to learn it or to memorize it," the old man said, pausing for a few moments while his breath rasped in and out. "Why should I? He was beneath my notice. He ought to have been beneath my niece's notice too, but he was a handsome devil and she was too like her father-nothing much in her brain to hold her ears apart." His eyes fluttered closed and his head drooped back against the cus.h.i.+ons while he caught his breath again.

"We must leave you to rest, sir," Joel said, getting to his feet.

The old gentleman's eyes opened. "It was a good thing for you," he said irritably, "that you turned up here so soon after Uxbury. I doubtless would not have allowed you in otherwise. You made yourself perfectly clear a few days ago and I have no reason to feel kindly toward you."

"Then I must be thankful that my timing was so good," Joel said. "I will not trouble you further, sir. Thank you for telling me what you have about my mother and grandparents."

The eyes had closed again. But Mr. c.o.x-Phillips spoke once more. "Orville," he said, "have someone go into my sister's room and find that miniature she always kept beside her bed. I daresay it is still there. I do not know where else it would be. Have it given to Mr. Cunningham on his way out. I will be glad to be rid of it."

The valet took a few steps forward and pulled on the bell rope beside the mantel.

"A miniature?" Joel asked.

"Of my niece," the old man said without opening his eyes.

Camille got to her feet and turned to leave. The poor man looked very tired and very ill. But Joel stood frowning down at him.

"Who painted it, sir?" he asked.

"Ah." There was a rumble from the chair, which Camille realized was a laugh. "You may blame-or thank-your grandmother that you exist, young man. She took Dorinda to him. He was Italian and handsome and spoke in that silly accent Italians tend to affect, and it seemed to follow that he must therefore be an artist of superior talent. He painted her."

He clearly had nothing more to say. After regarding him for a few moments longer, Joel looked blankly at Camille and walked beside her from the room and down the stairs. They waited silently in the hall until the butler came and handed a small cloth-bound bundle to Joel before opening the door for them.

The carriage had waited.

Twelve.

Joel slid the package down the side of the seat next to the window. It had been called a miniature, but it felt a bit larger than that to him. He would wait to unwrap it until he was alone.

Henry and Mary Cunningham.

Dorinda Cunningham.

Three strangers. All dead. They did not feel like people who were in any way connected to him, though he shared their name and their blood. Would his mother seem more real when he looked at her likeness? Or less so? Would he sense his father's hand in the composition and the brushstrokes? Would he see from her face that she had been looking into his father's, and what she had felt doing so? He felt sick with apprehension at the thought of unwrapping the package. He almost wished the portrait did not exist or that c.o.x-Phillips had not remembered it.

The carriage lurched into motion and he recalled that he was not the only one whose emotions had been aroused during this visit. Camille had come here with him after a full day of teaching to offer moral support, only to find herself horribly insulted by the man she had once been close to marrying.

"I am so sorry," he said.

"About Viscount Uxbury calling me a doxy?" she said. "About his saying that I was not fit to be in that house? Why would you be sorry? You did not say it. Nor did you drag me here."

"Despite the old saying about sticks and stones," he said, "words do hurt. And you once held him in high enough esteem to agree to marry him."

"I always thought that above all else he was a gentleman," she said. "It hurts to know I was so wrong. And it always hurts to be accused of being something one is not. Yet I cannot help remembering that when Anastasia was admitted to Avery's salon and offered a seat, I was outraged because she was not fit to be in that house with respectable people, among whose number I counted myself. Sometimes other people's words become uncomfortable mirrors in which we gaze upon ourselves."

"I must repeat what I have said before," he said. "That man is altogether unworthy of you, Camille. He is a thoroughly nasty customer, and you had a fortunate escape from him. What I was really apologizing for, however, was my own negligence in not smas.h.i.+ng that aristocratic nose of his and blackening both his eyes. I ought to have done that much for you-and rammed his teeth down his throat. I have been put to shame by the Duke of Netherby."

"What Avery did was quite splendid in its context," she said, reaching up for the worn leather strap as the carriage rattled out of the driveway and onto the road. "According to your account, he had been challenged to a duel, and honor as well as pride dictated that he accept. Today's context was different. Both of you were guests of a dying man, and in his presence in his home. It would have been inappropriate to come to blows with Viscount Uxbury or even to engage in heated words. He did not behave like a gentleman. You did. You behaved with dignity and restraint, and for that, I thank you."

"You had the last word, though," he said, grinning at the memory, "by hoping he had recovered from the kick to his chin."

"I lied." She smiled suddenly, a bright, mischievous expression. "I did not hope any such thing. But I did want him to know that I know."

"Well, I am sorry any of it happened," he said. "It was poor thanks for your kindness in accompanying me here."

"I suppose," she said, "it was punishment for forcing my company upon you. I am not sorry I came, however. Mr. c.o.x-Phillips is very ill indeed, is he not?"

