Part 6 (1/2)

Mr. Cunningham set his book down in order to help construct battlements about the top of the tower-until the little boy whose hair he had ruffled came along and knocked the whole thing down with one swipe of his arm and a giggle. There were cries of outrage from the children who had built it, and Mr. Cunningham stood up, roaring ferociously, grabbed the child, tossed him at the ceiling, and caught him on the way down. The little boy shrieked with fright and glee and then helped Mr. Cunningham and the other two gather up the fallen bricks and start again.

Other children claimed his attention and he spent some time with each group before exchanging a few words with one of the older housemothers. He had brought the cook some fresh eggs from the market, Camille heard him say, and had wrangled an invitation to stay for luncheon.

”But you don't need an invitation, Joel,” the woman told him. ”You know that. Not to come home.”

He laughed and sat down on a chair, his back half turned to Camille-he still had not seen her-and began to draw something in his sketchbook. The baby in his cradle, perhaps-he now had both feet clutched in his hands and was rocking from side to side, jabbering happily to himself. Or perhaps the girls engrossed in their game with the rag dolls. Or perhaps six-year-old Caroline Williams, one of the younger children at the school, who appeared to be reading aloud to an old doll from a large book, sounding out the words and following them along the page with one forefinger. Camille knew that in fact she had difficulty reading, something that was going to have to be addressed in the coming week.

The baby in her arms gave a hiccup of a sob and Camille looked down as one little hand waved in the air and came to rest against her bosom and clutch the fabric of her dress, even though the child did not wake. And then she did. She twitched, opened her eyes, gazed solemnly up at Camille, and . . . smiled a broad, bright, toothless smile. It felt like one of life's random and unearned gifts, Camille thought, smiling back, smitten with unexpected happiness. It was a totally unfamiliar feeling. She had never cultivated happiness-or unhappiness for that matter.

They were interrupted by Hannah, who had come to take the baby to change her nappy before feeding her. ”The children have been sent to wash their hands before luncheon,” she told Camille. ”You will be wanting to go and eat too, Miss Westcott. I think Sarah has taken to you. She will soon settle here. They all do.”

Mr. Cunningham was standing close by when Camille got to her feet. He had seen her at last and appeared to be waiting to go into the dining room with her. ”Madonna and Child, do you think?” he asked her, holding up his sketchbook, its topmost page facing toward her, so that she could see what he had been drawing. ”Or is that too popish a t.i.tle for your liking?”

It was a charcoal sketch of a woman seated on a low chair, a baby, swaddled in a blanket, asleep in her arms. The drawing was rough, but it suggested a strong emotional connection between the child and the woman, who was gazing down at it, something like adoration on her face. The child was unmistakably Sarah, and the woman, Camille realized with a jolt, was herself, though not as she had ever seen herself in any mirror.

”But you did not even see me when you came in,” she protested. ”And you were sitting almost with your back to me while you sketched.”

”Oh, I saw you, Miss Westcott,” he said. ”And like any self-respecting teacher, I have eyes in the back of my head.”

She did not have a chance against him, Camille thought, not quite understanding what she meant. Within just a few minutes and with only paper and charcoal, he had reproduced exactly how she had been feeling as she held that child. Almost honored. Almost tearful. Almost maternal. Almost adoring. She looked at him, a little disturbed. And she wished, suddenly cross, that he was not handsome. Not that he was handsome exactly, only good-looking. What she really wished was that he was not attractive. Because he was, and she did not like it one bit. She was not accustomed to characterizing men according to their physical appeal. Though it was not all physical with him, was it?

”Shall we go for luncheon?” he asked, indicating the door. They were the last two left in the room.

”May I have the sketch?” she asked him.

”Madonna and Child?” he said.

”May I?”

He detached it from the book and held it out to her, holding her eyes as she took it from him.

”Thank you,” she said.

”It is not a crime, you know,” he said, ”to love a child.”

Joel had left Edwina's house earlier than usual last night despite her sleepy protests. He was working on a painting, he had told her, and was burning up on the inside with the need to get back to it before his vision dimmed. He had not even been lying, though he had felt a bit as though he were, for the arrangement with Mrs. Kingsley had been that he would start with her younger granddaughter next week and leave the elder until later, perhaps even the autumn.

He had been up until dawn, working by candlelight, capturing her laughter-full face and then her averted, tear-streaked profile-two sides of the same coin. But, unlike a coin, she had more than two sides. How many more he did not yet know.

He had s.n.a.t.c.hed a few hours of sleep but had got up earlier than he intended, restless and impatient with the two portraits he must finish before getting too deeply involved in the new project. He ate his breakfast standing up and, gazing at one of the portraits on his easel, trying to feel the excitement of a character almost captured in paint with only a few slight tweaks remaining to be done. Then he sat down and wrote to inform Mr. c.o.x-Phillips that he would call on him on Tuesday. He did not really want to go at all. He wanted to finish the outstanding projects and then concentrate upon the two portraits that had captured his interest far more than he had expected. But it would not do to turn down the possibility of another commission out of hand. Who knew when they would dry up altogether and leave him without further income?

