Part 17 (1/2)

He ought not to have done it, of course, but how could he have said no when it had been what he wanted too? Joel had no idea if her comings and goings had been noted by any of the neighbors on the street, but certainly this time they were fortunate inside the house. Either his fellow tenants were out, or they were occupying themselves quietly in their own rooms.

Camille made no pretense of having come with him for any other reason than the obvious one. Having removed and hung up her bonnet and shawl, she turned into the bedchamber and looked around. He was glad he had cleaned and tidied yesterday. He had even changed the bed linen.

She undressed herself today, methodically and efficiently, her back to him. They had scarcely exchanged a word since leaving that seat by the river. Her hair came down last. She drew out the pins, set them on the table beside his book, and shook her head. Her hair was dark and thick and s.h.i.+ning and fell in waves almost to her waist. Despite the fullness of her figure evident through her clothes, one would never guess that she was so voluptuously beautiful. And young. In most of the personas she adopted for the outside world, she looked ageless, but certainly not youthful. Now she looked her age-she must be all of five years younger than he-and youthful and vibrant and so desirable that the blood seemed to be singing through his veins and filling him with an almost painful desire.

She drew back the bedcovers and lay down, apparently without self-consciousness as he finished undressing and joined her on the bed. She turned onto her side and reached for him. She had been a virgin the first time, of course, and somewhat pa.s.sive, though not by any means cold or shrinking. Today she made love with a fierce abandon that he soon matched, her hands, her mouth, even her teeth, all over him while he set about the wholly unnecessary task of arousing her. He rolled onto her and thrust into her far sooner than proper finesse would have dictated, but not too soon, by G.o.d. She was hot and wet and eager, and she matched him stroke for stroke with rolling hips and inner muscles and straining hands and twined legs until she cried out her release a moment before he spilled into her.

”Camille.” He disengaged from her, moved to her side without taking his arms from about her, settled her hot, damp body against his own, and smiled as she sighed and slid into a deep, totally relaxed sleep.

He had enjoyed regular s.e.x with Edwina for two years or longer without ever feeling the need to examine his feelings or wonder about hers or consider his obligations. He did all three as he lay there, comfortable and sated and teetering on the brink of sleep but not quite falling asleep. She smelled of that faint fragrant soap he had noticed before-and of sweat and woman. She smelled wonderful.

She woke up sometime later and moved her head back far enough to gaze at him. He wondered if he was in for another stinging slap across the face, but no-she was the one who had asked to be brought here for just what had happened between them. Besides, she had explained that she slapped him that other time because he had apologized and thus cheapened what for her had been a lovely experience.

”I am not about to apologize,” he said.

She smiled slowly. It began in her eyes and spread down to her mouth-a lazy, amused, happy smile. And oh, G.o.d, when had that ghastly Amazonian woman he remembered from a couple of weeks ago metamorphosed into this infinitely desirable woman in his arms and in his bed?

”A pity,” she said. ”I could have slapped your other cheek and evened things up a bit.”

Camille Westcott making jokes?

He kissed her, moving his lips warmly, lazily over hers, and by unspoken consent they made love again, slowly this time, in no hurry to get where they were going, taking their time, enjoying every moment, every touch and caress along the way. And when it came time to join their bodies, he took her on top of him, drawing her knees up to hug his hips, and penetrated her before they rode together for long minutes of pure pleasure until desire turned the ride into something more urgent and they reached the climax together. He stayed deep and she clenched tightly about him and then opened as he spilled his seed into her once more.

He walked her home in the middle of the evening after they had eaten and talked and laughed and he had sketched her and she had pulled gargoyle faces-which he had drawn-and they had laughed more, like a couple of children, and they had made love once more, fully clothed except for essential places, on the sofa.

They would marry, he thought as they walked. They almost certainly would even apart from the fact that three separate times he had made it more likely that he had impregnated her. But he did not ask. He was not certain of her answer. And-foolishly-he did not know how to go about it. There was a great deal of turmoil facing him in the coming days. She had her family to be concerned about for the next week. He would wait. And there was no great hurry anyway. A baby took nine months to be born, did it not?

