Part 12 (1/2)

”Joel?” Anna looked at her in surprise.

”You grew up with him, ”Elizabeth said. ”To you he is a sort of brother. It took me a while to realize how devastatingly handsome Alex is in the eyes of other women. To me he was always just my tall, good-looking young brother.”

”Joel is gorgeous?” Anna frowned. ”Is he really?”

”And Camille would be remarkably handsome,” Elizabeth said, ”if she would not always be so intent upon looking like a prune.”

”Perhaps she is not always so,” Anna said. ”She is doing well as a teacher. The children like her. I know just how demanding a job teaching is, Lizzie, and how difficult it is to earn the liking and respect of one's pupils. They must have seen aspects of her you and I have not. And that baby lights up with joy when she sees Camille, according to Miss Ford. Perhaps Joel has seen these other sides of her too.”

”For a brief moment after Miss Ford opened the door,” Elizabeth said as they arrived at the hotel, ”I did not recognize the woman as Camille.”

”Oh,” Anna said, ”neither did I.”

Camille hastened over to the bookcase to finish straightening the books. Except that the task had already been completed and there was nothing left to do.

”I must look a fright,” she said.

”In contrast with your cousin and your sister?” he said. ”That is because you have been too deeply involved in your day's work to worry about your appearance. A look of slight dishevelment does not necessarily make a person look a fright, though.”

Slight dishevelment. His words were not rea.s.suring. ”Half sister,” she said, frowning. ”Does it hurt you to see her looking so happy?”

”No,” he said. ”Does it hurt you?”

Happiness-a deep sort of contentment-had surrounded Anastasia with a glow that was almost visible, and Camille did not believe it was just the acquisition of property and fortune that had caused it. Avery had had something to do with it. Whatever could she see in Avery except bored affectation? Except that he had felled Viscount Uxbury with his bare feet-in defense of her, Camille's honor. There must be something terribly wrong with her, Camille thought, that she could neither feel nor attract love. Was it possible that her quest for perfection had somehow deadened an essential part of herself?

”No,” she said, switching the positions of two books for no other reason than that it gave her something to do. ”Why should it?”

He had been going to kiss her. She had been going to kiss him back. But they had been interrupted. Now she was resentful. Or relieved. And horribly embarra.s.sed. Why did he not just leave? He was over there by the door. All he had to do was open it and step through-and leave her to move the desks and chairs back where they belonged. She looked up at him. He was leaning back against the door, his arms crossed, staring broodingly at her.

”I cannot bring myself to look at it,” he said abruptly.

She stared blankly at him for a moment before realizing his thoughts had not been moving along the same lines as her own.

”I could not bring myself to unwrap it in the carriage yesterday. I thought I needed to be alone. But I was alone all evening and all night and this morning until I went up to the Royal Crescent to make more sketches of your sister. I did not once even glance its way. Now I cannot bear the thought of going home alone and knowing it is there and that I do not have the courage to deal with it. There must be something wrong with me.”

What if she had never known her own mother? What if now suddenly and unexpectedly she had been presented with a portrait of her, all neatly wrapped up? She would surely be all fingers and thumbs in her eagerness to tear off the wraps that kept that image from her view. Or would she? Would she too be afraid to look? To see the face she had never looked upon in real life and never would now? To see the face of a stranger she could not quite believe was her mother? To come face-to-face with the loneliness she had spent a lifetime denying? She thought of her own mother, of her resentment that she had gone, leaving her two daughters behind in Bath. But at least Mama was alive. At least Camille could bring her image to mind, complete with voice and touch and characteristic gestures and fragrance.

”Do you think there is?” he asked. ”It is only a painting, after all, and probably not even a good one, if c.o.x-Phillips was right about my father's talent.”

”Do you want me open the package with you?” she asked.

He did not immediately answer but continued to frown at her. ”I cannot ask it of you,” he said.

But he had not said no. He wanted her-no, he needed to have her with him. She was a bit shaken by the rush of . . . joy she felt. When had anyone ever needed her?

”You did not ask,” she said. ”I offered.”

”Then yes,” he said. But he smiled suddenly. ”What if I then discover that I need to be alone?”

”Then I will come back here.” She shrugged. ”I need the exercise anyway.”

”After all the dancing?” He was still smiling.

”I will fetch my bonnet and shawl,” she said, and left the room.

He had not told Anastasia about his discovery of his ident.i.ty. He had not told her about the portrait of his mother. He had not asked her to go with him to give him the courage to look at it. Not that he had asked her, Camille, exactly, but she knew he wanted her to be with him. Oh, she wished, wished, wished she did not hate Anastasia. In her head she did not, but her heart would not seem to soften. She must make a determined effort to be civil tomorrow evening and during the coming week. But she already was civil. She must go beyond civility, then. She must initiate some conversation with Anastasia, show some interest in her, find some common ground they might share-the school, perhaps, and the pupils they had both taught. She would learn to like the woman if it was the last thing she ever did. Perhaps in time she would even be able to call her sister without always having to add the word half in order to set the proper distance between them.