"Yes," he agreed, and was a.s.sailed by a wholly unexpected wave of near panic. His mother and his grandparents were dead, and his great-uncle, his last link with them, was dying. There could be no doubt about that.

"Will you go back yet again?" she asked.

Part of him wanted to do it right now, to lean forward and knock urgently on the front panel and instruct the coachman to turn around.

"Very probably not," he said. "There are more questions I would like to ask. Anecdotal questions. I would like to hear stories about his boyhood with his sister, my grandmother, about the arrival of my grandfather in the household, about the infancy and childhood of my mother. He must have stories to tell, must he not? But I doubt he would be willing to tell them even if he were fit and well. Why should he, after all? He does not know me. I am merely the b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of a niece for whom he does not appear to have felt much fondness. Anyway, he is neither fit nor well and would not even have told me as much as he did today if he had not been annoyed by the high-handed behavior of his kinsman. Besides, Uxbury has clearly come to stay, and the old man seems to believe that the other two claimants to his property and fortune will not be far behind him. I have no desire whatsoever to confront any of them."

"Even though they are your relatives too?" she said.

"Exactly because of that," he admitted. "I am not proud that Uxbury is somehow connected to me. I do not even know how and am not much interested in learning."

"But I do wish circ.u.mstances had permitted you to smash his nose and blacken both his eyes and ram his teeth down his throat," she added.

He grinned, remembering how at Sally Lunn's she had wished she could string the man up by his thumbs. She chuckled, perhaps remembering the same thing, and then they were holding hands and almost doubled up with laughter. He did not know why they were quite so amused except that it had been a miserable and emotionally charged visit in a number of ways, and life had a way of rea.s.serting itself in face of insult and sickness and imminent death.

"Thank you for coming with me, Camille," he said when he could, and he squeezed her hand, which was still in his, and laced their fingers.

"I have been fearing that I ought not to have talked you into it," she said. "It was really none of my business."

"I learned the names of my mother and her parents," he said. "It is not a great deal, but even that much knowledge gives me more ident.i.ty."

"And you have the painting," she said "Yes, I have that," he agreed. "But I am afraid to look at it."

She tipped her head to one side as she gazed at him and frowned in thought for a few moments. "I believe I would be too in your place," she said. "You will look at it when you are ready."

"It is not just that the painting is of my mother," he said. "It is also that it was painted by my father. Or by the man who was supposedly my father."

"They must have been in company together a good deal when he was painting her portrait," she said. "She would have been gazing at him and he at her for hours on end. It is perfectly understandable that they fell in love."

"He did not love her, though, did he?" he said, and closed his eyes for a few moments. "There is no point in trying to romanticize what happened between them. He ran away as soon as he learned their affair had had consequences-me. I am not the product of a grand pa.s.sion between ill-fated lovers who died of broken hearts after being plucked asunder. It was all far more mundane. l.u.s.t pure and simple, I would guess. And cowardice."

"You do not know all the facts," she said.

"No, I do not," he admitted. Would he know better when he saw the painting? Would he sense whether there had been love-in the eyes of his mother, in the brushstrokes of his father? Probably not. What had happened between those two had died with them, and that was the way it ought to be. Perhaps. Except that he was left to wonder. "I do know something about the son they produced, however. I would never abandon a woman I had impregnated. Or our child."

They traveled the rest of the way in silence, their hands still joined, their shoulders touching as the carriage swayed and bounced over the road. When they arrived back at the orphanage, he opened the door and jumped down to the pavement before turning to help her alight.

"Thank you for coming," he said again.

"Go back again," she told him, but she did not offer to accompany him this time or press the point. She hurried inside and closed the door.

After school one day earlier in the week, when the children were all outside playing or otherwise occupied elsewhere and the playroom was empty, Camille had sat down at the old neglected pianoforte, which had been pushed off into one corner, and played softly to herself. She had never been more than a tolerably skilled musician, but playing the pianoforte was a necessary accomplishment for a properly brought-up young lady and she had persevered. She had been missing playing as well as embroidering and watercolor painting-all strictly according to the rules set down by her governess. Sometimes she wished she could go back and relive her girlhood with more of a questioning, even rebellious spirit, but it could not be done. Going back was never possible, and there was no point in wallowing in regrets for what might have been.

When she had looked up from the pianoforte after a few minutes, it was to the discovery that three children had crept into the room unnoticed and were standing perfectly still, watching her. They would go about their play soon enough, she had thought after smiling vaguely at them and turning her attention to another remembered piece, but after that there were two more children watching her, as well as the original three and one of the housemothers. The next time she looked up, she was forced to the startled conclusion that there must surely not be a child left in the garden or any other part of the building. The playroom was as full as she had ever seen it.

She had switched to playing some folk songs that everyone knew-everyone in her old world, anyway, but apparently not in the new. She had picked out a few of the simplest tunes and taught the melody and the words of the first verses. The girls had soon been singing along with her while the boys looked warily at one another and held their peace while at the same time holding their ground.

