Someone To Hold Part 7

"On Tuesday," he said, "I have agreed to call upon a Mr. c.o.x-Phillips. He lives some distance outside Bath up in the hills where most of the houses are mansions. I daresay he is very wealthy and can well afford my fee."

"c.o.x-Phillips?" She frowned in thought. "Do you know him?"

"No," he said, "but he must know me or at least have heard of me. My fame must be spreading." He grinned at her and got up to check the kettle, though it was clearly not boiling yet. "Do you know him?"

"I know who he is," she said, "or, at least, I suppose he must be the man I am thinking of. He was somebody important in the government a number of years ago, an acquaintance of my uncle, the late Duke of Netherby. I remember my aunt Louise talking about him. She used to describe him as curmudgeonly. He has some family connection to Viscount Uxbury."

"Curmudgeonly?" Joel said, sitting down again. "That does not bode well for me. He may not like being told he must wait for a few months until I have time to paint for him."

"You must play the part of temperamental artist," she said, "and pit your will against his."

"Who says it would be playing a part?" he asked her, grinning again. "If he cuts up nasty, I shall just refuse whatever commission he has in mind. Perhaps I will not even go up there."

"The word curmudgeonly has frightened you off?" she asked him. "But your curiosity will surely outweigh your fear. I hope so, anyway. I want to hear all about your visit when you come to school on Wednesday, a.s.suming, that is, that you survive the ordeal."

He gazed at her without answering, and his fingers drummed a light tattoo on the table. "I need my sketch pad," he said. "You should do that more often, Camille."

"Do what?" She could feel her cheeks grow warm at the intentness of his gaze.

"Smile," he said. "With a certain degree of mischief in your eyes. The expression transforms you. Or perhaps it is just another facet of your character I have not seen before. I left my sketchbook at the orphanage, alas, though I do have others in the studio."

"Mischief?"

"Of course you are not doing it any longer," he said. "I ought not to have drawn your attention to it."

"The kettle is boiling," she said, and she pressed both palms to her cheeks when he got up and turned his back. But the thing was that she really had been smiling and joking and rather enjoying the image of him confronting Lord Uxbury's crotchety relative, his knees knocking with fright but his artistic temperament coming to his rescue. And now she was probably blus.h.i.+ng. She watched him pour the boiling water into the teapot and cover it with a cozy to keep the tea hot while it steeped. She had never seen a man make tea. He did not look effeminate doing it, though, despite the fact that the cozy had daisies embroidered all over it. Quite the opposite, in fact. "Mischief is for children, Mr. Cu- Joel."

"And for adults who are willing to relax and simply be happy," he said, turning to lean back against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest.

"You think I am not willing?" she asked him.

"Are you?"

"Ladies are not brought up to cultivate happiness," she said. 'There are more important things."

"Are there?"

She frowned. "What is happiness?" she asked. "How does one achieve it, Joel?"

He did not immediately answer. Their eyes locked and neither looked away. Camille swallowed as he pushed away from the counter and came toward her. He set one hand on the table beside hers and the other on the back of her chair. He drew breath as though to say something, but then leaned over her instead and kissed her.

Somehow she had known it was coming, yet when it happened she was so surprised, so shocked, that she sat there and did nothing to prevent it. It did not last long-probably no more than a few seconds. But during those seconds she became aware that his lips were slightly parted over her own and that there was heat in them and in his breath against her cheek. She was startlingly aware of the male smell of him and of a tingling awareness and yearning and . . . desire that were shockingly physical.

And then he drew back his head, and his eyes, darker and more intense than usual, gazed into hers, their expression inscrutable.

Camille spoke before he could. "That is how one achieves happiness?" she asked. Goodness, she had just been kissed. On the lips. She could not remember ever being kissed there before, not even by her mother. If she had been, it was so long ago that memory of it had faded into the dim, distant past.

"Not necessarily happiness itself." He straightened up. "But sometimes a kiss is at least pleasurable. Sometimes it is not."

"I am sorry I have disappointed you," she said, all instinctive haughtiness. "But I have never been kissed before. I have no idea how to go about it."

"I was not saying it was not a pleasure to kiss you, Camille," he said. "But I certainly did not intend to do it, and it ought not to have happened. I brought you in here out of the rain, but it was unconsidered and unwise. Even a man who is not a gentleman understands, you see, that he ought not to bring a virtuous woman to his rooms, and that if he does for some compelling reason-like a heavy rain-then he should not take advantage of her by kissing her."

"I do not feel taken advantage of," she said. Perhaps she ought, but she did not. It had happened, and on the whole she was not sorry. It was another new experience to add to all the others of the last few months, and she knew she would relive those few seconds for days to come, perhaps longer. Was that very pathetic of her?

