Part 17 (2/2)

”Punish you?” Viola frowned. ”Is that what I would be doing? But I suppose you are right. I wish you were not such a . . . pleasant young lady, Anastasia. It would be a great deal easier to dislike you if you were not.”

For some reason they both laughed.

”Yet the offer is made for selfish reasons,” Anastasia said. ”I want to feel happy about everything in my life, but at the moment I feel happy only about almost everything. I cannot close that gap unless I can somehow make amends for what I know was neither my fault nor yours. Think about it, Aunt Viola. Talk to Camille and Abigail about it, and to Mrs. Kingsley, if you will. Talk to Avery and all the others. It is your right to live in the home my father provided for you. It is not right that it be taken from you because of his wickedness. He was wicked, sad as I am to say it.”

Viola sighed. ”He was my husband, Anastasia,” she said. ”And though I know now that he never truly was, it is nevertheless hard for me to be disloyal to the vows I made him when I married him. He was as he was, and he did something right, at least. He fathered four fine young people.”

”Four? You include me?” Anastasia glanced at her, her eyes suspiciously bright. But they had completed the circuit of the room and Avery was stepping forward to meet them, his lazy eyes taking in his wife's unshed tears. Viola felt a wave of envy for the sort of love she had known fleetingly once upon a time, before her father presented her with the perfect marriage partner.

”I will think about your suggestion, Anastasia,” she said. ”Avery, do I have you to thank for Harry's promotion to lieutenant?”

”Me, Aunt?” He looked astonished. ”Harry made it perfectly clear at the start that he would allow me to purchase his commission but nothing else. I understood that he meant it, that he would be mortally offended if I were to intervene to purchase promotions for him. I took him at his word. And has he been promoted?”

”A letter arrived yesterday addressed to Camille and Abigail,” she said. ”He sounded quite excited. And thank you for not interfering. It is more important that he acquire a sense of self-worth than that he achieve high rank in his regiment.”

”It is to be hoped that he will acquire both,” he said. ”I have great faith in young Harry.”

Joel kept himself busy during the first half of the week in an attempt not to be overwhelmed by the new fact in his life. He did not want to be the sort who would dash out and squander a fortune on riotous living and ruin his own character in the process. And it would be quite easy to do, he had realized in alarm down by the river on Sunday. Money held immediate and almost overwhelming temptation.

He also did not want to think too much about Camille-or, rather, what he owed Camille. He owed her marriage. Having an affair with her was somehow quite different from having an affair with Edwina had been. With Edwina it had been like a game in which they both knew the rules and had no wish to change them. With Camille it was no game. He knew she had slept with him not just for the simple enjoyment of s.e.x. And it had not been just that with him either. The trouble was that he did not know quite what it had been. Love? But frequently she annoyed him enormously, and, to be fair, he believed he annoyed her too at times. Regardless of what it was between them, of course, he did owe her marriage. He just did not want to think about it yet. His head felt a bit as though it had been invaded by wasps or hornets.

But good G.o.d, the s.e.x had been enormously enjoyable.

He spent most of Monday working. He was at the house on the Royal Crescent during the morning, explaining to Abigail Westcott how he planned to pose and paint her. He sent her off to change into her favorite dress, not necessarily the most fas.h.i.+onable or the finest or the most admired or even the prettiest, but the one in which she felt most herself. In the meanwhile he chose a chair and its correct positioning with relation to the light and the other aspects of the room. Her mother was there, taking the place of the maid who usually sat silently in a corner as chaperon.

Abigail returned wearing a light blue cotton frock, which looked well-worn and slightly faded. Her mother looked at her somewhat askance, but Joel knew immediately that it was perfect. Her hair was dressed simply and took nothing away from the pure youthful prettiness of her face. He had had some doubt about the cheerful floral upholstery of the chair he had chosen, but when she sat in it, leaning slightly forward, and gazed at him with her happy, eager face and her sparkling, slightly wounded eyes, he knew that the painting he wanted was before his eyes and merely needed to be melded with the sketch he had made yesterday and then transferred to canvas in his studio.

”No, ma'am,” he explained when Miss Kingsley asked him if he would be painting here at the house. ”When I paint from life, my mind becomes too caught up in getting every fine detail correct and my spirit is silenced. And my subject becomes stiff and wooden from holding a pose and an expression. No, I will sketch what I see now as quickly as I can and then paint in my studio. If I need to see the original again, as I probably will, then we will set up this scene again.”