Music in the form of folk songs and simple hymns and a few rounds had become a part of the school curriculum from that day, and Camille had soon been scheming for a way to bring in the boys. She had done it by brus.h.i.+ng up on her knowledge of sailors' working chants and explaining them as exclusively male music. Indeed, for a while she banned the girls from singing them, something that proved highly successful when the girls burned with resentment and the boys preened themselves and sang loudly and l.u.s.tily and not necessarily musically.

It was not singing she was teaching early on the Friday afternoon after the visit to Mr. c.o.x-Phillips's house, however. It was dancing. It had all started during the morning, when Camille had unveiled the purple knitted rope, whose various parts she had stayed up late the night before weaving together into one. It could not be unveiled, of course, without being put to immediate use. They had gone out as far as Bath Abbey, where Camille had given a brief lecture on the architecture of the church before leading the way to the Roman baths just a few yards from the abbey and below the Pump Room. Both the expedition and the rope had been an enormous success, the latter having drawn amused attention from several pa.s.sersby. Not one child had either lagged behind or surged ahead without the others, and an occasional head count had satisfied Camille each time that she still had the correct number of children.

Their return to the school had been delayed by the presence in the abbey yard of some musicians-first a flautist, whom the children found enthralling mainly, Camille suspected, because watching and listening to him shortened the school day, and then by a troop of energetic dancers, who performed the steps of several vigorous and intricate country dances to the accompaniment of the flute and a violin. The children had been genuinely enchanted by them, and it would have been nothing short of cruel to drag them away before the performance came to an end.

On the way back to school a few of the older children had recalled the time when a former teacher had taught dancing. Miss Snow had not continued the lessons-the d.u.c.h.ess of Netherby, Winifred Hamlin had interrupted the speaker to remind him-because she could not sing the music and teach the steps at the same time. And Miss Nunce had not because . . . well, because.

If they wished to learn to dance, Camille had said rashly, then she would teach them. And had they noticed that in the troupe they had just watched there were exactly as many men dancers as women? One of the recently hired housemothers had even admitted to some skill at the pianoforte and might be persuaded to play while their teacher taught the steps. Her offer had been met with such enthusiasm-a public cheer in the middle of the street that would have scandalized Lady Camille Westcott even without the conspicuous addition of the purple rope-that she had decided to waste no time but to begin immediately after luncheon. Ursula Trask, the housemother in question, had agreed to play for them, though she had warned that her fingers were rusty and might well hit as many wrong notes as right.

It was only when she was already hot and bothered and disheveled and barking out instructions as she tried to teach the steps of the Roger de Coverley, however, that Camille recalled this was one of the days for art instruction. It was amazing she had forgotten when she had thought of little else but Joel Cunningham and their journey up into the hills all last evening and most of last night-she had slept only in fits and starts-and much of this morning too. But she had indeed forgotten and would not have remembered now if she had not suddenly noticed him standing, or rather, slouching in the doorway, one shoulder propping up the frame, one booted foot crossed over the other ankle, his arms folded over his chest, a smirk on his face.

She stopped barking abruptly and the music faltered and children went prancing off in all directions.

"Oh," she said. "Oh goodness. Children. Artists. It is time for your painting lesson."

She was horribly aware of her appearance, and of his. Since when had shabby men started to look impossibly attractive when immaculately tailored ones merely looked . . . well, immaculately tailored? Though it was not shabby men exactly-was it?-but a certain shabby man. It was really very puzzling.

There were sounds of protest from the art pupils, even, surprisingly, the boys. Joel held up one hand, palm out, and pushed himself away from the doorframe.

"Dancing?" he said. "It has not been taught here since Miss Rutledge's days. Most of you will not even remember her. But everyone should know how to dance. Among other things, it is an art form. A dancing lesson can conceivably be considered an art cla.s.s. Let it proceed, then, and I will lend my support to Miss Westcott."

The children cheered and Camille wished she had realized before she started that knowing how to dance was somewhat different from knowing how to teach dancing. There was so much to teach. There were the steps and the figures, of course, but there were also things like daintiness and grace and the correct positioning of one's head and hands to consider, and even the expression upon one's face. And it was different for boys and girls. This could well be her biggest failure in two weeks of dubious successes-except that the children were obviously enjoying themselves enough to want to continue. And younger children and housemothers and even Roger and Miss Ford kept poking their heads about the door, smiles on their faces.

After Joel had explained that when he learned to dance they had all moved about with great enthusiasm and a bounce in their steps and no regard for style or grace, the process became easier and far more fun. He taught the boys the steps. Camille taught the girls. Together they pushed and prodded and led and coaxed and bullied and applauded the cla.s.s into performing a dance that had some sort of resemblance to the Roger de Coverley. And since everyone ended up flushed and bright eyed and clamoring for more lessons and different dances another day, Camille supposed they had achieved some success after all.