He stood where he was for a few moments longer, his expression inscrutable, before turning away to pour their tea. He brought their cups and saucers to the table and set down the one without milk before her. He sat down while she stirred in a spoonful of sugar.

"Your betrothed never kissed you?" he asked. "Was not that a bit odd?"

Ought she to have been kissed merely because she was engaged to be married? But that was not what her betrothal had been all about. "I did not believe so," she said.

"Would you have gone through life unkissed?" he asked her.

"Probably," she said.

"But you would surely have wanted children," he said. "He would have wished for heirs, would he not?"

"Of course," she said. "And we would both have done our duty. But do we have to speak on this topic? I find it extremely uncomfortable." She stirred her tea again.

He was not going to let the matter drop, though. "What I find strange," he said, "is that there is a cla.s.s of people to whom marriage and marital relations are quite impersonal, devoid of real feeling or any sort of pa.s.sion. Or happiness."

"I wanted to be perfect," she reminded him, though there was something very arid in the word in contrast to the real feeling and the pa.s.sion and the happiness of which he had spoken. She found her hand was trembling when she tried to lift her cup.

"Camille," he said, and she could feel his eyes very intent on her though she did not look up at him. "What happened to you must surely have been the very best thing that could possibly have happened."

She lurched to her feet, sending her chair clattering backward to the floor, and hurried into the living room, where she turned blindly right instead of left and came up against the living room window instead of the hallway, where she might have grabbed her pelisse and bonnet and hurried away from there, rain or no rain. She came to a stop, hugging her arms about herself and gazing out into pelting rain without really seeing it.

"Camille." His voice came from just behind her.

"I suppose you disliked me even before you met me," she said. "She wrote and told you all about me, did she-Anastasia? And you disliked me when we met-I saw it in your face when Miss Ford introduced us. And I know you resented my walking into the schoolroom and looking at your pupils' paintings. Since then you have seen how poorly I teach and control my cla.s.s, and you resent the fact that I am now living in her room at the orphanage. I have not liked you very well either, Mr. Cunningham, but I have not been cruel to you. You may have a poor opinion of the life of privilege in which I grew up, but at least I was taught decent manners."

"Camille," he said, "I had no intention whatsoever of being cruel. I daresay my words were poorly chosen."

She laughed harshly-and heard, appalled, what sounded more like a sob than laughter. "Oh really?" she said. "And what words were those?"

"You were headed for a life of cold propriety and duty," he said. "You surely cannot believe now that you would have been happy with Viscount Uxbury."

"You do not understand, do you?" she said, looking downward and seeing the rain actually bouncing off the road. "I did not expect happiness. Or want it. I did not expect unhappiness either. My feelings were never in question or in turmoil until a few months ago. Now there is nothing but turmoil. And unhappiness. Misery. Self-pity, if you will-that is what you called it earlier this week. Is this better than what I had? Seriously, Joel? Is it better?"

She turned as she spoke and glared at him when she realized he was so close behind her.

"You would have married a man who publicly and maliciously insulted your name as soon as he learned something about you that offended him even though you were in no way to blame," he said. "How would he have treated you if you had already been married?"

She had been trying for several months not to ask herself that question. "I will never know, will I?" she said.

"No," he said, "but you can make an educated and doubtless accurate guess."

She hugged herself more tightly. "Yet you still think I deserve what happened to me," she said.

He frowned. "That," he said, "is not what I said. It is certainly not what I meant. Sometimes good can come out of disaster. You had schooled yourself all your life not to feel emotion. You believed that that is what perfect ladies do. Perhaps you were right. But if it is indeed so, then perfect ladies are surely to be pitied."

"My mother is a perfect lady," she said. And because he did not immediately answer, the words echoed in her head. Was that all her mother had ever been? The empty sh.e.l.l of a perfect lady? Camille had always wanted to emulate her unshakable poise and dignity. Her mother had never been at the mercy of emotion. She was never vividly happy or wretchedly unhappy. She had been a model of perfection to her elder daughter. Only now did Camille ask herself what had lain beneath that disciplined exterior. Only now did she wonder if it had been a misery bordering upon despair, for Mama had been married to Papa for almost a quarter of a century before she knew that she had never been married at all, and Papa must have been wretchedly hard to live with as a husband.

"Do you miss her?" he asked softly.

Abby did. She had said so a few days ago. Did she, Camille, miss her too? "I am not sure I know who she is any more than I know who I am," she said, and felt dizzy at the truth of the words she spoke. Oh, how could what was happening to her be the best thing that could possibly have happened? She reached out one hand to pat his shabby jacket, just below the shoulder. "Will you hold me, please? I need someone to hold me." She would have been appalled, surely, if she had stopped to listen to her own words of weakness. They went against everything she had always been and everything she was trying to be now.