They said good night when they reached the orphanage, and she let herself in with her key and closed the door behind her without looking back at him. He ought to have asked anyway. But it was too late now.

Did all men feel gauche and slightly clammy with panic when it came time to propose marriage?

He walked home with his head down and found himself longing illogically for his old life, just a couple of weeks or so ago, when the only complications to be dealt with were a leftover love he could not quite shake off and not enough hours in the day to paint all the portraits people wanted.

Nineteen.

Viola Kingsley, formerly Countess of Riverdale, Camille's mother, chose to accompany her own mother and Abigail to the Pump Room on Tuesday morning. It was a courageous move, since it was the first time she had appeared to Bath society, many of whose members knew her well, since the scandal of her invalid marriage had supplied enough gossip to keep polite drawing rooms abuzz almost to the exclusion of all else for a week and more just a few months ago.

She went because she could not hide forever and because her mother and her younger daughter had faced down the gossip before her and made her feel cowardly, and because her elder daughter had stepped out into the new world with incredible courage and determination to make it her own. She wondered how she could have given birth to such admirable children-Harry was on the Peninsula, fighting the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte and risking his life every day-and be so abjectly timorous herself, cowering in her brother's vicarage, where she was not really needed and where she was impeding his path to happiness with a lady who deserved him.

She was not received in the Pump Room with the flattering deference she had once commanded as a countess, but neither was she given the cut direct. A few of her mother's friends greeted her kindly and a few others nodded politely, while some simply pretended not to have seen her. Soon, however, her former mother-in-law, the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, arrived with Matilda and Louise and Jessica. The dowager countess, having received Abigail's bright smile and curtsy with a smile of her own, a hand beneath her chin, and a comment that she was looking as pretty as ever, linked an arm through Viola's, leaned upon it, and joined the morning promenade about the room with her, nodding graciously from side to side as they went. Matilda and Louise came behind them, all nodding feathered bonnets and benevolent hauteur.

Abigail, who had no young friends in Bath yet, Viola had learned since her arrival, happily made the promenade with Jessica, their arms linked, their heads bent toward each other, their smiles bright and genuine.

When Avery and Anastasia arrived a short time later, a buzz of excitement raised the noise level in the room. Avery was not only a duke, something that would have caused a stir in itself, but he was also . . . well, he was the Duke of Netherby, and no one played the part of bored, haughty, glittering aristocrat better than he. And everyone present knew the story of his d.u.c.h.ess, who had grown up and taught at an orphanage little more than a stone's throw from the Pump Room until it had been discovered earlier this spring that she was the legitimate daughter of an earl and wealthy beyond belief. Her story quite cast Cinderella into the shade.

They became the focus of everyone's admiring attention, though good manners prompted most people to keep their distance and content themselves with deferential bows and deep curtsies and warm smiles.

”How he does it, I do not know,” the dowager countess said, nodding in Avery's direction, ”since he makes no attempt to win the adulation of all around him but indeed looks as though he is almost too bored to live. Yet he has that incredible presence.”

”He does,” Viola agreed. ”But I will always love him, Mother. He saved Harry from a dreadful fate after the poor boy rushed out to enlist as a private soldier. And he purchased Harry's commission for him. I think it was the best solution for my boy under the circ.u.mstances even though I suffer daily anxiety for his safety, as I daresay thousands of other mothers throughout the land do. Is he happy? Avery, I mean.”

The dowager looked sharply her way. ”I believe he is, Viola,” she said. ”He annoyed us all considerably, of course, when we were in the midst of making elaborate plans for their wedding and he simply bore her off one morning without a word to any of us and married her by special license in an insignificant church no one had ever heard of with only Elizabeth and his secretary for witnesses. But . . . well, if Louise is to be believed, and I daresay she is since she lives with them, they adore each other. Yes, he is happy, Viola, and so is she.”

Viola nodded, and they proceeded on the their slow course about the room, nodding to people as they went, occasionally stopping to exchange a few words. When they had completed the circuit once, however, they came face-to-face with Avery and his bride, and Anastasia surprised Viola.

”Will you take a turn about the room with me . . . Aunt Viola?” she asked.

