Part 14 (1/2)
”He was my great-uncle,” he said after a brief hesitation. ”My grandmother's brother.”
”Joel?” Anastasia leaned closer to him across the table, her eyes wide. ”Your great-uncle? Your grandmother?”
”He invited me to call,” Joel explained. ”I a.s.sumed he wished to discuss some painting commission with me, but when I went earlier this week, he told me it was his now-deceased sister who took me to the orphanage as a baby after my mother died in childbed. So you see, Anna, you are not the only one to have discovered your parentage this year.”
”c.o.x-Phillips.” Aunt Louise frowned in thought. ”He used to be in the government in some capacity, did he not? Netherby-my husband-had an acquaintance with him. I had a.s.sumed him to be long deceased. Not that I have spared a thought for him in years, I must confess. If memory serves me correctly, though, he was some connection of Viscount Uxbury's. I remember hearing it when Uxbury began to show an interest in Camille.”
It seemed to Camille that everyone-except Avery-determinedly did not look her way.
Avery, unapologetically resplendent in satin and lace long after they had pa.s.sed out of fas.h.i.+on with most other gentlemen, sat at his elegant ease, a gla.s.s of port in one hand, a jeweled quizzing gla.s.s in the other, his smooth blond hair like a s.h.i.+ning halo about his head. His heavy-lidded eyes were fixed upon Camille.
”Yes, he was,” Joel said. ”Uxbury is there at the house now.”
”The less said about him, the better,” Aunt Mildred said. ”I do not feel at all kindly toward that young man.”
”He must be c.o.x-Phillips's heir, then,” Avery said. ”That could be unwelcome news to you, Camille, though I do not suppose he will spend any great amount of time here as your near neighbor. He does not strike me as the sort to make his permanent home in Bath.”
”Perhaps,” Camille said, ”he will be discouraged by the possibility that you will come to my defense again, Avery, with your bare feet.”
His eyes gleamed with appreciation, and his hand closed about the handle of his quizzing gla.s.s. ”Ah, you have heard about that slight episode, have you?” he said.
”What is this about bare feet?” Aunt Louise asked sharply.
”You would not wish to know, Louise,” Uncle Thomas said firmly. ”More to the point, you would not wish Jessica or Abigail to know.”
”Know what?” Jessica cried, leaning forward across the table to fix her eager gaze upon her half brother. ”What did you do to Viscount Uxbury, Avery? I hope you punched him in the nose without first removing any of your rings. I hope you ran him through the ribs with the point of your sword. I hope you shot him-”
”That is quite enough, Jessica,” Aunt Louise said sternly.
”He is a thoroughly nasty man, Aunt Louise,” Anastasia said, ”and I can only applaud Jessica's bloodthirsty wishes for his fate. He was horrid to me at my first ball and he was horrid about Camille-worse, in fact, because he had been betrothed to her. I am so glad, Camille, that you escaped his clutches in time, though I daresay you were unhappy at the time. Avery avenged you, and I do not care how many ladies know how he did it and are shocked. And if Avery had not avenged you, then Alex would have. They love you.”
There was a brief silence about the table as Anastasia looked at Camille and Camille frowned back at her. She blinked, feeling that hotness behind her eyes that sometimes presaged tears. She nodded curtly.
”I am not shocked,” her mother said. ”I am enchanted.”
”But . . . bare feet, Avery?” Abigail said.
”You see,” he said softly, raising his gla.s.s to his eye to survey her through it and sounding horribly bored in that annoying way of his, ”I had no choice. I had removed my boots. And my stockings.”
”Mr. Cunningham,” Aunt Mildred said, ”accept my congratulations at having discovered your ident.i.ty at last and my commiserations at your loss of your great-uncle so soon after you found him.”
And everyone's attention returned to Joel.
”Thank you, ma'am,” he said.
Sixteen.
After having felt a great deal of nervous apprehension about walking in upon a family gathering of such ill.u.s.trious persons, most of whom he had not met before, Joel had found his welcome gracious, even warm. He might have almost enjoyed the evening if Camille had not been there, looking a bit like a regal Amazon, to make it impossible for him to put aside his great sense of guilt, at least for a few hours. Fortunately, perhaps, dinner was served soon after his arrival, and he had found himself seated between Lady Overfield and Lady Molenor, with Anna across from him and Camille farther along the table on the same side as he, where he need not be constantly looking at her.