He had intended to settle to the painting after sealing the letter, but his mind was churning with myriad thoughts and he owed the subject of the portrait better than that. Perhaps later. Perhaps he was just tired. He had had maybe an hour of sleep at Edwina's, maybe two here after dawn. Finally he stopped pretending to himself, though he still did not admit his motive. He went to the orphanage, picking up some fresh eggs at the market on the way. There was nothing so very remarkable about his visit, after all. He often went there unannounced, to chat with the staff that had been there for much of his life and to play with the children. They were his family.

And if he went at least partly to see how Camille Westcott was coping with her first full day there, then it was hardly surprising, for she was a work colleague, and she was Anna's sister. And he was to paint her portrait even if her sister's was to come first.

The garden was deserted, of course, since the drizzle was still coming down and making July feel more like April. He made his way to the playroom-and saw her immediately, even though it was almost overflowing with busy children and their adult supervisors and she was sitting quietly in a corner. Would she never cease to amaze him? She was holding a sleeping baby. If he was not mistaken, it was the one who had been discovered on the front step early one morning a week or so ago with one thousand pounds in banknotes tucked beneath the blanket in which the child was wrapped-a staggeringly immense fortune in money with a sc.r.a.p of paper on which were written the words Sarah Smith. Look after her.

Joel played with several of the children, but all the time he was aware of the woman and baby in the corner. He had brought a sketch pad with him, as he usually did, though he did not often make use of it. He was always more of a partic.i.p.ant than an observer here. But this time was different, and finally he could resist no longer. He sat down to sketch. He did not even have to look at them while he worked. He marveled that he had seen yet another aspect of Camille Westcott he would never have suspected. Her whole posture of relaxed stillness and her apartness in the corner of the room spoke of maternal love.

Of course she was unaware of it. She frowned when she saw the sketch after Hannah had taken the baby from her. He had seen the moment when she recognized herself and stiffened with displeasure and perhaps denial. Her lips had thinned when he told her there was no crime in loving a child. Yet she had asked him for the sketch, which he had wanted to add to the portfolio of her he had started early this morning. He gave it to her reluctantly and wondered if she would burn it or hang it in her room or hide it at the bottom of a drawer.

They sat at the staff table in the dining room with the nurse and Miss Ford, but they lingered there after the other two had left.

”Have you ever discovered anything of your parentage, Mr. Cunningham?” she asked him.

”No,” he said.

”Do you ever wish you could?” she asked.

He considered the question-not that he had not done so a hundred or a thousand times before, but he had ambivalent feelings about it. ”Perhaps I would regret it if I ever did ever find out,” he said. ”Perhaps they were not pleasant people. Perhaps they came from unpleasant families. It is only human, however, to yearn for answers.”

”Do you suppose Anastasia has regretted finding out?” she asked him.

”I believe she did for a while,” he said. ”But she would not have met and married the Duke of Netherby if she had remained Anna Snow, orphan teacher of orphan children in provincial Bath. And that would have been something of a tragedy, for she is happy with him. She has also discovered maternal grandparents who did not after all abandon her. And she has a paternal grandmother and aunts and cousins who have opened their hearts to her and drawn her into a larger family. On the whole, I do not believe she has many regrets.”

”On the whole?” She was gazing into her teacup, which was suspended between the saucer and her mouth.

”Her new life has brought some unhappiness too,” he said. ”She has been quite firmly rejected by the very family members she most yearns to love. And what makes it worse for her is that she knows she has brought a catastrophic sort of misery to those people but has not been allowed to make any sort of amends.”

”Are you trying to make me feel guilty, Mr. Cunningham?” she asked him.

”You asked the question,” he reminded her. ”Ought I to have given the answer with sugar added to disguise some of the bitterness? Do you feel guilty?”

”I am tired of this conversation, Mr. Cunningham,” she said.

”And I am tired of being Mr. Cunningham,” he said. ”My name is Joel.”

”I have been brought up to address everyone outside my inner family circle with the proper courtesy,” she told him.

”You would probably have called your husband Uxbury all his life if you had married him,” he said.

”Probably,” she agreed. ”What I was brought up to does not amount to the snap of my fingers now, though, does it? I am Camille.” She set her cup down on the saucer, still half full. ”I see that the rain has stopped. I need to get out of here. Would you care for a walk?”

With her? She irritated him more than half the time, intrigued him for much of the rest of it. He did not believe he liked her. He certainly did not want to spend Sat.u.r.day afternoon prowling the streets of Bath with her. He had better things to do, not least the completion of a portrait so that he could get on with hers and her sister's.

”Very well,” he found himself saying nevertheless as he got to his feet.

Eight.

It was chilly and bl.u.s.tery, but at least it was not raining. Camille set the direction and strode off toward the river, Mr. Cunningham-Joel-at her side. He was not talking, and she felt no inclination to carry on a conversation. She could not explain to herself why she had wanted him with her, but she was pleased with herself about one thing. She had never before suggested to a man that he take a walk with her. She had never called any man outside her family by his first name either. Not that she had called Mr. Cunningham by his yet.

”Joel,” she said, and was surprised to realize she had spoken out loud.

”Camille,” he answered.