Aunt Viola. Viola was no such thing, but Matilda and Mildred and Louise, her former sisters-in-law, certainly were Anastasia's aunts. The young woman had chosen to call her that, Viola supposed, albeit hesitantly, rather than address her by the only alternative, Miss Kingsley.

”Of course,” Viola said, and they set off side by side. It was hard, so very hard, not to resent the girl, of whose existence Viola had been aware for years when she had a.s.sumed the girl was a by-blow of her husband's. She had even arranged for a generous settlement to be made on her after her husband's death, a gesture that had probably precipitated the discovery of the truth.

”I believe,” she said stiffly, beginning the conversation, ”I have you to thank, Anastasia, for the fact that my dowry has been returned with interest, enabling me to set up a home for myself and my daughters where we may live independently.”

”You must know,” Anastasia said, ”that you are ent.i.tled to at least that much. What happened to you was insufferable.”

”I will accept,” Viola said, ”because I agree that the dowry money ought to be mine. However, I doubt Mr. Brumford was the one to think of it. I believe that was you, and I thank you.”

They were interrupted by two ladies who wished to pay their respects to the d.u.c.h.ess of Netherby . . . and of course to Miss Kingsley. The d.u.c.h.ess of Netherby returned their greetings amiably but showed no inclination to engage the two ladies in conversation. They moved on.

”I live at Morland Abbey with Avery,” Anastasia said. ”I will continue do so for the rest of my life, or at one of his other numerous homes, including Archer House in London. Yet I am the owner of Hinsford Manor and of Westcott House in London. I believe I have persuaded Alex that it would be appropriate for him to stay at Westcott House whenever he is in town since he is the holder of the t.i.tle. But Hinsford, which is extremely pretty, is uninhabited, and the people who live in the neighborhood are unhappy about it. They look back with nostalgia to the years when you and your family lived there.”

Viola stiffened. ”They would hardly be delighted to see the return there of Miss Kingsley and the Misses Westcott,” she said.

”I do believe you are wrong,” Anastasia said, nodding to a couple who would have detained them with the smallest encouragement. ”Forgive me, but I understood from my one visit there that my father was never well liked. I equally understood that you were. Sympathy and understanding are very heavily on your side. Some of those I spoke with were cool toward me, a fact from which I took comfort rather than offense. Their loyalty lies with you, regardless of the change in your status, which they quite firmly attribute to my father.”

”They are kind,” Viola said, almost overcome with a great surge of nostalgia for home, or what had been her home for more than twenty years. And for her friends and neighbors there.

”Aunt Viola,” Anastasia said, and then paused. ”Oh, do you find it offensive when I call you that? I do not know what else to call you. I cannot address you as Miss Kingsley.”

”I am not offended,” Viola told her.

”Thank you,” Anastasia said. ”Aunt Viola, will you go back home? Please? It would mean so much to me. I do not suppose that argument will weigh a great deal with you, but . . . for Abigail's sake? I met some of her friends there, and they were genuinely melancholy about her absence and the reason for it. One of them even shed tears and dashed from the room while her mama tried to convince me that she was suffering a head cold. For Camille's sake too, though it would not surprise me if she chose to remain here rather than go with you.”

Viola frowned and shook her head. ”You will have children, Anastasia,” she said. ”Your eldest son will, of course, inherit from Avery eventually. But the younger ones will have to be provided for too.”

”Avery will provide for them all, no matter how many children we have,” Anastasia said. ”He is quite adamant about it. He warned me you would be sure to use that argument. He told me to tell you to think of a more convincing one-if you could.” She smiled, but there was anxiety in her eyes. ”Please will you go home and consider it your own? I have drawn up a will, Avery having insisted that what I brought to the marriage remain mine to be done with as I choose. I am leaving Hinsford to Harry and his descendants. There will be no point in his arguing against it. It is done and it will remain so. So if you go home, you will be merely keeping your son's future home in good order for him.”

Viola drew breath to speak, let the breath out, and drew it in again. ”You have made it nearly impossible for me to say no,” she said.

”You must say no, though,” Anastasia said, looking stricken, ”if you truly do not want to live there. But, please, do not refuse for any other reason. Do not punish me to that degree.”