But he did need to talk to her, to apologize again, to try to clear the air between them if at all possible. They still had to share a schoolroom occasionally, after all, and he had to paint her portrait. Besides, yesterday might have had consequences, and he would not close his mind to the possibility, just as he had not-to his shame-even yesterday. He knew a great deal about illegitimate, unwanted children, and neither of those adjectives would ever apply to any child of his.
His chance came when the former Countess of Riverdale, Camille's mother, decided that it was time she and her younger daughter returned home and Netherby raised a hand-actually it was one languid forefinger-to summon a servant and instruct him to have the ducal carriage brought around.
”It will deliver Camille to Northumberland Place first, if that meets with your approval, Aunt Viola,” he said, ”before taking you and Abigail up to the Royal Crescent.”
”It really is not far for me to walk,” Camille said.
”Nevertheless,” Netherby said with a sort of haughty weariness, clearly expecting that the one word was enough to settle the matter. It never ceased to amaze Joel that Anna had married him. He was all splendor and affectation. However, Joel knew there was a great deal more to the Duke of Netherby than met the eye. There were those Far Eastern martial arts he had perfected, for example, which apparently made him into a lethal human weapon. And there was the fact that he loved Anna, though that was not something that had particularly endeared him to Joel at first.
”I will be pa.s.sing Northumberland Place on my way home,” Joel said. ”I will happily give you my escort to your door, Camille, unless you prefer to ride.”
Anna beamed across the table at him, and Lady Overfield turned her head toward him and smiled too for no apparent reason.
”I will walk home with Joel, Avery,” Camille said stiffly.
Joel stood exchanging pleasantries with Lord Molenor while she took her leave of her relatives and promised her mother that she would walk up to the Royal Crescent tomorrow afternoon.
”I shall probably see you there, Camille,” Anna said. ”I know that Aunt Louise and Aunt Mildred want to call upon Aunt Viola. There is something I wish to tell you.”
Camille gave a brief, chilly nod, Joel saw.
The outside air had cooled with the descent of darkness, but it was still almost warm. The stars were bright. There was not a breath of wind. The silence of the street seemed loud after the clamor of voices in the dining room.
”You were not expecting to see your mother?” Joel asked, clasping his hands behind his back as they walked.
”I was not,” she said. ”I did not believe she would come at all. She gave no hint of it in the letter she wrote me this week. She feels herself to be an outsider.”
”Yet she must have been a close member of the Westcott family for more than twenty years,” he said. ”She still is in the minds of the others. That was clear to see. So are you and your sister.”
”Alexander said a strange thing to me before dinner,” she told him, ”and before you arrived. It was in the nature of a suggestion-that I allow myself to be loved. I have never thought before about the difference between loving and being loved, though I learned early in my schooling the distinction between the active and pa.s.sive voices of verbs. I think I have always behaved in the active voice. It is easier to do something oneself than wait for someone else to do it. One might wait forever, and even if one did not, the thing might not be done as well as one could do it oneself. I have always liked to be in control. It is easier to love than wait to be loved-or to trust that love even if it is offered.”
”You love your Westcott relatives, then?” he said.
”Yes, of course,” she said, shrugging. ”Though I tend to avoid using the word love, for it is used to cover a mult.i.tude of different emotions and att.i.tudes, is it not? They are my family. The fact that I will no longer allow myself to be dependent upon them does not alter that.”
”Was the Earl of Riverdale suggesting that you do not allow them to love you in return even though they wish to do so?” he asked.
”I do not know what that means,” she said.
He remembered her telling him that throughout her girlhood she had craved her father's love, that she had tried to shape herself into the sort of perfect lady he would love. She had been far more damaged by that man than she realized. The fact that he had knowingly made her illegitimate was the least of his sins against her.
”It was clear to me tonight,” he said, ”perhaps because I am indeed an outsider and could judge dispa.s.sionately, that your family members have been hurt by what has happened to you and your mother and sister and brother. The pain they feel is perhaps the deeper for the fact that they feel largely helpless to lessen your burden. They want to cherish you and make your lives easier again, less painful, but there are limits to what they can do. They can and do love you, however. Your sister seems willing to accept that. You and your mother hold yourselves more aloof, and it hurts both yourselves and them.”
She did not immediately reply, and he listened to their footsteps on the silent, deserted street.