Part 3 (1/2)

Mrs. Kingsley's house was almost in the middle of the Royal Crescent. He rapped the knocker against the door and was admitted into a s.p.a.cious hall by a butler who made him uncomfortably aware of the shabbiness of his appearance with one sweeping head-to-toe glance before going off to see if Mrs. Kingsley was at home-as though he would not have been perfectly well aware of the fact if she were not. Besides, this was the precise time she had requested that he call.

A couple of minutes later he was escorted upstairs to the drawing room, where the lady of the house and the younger of her granddaughters awaited him. There was no sign of the elder, though she ought to be home from school by now. Mrs. Kingsley was on her feet, and with the practiced eye of an artist, Joel took in her slender, very upright figure, her elderly bejeweled hands clasped before her, her lined, handsome face, the half-gray, half-white hair coiled into an elegant chignon. She herself would be interesting to paint.

”Mr. Cunningham,” she said.

”Ma'am.” He inclined his head, first to her and then to the younger lady. ”Miss Westcott.”

”It is good of you to have come promptly on such short notice,” Mrs. Kingsley said. ”I realize you are a busy man. My granddaughter and I saw your portrait of Mrs. Dance yesterday morning and were enchanted by it.”

”Thank you,” he said. The granddaughter was smiling at him and nodding her agreement. She was as he remembered her, small and slender and dainty. She was fair-haired and blue-eyed and exquisitely pretty. She resembled Anna more than she did her full sister.

”You captured her kindly nature as well as her likeness, Mr. Cunningham,” she said. ”I would not have thought it possible to do that with just paint.”

”Thank you,” he said again. ”A portrait is of a whole person, not just the outer appearance.”

”But I really do not know how that can be done,” she said.

She was even prettier when her face was flushed and animated, as it was now. The sight of her made him even more eager for the chance to paint her if the commission was indeed formally offered. But even as he was thinking it, the door opened behind him and Camille Westcott stepped into the room, seeming to bring arctic air in with her. He turned and inclined his head to her.

She was wearing yesterday's brown frock and yesterday's severe hairstyle, both tidy today but paradoxically even less appealing. She also had yesterday's severe, quelling look on her face.

”Miss Westcott,” he said, ”I trust your day went well? Did the children buy everything in sight?”

”Oh, many times over,” she told him. ”Morning and afternoon. At lunchtime the cook had to send an emissary to threaten dire consequences if the dining room tables were not fully occupied in two minutes or less. I spent my day preventing fights over groceries in the nick of time or breaking them up after they had started, and over bills too, for the shopkeeper's sum of what was owed for a transaction was quite often different from what the shopper was offering, and of course both insisted they were right. The shoppers argued with great ferocity, even when the shopkeeper was demanding less than he or she was offering.”

Joel grinned. ”It was a great success, then,” he said. ”I was sure it would be.”

”When you were buying sweets in the market,” she said, frowning at him, ”you ought to have counted out the exact number for each child to purchase one. You actually bought three too many and caused no end of squabbling until Richard had the brilliant notion of taking them to three toddlers who do not attend school yet. He even insisted upon using three of his precious ha'pennies to buy them and so put all the other children to shame. As a result, they were less than delighted with him. So was I when he murdered the English language at least three times while being so kindhearted.”

”Camille,” her grandmother asked, ”what is this about a shop?”

”You really do not want to know, Grandmama.” She moved past Joel and took a seat. ”It was just an ill-conceived lesson idea of mine.”

Miss Camille Westcott, Joel thought, looked a great deal more handsome when she was ruffled. And a great deal more starchy and stubborn chinned and thin lipped too. Those children had probably not had more fun for a long time-or learned as much.

”Do sit down, Mr. Cunningham,” Mrs. Kingsley said, indicating another chair. ”I hope to persuade you to paint my two granddaughters, though I am well aware that your services are in high demand at present.”

”It would be my pleasure, ma'am,” he said. ”Did you have a group portrait in mind or individual portraits?”

”My grandson is in the Peninsula with his regiment,” she said. ”If he were here, I would choose the group portrait of all three. As it is, I would prefer my granddaughters to be painted separately so that a portrait of Harry may be added after he comes home.”

The grandson, Joel remembered from Anna's early letters, had lost his earl's t.i.tle and fortune on the discovery of his illegitimacy and had fled England to fight in the wars. She had been very upset by it all. Her good fortune had been ill fortune for her brother and sisters, and she had not been as exuberantly happy as might have been expected when the dream of a lifetime had come true for her.

”I do not wish to sit for a portrait, Mr. Cunningham,” the elder Miss Westcott informed him. ”I will do so only to please my grandmother. But I do not want to hear any nonsense about capturing my essence, which is apparently what you did or tried to do with Mrs. Dance. You may paint what you see and be done with it.”

”Cam,” her younger sister said reproachfully.

”I am perfectly sure Mr. Cunningham knows what he is doing, Camille,” her grandmother said.

Miss Westcott looked at him accusingly, as though he were the one arguing with her. He wondered what she had been like as Lady Camille Westcott, when almost everyone would have been her inferior and at her beck and call. She must have been a force to be reckoned with.