He took a hasty step forward, wrapped his arms tightly about her, and drew her hard against him. She turned her head to rest her cheek on his shoulder and leaned on him-in every way it was possible to lean. And it seemed to her that he was all solid strength and dependability and the perfect height-taller than she but not towering over her. He was warm and he smelled good, not of an expensive cologne, but of basic cleanliness and masculinity. He rested his head against hers and held her as she needed to be held. He did not try to kiss her again, and she did not feel any of the desire she had felt in the kitchen a short while ago. Instead she felt comforted from the topmost hair on her head to her toenails. And gradually she felt a nameless yearning, something with which she had no previous experience, though not the physical one she had felt earlier.

"Why did Anastasia not fall in love with you?" she asked into his shoulder.

He took his time about answering. "Foolish of her, was it not?" he said.

"Yes," she said, and thought about the man Anastasia had married. She could not imagine asking Avery to hold her. And she certainly could not imagine his doing so like this. For one thing, he was small and slight of build and would not feel so comforting. For another, there was no discernible warmth in him. Some things really were a mystery. Why had Anastasia fallen in love with him rather than with Joel? It had nothing to do with the fact that Avery was wealthy, for so had Anastasia been when she married him. Avery was a duke, of course, whereas Joel was a portrait painter who wore shabby coats and felt affluent because he could afford to rent the whole of the top floor of a house in Bath. But it was not that either. Camille was convinced of it. Much as she would like to think ill of Anastasia, she could not deny that it was very clear her half sister loved Avery with all her being.

She drew reluctantly free of his arms. "I am sorry," she said. "No, I mean, thank you. I was experiencing a moment of weakness. It will not happen again."

"I thought perhaps it was only orphans who sometimes long to be held," he said. "It had not occurred to me that people who grew up with both parents might sometimes feel a similar craving."

"That baby I was holding earlier-Sarah," she said. "Before I picked her up, she was crying with the hopeless conviction that no one was ever going to hold her again. She hurt my heart."

"But you held her," he said.

"What was I to do?" she asked rhetorically. "What was I to do, Joel?"

He did not answer her because of course there was no answer. "Our tea will be getting cold," he said.

"I think I had better go home," she said. "You were quite right earlier. This was a mistake, and I apologize for forcing you into accompanying me on my walk and then leaving you with little option but to bring me here."

"The rain is heavier than it was when we arrived," he said. But he did not try to dissuade her from leaving. "I have an umbrella, a large man-sized one. We can huddle under it together."

"I would rather go alone," she said.

He nodded and went to fetch her pelisse and bonnet, which were still a bit damp. She was half splas.h.i.+ng along the street a few minutes later, the umbrella he had insisted she bring with her keeping her dry, though she could hear the rain drumming upon it. She had been kissed and she had been hugged this afternoon, both new experiences. She had also begged to be held and had surrendered to the comfort another human being had offered, even if only for a minute or so. Now she felt a bit like crying-yet again.

She would not do it, of course. She had cried last night, and that had been more than enough to last her for another fifteen years or so at least. But she must not put herself again in the position of needing to be held by Mr. Joel Cunningham, who believed that the disaster she had met with earlier this year was the best thing that could have happened to her. She certainly would give him no further opportunity to kiss her-or herself further opportunity to invite his kiss. For she would certainly not put all the blame, or even most of it, upon his shoulders.

She wished she did not have to encounter him again next week in the schoolroom, where she would have to behave as though nothing had happened between them. Not that much had. Oh, somehow, sometime she was going to get through all this, this . . . whatever it was and come out on the other side. But what would that other side look like?

She tilted the umbrella to s.h.i.+eld her face from the driving rain and hurried onward.

Nine.

Joel kept himself busy on Sunday and Monday. He finished one of his portraits on Sunday and went up to the Royal Crescent on Monday to begin sketching and talking to Abigail Westcott. Her portrait was going to be a pleasure to work on and a bit of a challenge too, for almost as soon as she started to talk he could sense a vulnerability behind her prettiness and sweetness and a carefully guarded sadness. It would take him some time and skill to know her thoroughly.

But while he kept himself occupied, his mind was in turmoil. Why in thunder had he kissed Camille? She had asked him how one achieved happiness, and like a gauche boy with only one thing on his mind, he had acted as though there could be only one possible answer. The thing was, he had taken himself as much by surprise as he had her. And then, as though that were not bad enough, he had proceeded to hurt her horribly with that ill-advised remark about the great disaster of her life having been the best thing that could possibly have happened to her.

He had not even enjoyed his evening with Edwina on Sunday. Indeed, he had returned home early without even having gone to bed with her.

He spent Monday afternoon and evening sketching Camille from memory-laughing in the rain, sitting at his kitchen table looking just kissed, standing at his living room window, arms wrapped defensively about herself, gazing sightlessly down at the street. He did not want to be obsessed with painting her yet. He wanted to be able to focus upon her sister. But perhaps it was not painting her that was obsessing him.

