Part 10 (1/2)
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.