”I will sit for you, Mr. Cunningham,” she said, ”but I trust it will not be for hours at a time. How long does it take?”

”Let me explain something of the process,” he said. ”I talk with the people I am about to paint and observe them as I listen. I get to know them as well as I can. I make sketches while we talk and afterward. Finally, when I feel ready, I make a final sketch and then paint the portrait from that. It is a slow and time-consuming process. It cannot be pushed. Or varied. It is a little chaotic, perhaps, but it is the way I work.”

Indeed, there was nothing orderly about the creative process. One could commit the time and the effort and discipline, but beyond that one had little control over the art that came pouring out from one's . . . soul? He was not sure that was the right word, but he had never been able to think of one that was more accurate, for his art did not seem to come from any conscious part of his mind.

Miss Westcott was looking very intently at him.

”Paint Abby first,” she said. ”You may observe me two afternoons a week in the schoolroom and get to know me that way. You may even present me with a written list of questions if you wish and I will answer all that I consider pertinent. I will allow you to discover all you can about me, but do not expect ever to know me, Mr. Cunningham. It is not possible, and I would not allow it if it were.”

She understood, he realized in some surprise. She knew the difference between knowing about someone and actually knowing that person. She was beginning to intrigue him more than a little.

”Will you accept the commission, then, Mr. Cunningham?” Mrs. Kingsley asked him. ”And begin with Abigail? I will have a room set aside here for your use. Perhaps we can agree to a schedule that will fit in with your other commitments. And to terms of a contract. I a.s.sume you would like something in writing, as I would.”

”Yes to everything, ma'am,” he said, glancing at the younger sister, who was flushed with seeming delight. For the first time it struck him that she would perhaps be more of a challenge than he had first thought. It would be a joy to paint youth and beauty, but it was not his way to paint only what he saw with his eyes. Was there any depth of character behind the lovely, eager young face of Miss Abigail Westcott, or was she too young to have acquired any? It would be his task to find out.

”Let us go down to the library to discuss details,” Mrs. Kingsley said. ”I will have some refreshments brought there.”

But it was Camille Westcott who had the last word before they left the room. ”Did you know that Anastasia is coming here?” she asked him.

He stopped in his tracks.

”She and Avery,” she told him, ”and all the rest of the Westcott family. They are coming to celebrate the seventieth birthday of the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, my other grandmother. You did not know, did you?”

”No,” he said. No, he had not heard from Anna for more than a week. They did not write to each other as often as they had when she first left Bath. They remained close friends, but the fact that they were different genders complicated their relations.h.i.+p now that she was married. In addition, she was happy now and did not need his emotional support as she had at first. ”No, I had not heard.”

”I thought not.” She half smiled at him. Do you love her? she had asked yesterday when he had asked her if she hated Anna. She was too intelligent not to have noticed that he had evaded answering the question. Just as she had not answered his.

Anna had rejected the only marriage offer he had made a few years ago, presumably because she did not love him. She had told him at the time that she thought of him as a brother. She had accepted Netherby's offer, presumably because she did love him and he felt nothing like a brother. It was as simple as that. He was not suffering from unrequited love. His life was full and active and really far happier than he had ever expected it would be. But he would rather she had not been coming back to Bath so soon after the last time.

”When do you think you will be able to start?” Mrs. Kingsley asked him as they descended the stairs.

Joel was striding back downhill half an hour later, hoping to reach level ground before the lowering clouds overhead decided to drop their rain upon him. He wondered what Anna would have to say when she knew he was painting her sisters' portraits. And what she thought of the fact that Camille was teaching at the school. Dash it, but he missed the long, almost daily letters they had exchanged when Anna had first left Bath.

Miss Camille Westcott was going to be difficult to paint. How was he to penetrate all that p.r.i.c.kly hostility to discover the real person within, especially when she was determined that he would not succeed? It was altogether possible she would be his biggest artistic challenge yet. As he reached the bottom of the hill and strode briskly in the direction of Bath Abbey, the rain began to fall, not heavily, but in large drops that promised a downpour at any minute. He felt the first stirrings of the excitement a particularly intriguing commission always aroused in him. It did not happen often, but he loved it when it did. It made him feel more like an artist and less like a mere jobber-though he hoped he was never just that.

He ducked into the abbey just as the heavens opened, and took a seat in a back pew. He found that he was actually looking forward to sharing the schoolroom tomorrow. That had not happened since Anna left.

Five.

She was within a few hours of surviving her first week of teaching, Camille thought early the following afternoon. But could she do it all over again next week and the week after and so on? If, that was, she was kept on after her fortnight's trial. How did people manage to work for a living day in and day out all their lives? Well, she would find out. She might be sacked at the end of next week, but she would not quit on her own, and she would find something else to do if she was judged not fit to teach here. For if she had learned anything in the last week and a half, it was that when one had taken that first determined step out into the rest of one's life, one had to keep on striding forward-or retreat and be forever defeated.

She would not retreat.