He was actually glad on Tuesday to have something to distract him. He hired a carriage and went to call upon Mr. c.o.x-Phillips. The house was somewhere between a manor and a mansion in size, stately in design, and set within s.p.a.cious and well-tended gardens, commanding a wide and panoramic view over the city below and the surrounding country for miles around. Joel, having instructed the coachman to wait for him, hoping he would not be too long, as the bill would be running ever higher, nevertheless took a few moments to admire the house and the garden and view before knocking upon the door.

He was kept waiting for all of ten minutes in the entry hall, being stared at by a collection of stern marble busts with sightless eyes while the elderly butler inevitably went to see if his master was at home. Joel was admitted eventually to a high-ceilinged library. Every wall was filled with books from floor to ceiling wherever there was not either a window or a door or fireplace. A large oak desk dominated one corner of the room. On the other side an imposing leather sofa faced a marble fireplace in which a fire burned despite the summer heat outdoors. Matching leather wing chairs flanked it.

In one of the chairs and almost swallowed up by it, his knees covered by a woolen blanket, a silver-k.n.o.bbed cane grasped in one of his gnarled hands, sat a fierce-eyed, beetle-browed gentleman who looked to be at least a hundred years old. His eyes watched Joel cross the room until he came to a stop beside the sofa. Another man, almost equally ancient and presumably some sort of valet, stood behind the gentleman's chair and also watched Joel's approach.

"Mr. c.o.x-Phillips?" Joel said.

"And who else am I likely to be?" the gentleman asked, the beetle brows snapping together in a frown. "Come and stand here, young man." He thumped his cane on the carpet before his feet. "Orville, open the d.a.m.ned curtains. I can hardly see my hand in front of my face."

Both Joel and the valet did as they were told. Joel found himself standing in a shaft of sunlight a few feet from the old man's chair, while its occupant took his time looking him up and down and studying his face. The lengthy inspection made Joel wonder, with an inward chuckle, who was going to be painting whom.

"It was the Italian after all, then, was it?" the old man said abruptly. It did not sound like the sort of question that demanded an answer.

"I beg your pardon, sir?" Joel regarded him politely.

"The Italian," the old man said impatiently. "The painter who thought his swarthy looks and accent that charmed the ladies and foreign names all ending in vowels would hide the fact that what talent he had would not have filled a thimble."

"I am afraid," Joel said, "I am not understanding you, sir. I do not know the man to whom you refer."

"I refer, young man," the old gent told him, "to your father."

Joel stood rooted to the spot.

"I suppose," the old man said, "they did not tell you a thing."

"They?" Joel felt a little as though he were looking through a dark tunnel, which was strange when he was standing in sunlight.

"Those people at that inst.i.tution where you grew up," the old man said. "It would be a wonder if they did not. Very few people can hold their tongues, even when they have been sworn to secrecy. Especially then."

Joel wished he had been invited to sit down or at least to stand in shadow. There was a dull buzzing in his ears. "Do you mean, sir," he asked, "that you know who my father was-or is? And my mother?"

"It would be strange if I did not know her," c.o.x-Phillips said, "when she was my own niece, my only sister's girl, and more trouble to her mother than she was worth. Dead the lot of them are now. Never hope to live to be eighty-five, young man. Everybody who has ever meant a thing to you ends up dying, and the only ones left are the sycophants and vultures who think that because they share a few drops of your blood they are therefore ent.i.tled to your money when you die. Well, they are not going to have mine, not while I am alive to have a say in the matter, which I will have this afternoon when my lawyer arrives here."

Most of what he said pa.s.sed Joel by. His mind was grappling with only one thing. "My mother was your niece?" he asked. "She is dead? And my father?"

"She would never tell her mother who he was," the old man said. "Stubborn as a mule, that girl was. She would only tell who he was not-and that was every likely and unlikely male her mother could think of, including the Italian, though how she ever got her tongue around his name to say it aloud I do not know. My sister sent the girl away for her confinement and paid a pretty penny for her care for six months too, but the girl died anyway in childbed. The baby-you-survived, more was the pity. It would have been better for all concerned, you included, if you had died with her. Nothing would do for it but my sister had to bring you back here despite everything I had to say to the contrary. Her daughter got her stubbornness from her. She knew she could not bring you to this house to live and explain away to all who would have been sure to ask, and strange if they had not. She ought to have left you where you were. She took you instead to that orphanage and paid for your keep there. She even paid for that art school you wanted to go to, even though I told her she had feathers for a brain. I guessed then, though, that it must have been the Italian. Where else would you have got the cork-brained notion that you could make a decent living painting? They probably tried to make you see better sense at the orphanage."

"My . . . grandmother lives here with you?" Joel asked.