They did not talk during the walk to Grove Street or while he unlocked the door of the house and she started on her way upstairs ahead of him. Unlike the other two times she had been here, though, a door on the first floor opened abruptly as she rounded the newel post to continue upward, and a man's head appeared around the door.

”Is that you, Joel?” he asked. ”I wonder if you- Oh, pardon me.” And his head disappeared back inside and the door clicked shut before either Camille or Joel could say a word.

”Marvin Silver, my neighbor,” Joel said. ”I am so sorry, Camille. I did not expect he would be home yet. I would not have had that happen to you for worlds, especially when you are doing me such a favor.”

”It does not matter,” she said. ”And I offered to come, if you will remember.” She waited for him to unlock the door to his rooms and then hung up her bonnet and went into the living room.

”I will have a word with him,” he said. ”He will not tell anyone.”

”It does not matter, Joel,” she said again. ”I am sick and tired of the rigid rules of propriety that have always governed my behavior. What have they ever done for me?”

”Well,” he said, ”if you can be so brave and decisive, then so can I. It is in the studio. It. You see? I cannot even name it. I fervently wish c.o.x-Phillips had not even thought of it yesterday.”

”Bring it out here, then,” she said, ”and I will look at it with you. Or I will turn my back and look out through the window while you do so alone, if you would prefer.”

”No,” he said. ”In there.”

She raised her eyebrows. Into the studio? Was it not his holy of holies? The one place he took no one?

He turned to her outside the closed door and extended a hand for hers. ”Come in with me. Please,” he said.

Fourteen.

Joel took Camille's hand in his and took her into his studio. It was an incredibly difficult thing to do. He had never before invited anyone into his work s.p.a.ce, even when it was just his crowded bedchamber.

His almost-completed portrait of Mrs. Wa.s.serman was on the easel, the eighteen charcoal sketches he had done of her strewn on the table beside it. It was an odd moment for him to realize what had been nagging at him for days, the missing detail that would allow him to complete the portrait and sign his name to it, satisfied that it was the best he could possibly do. Although she was always carefully, elaborately coiffed, there was invariably one slender lock of hair that escaped the rest and curled across her forehead just beyond the outer edge of her left eyebrow. It was surely in every one of the sketches, but it was absent from the portrait. She did not look quite herself without it. And such a very small omission made all the difference.

But this was not why he had come in here and brought Camille with him. He took Mrs. Wa.s.serman's portrait off the easel and set it on the table beside the sketches. Then he strode over to the corner of the room behind the door and picked up the clothbound package he had propped against the wall there yesterday and stood it on the easel instead.

”Come and see,” he said as he removed the cloth carefully and dropped it to the floor. She came to stand silently beside him.

His first reaction-perhaps it was a defensive one-was purely critical. She had been formally posed on a gilt-backed, gilt-armed chair, one elbow resting on a small cloth-covered table beside her, her hand dangling gracefully over her lap, holding a closed ivory fan. Her other hand rested on the back of a tiny dog in her lap, its eyes all but invisible beneath its long hair. She was half smiling at the beholder with a carefully contrived expression. There was a certain stiffness about it and about her pose generally, and Joel knew that she had been painted from life, and that she had sat still, probably for hours at a time, while the artist painted her. She was pretty, dainty, graceful-and totally unreal. Looking at her, one saw only the prettiness, the daintiness, the grace, the perfection of hair and complexion and dress and expression, and nothing of the person herself. The eyes looked outward but did nothing to draw the beholder inward. There was no hint of character, of mood, of vitality, of individuality. One could see this young woman, even admire her beauty and the care with which she and her props and surroundings had been arranged and painted. But one could not know her.

His second reaction was that outside the painting, where he was standing now, was the invisible figure of the painter. There was no hint, either in the facial expression and posture of the woman or in the way she had been painted, of any connection of tenderness, of intimacy, of pa.s.sion, of love between painter and subject. Had he expected there would be? Had he feared there would not?

His third reaction-the one he had been holding back-was that this was his mother. She was blond, blue eyed, apparently small and dainty, pretty in a fresh, youthful way without any individuality to set her apart from hundreds of other young ladies her age. She was his mother. She had died giving birth to him. He wondered how old she had been. She looked no older than eighteen in the portrait, probably younger. And the hand that had painted her-the invisible hand though it had touched this canvas numerous times-was his father's.