He spent all afternoon on the painting and the evening too until the light became too poor. He was a bit uneasy that it was all happening so fast. Each step of the process usually took him a great deal longer. But inspiration was something that must be trusted above all else. He had learned that over the past ten years or so. And he was inspired now. He saw the girl as she was and as she must appear on his canvas, and he could not paint fast enough so that he would not lose that spark in himself that would do her justice. How did one capture light and hope and vulnerability on canvas without losing the fine balance among the three and without giving in to the temptation to paint the merely mundane-a very pretty girl in her case?

A notice of the death appeared in the Bath papers on Tuesday morning and identified Joel by name as both the great-nephew of the deceased and the princ.i.p.al beneficiary of his will. Mr. c.o.x-Phillips was described in the notice as one of the wealthiest men in Somerset and, indeed, the whole of western England.

Joel went to the funeral. It was at a church in a village north of Bath, where apparently his great-uncle had wors.h.i.+pped regularly until the last six months or so, when deteriorating health had kept him at home. Joel was a bit surprised at how well attended the funeral was. He sat alone in a pew at the back, and he stayed behind the small crowd that gathered around the grave in the churchyard afterward for the burial. Uxbury was there, making a show of dignified grief, as were the two men with him. Joel did not think Uxbury had seen him until, just as Joel turned away at the end to return to his waiting carriage, the man leveled a steady look at him. Joel had not made any display of grief during the ceremonies, though he felt some. Perhaps, he thought in the carriage on the way back to Bath, it was the grief of regret for what might have been. If he had learned the truth a year ago, even six months ago, perhaps he could have had some sort of relations.h.i.+p with the man in whose house his grandparents and his mother had lived. Now it was too late.

He went to the offices of Henley, Parsons, and Crabtree in the afternoon. Mr. Crabtree seemed to take satisfaction in informing him that Mr. c.o.x-Phillips's relatives did indeed intend to contest the will with all the vigor of their combined influence. They would not succeed, he told Joel again. They had remained in Bath, however, though they had removed from the house. In the meantime, the solicitor produced some papers and spread them upon his desk, went into a lengthy explanation that Joel would have liked to have translated into intelligible English, and concluded with a rough estimate of the total fortune, which might have had Joel's jaw hanging if he had not been clenching his teeth so hard.

He would have painted himself into oblivion for the rest of the day if his door had not been almost constantly knocked upon from the moment he returned home. Everyone he had ever called friend, and a few who were mere acquaintances, came to commiserate with him at his loss and congratulate him upon his good fortune. Even Miss Ford came from the orphanage, accompanied for propriety's sake by Roger, the porter. She had closed the school for the rest of the week, she informed him. She supposed he would have more important things to do on Wednesday and Friday than teach his art pupils, and Miss Westcott certainly did. The Dowager Countess of Riverdale had arrived in Bath with her eldest daughter, Lady Matilda Westcott, and the family was busy celebrating and wished to include Miss Westcott in their activities. Miss Ford herself had been invited to join the family at the public tea in the Upper a.s.sembly Rooms on Thursday afternoon and to attend a private a.s.sembly there on Sat.u.r.day evening.

Anna and Netherby called at Joel's rooms too not long after Miss Ford left-the first time Anna had ever been there. She hugged him tightly while Netherby looked on complacently, exclaimed with delight at the size of his rooms, examined closely the portrait of his mother, and sat beside him on the sofa, patting his hand and a.s.suring him that if her experiences were anything to judge by, he would soon recover from his bewilderment and reconcile his life to the new reality without losing himself in the process.

”For that is one's greatest fear,” she said, echoing what he had been feeling. ”One starts to believe that one does not know oneself at all. It is a terrifying feeling. But of course you are who you have always been, and you will get through to the other side more or less intact.”

”It is the less part that worries me,” he said, and they both laughed.

Netherby informed him that he had better attend the public tea in the Upper a.s.sembly Rooms on Thursday so that they could all boast of an acquaintance with the man who had become the sensation of Bath.

”There is nothing like the background of an orphanage upbringing to lend an irresistible aura of romance to a story like yours,” he said with a weary-sounding sigh.

Anna laughed at her husband. ”And you must come to the a.s.sembly on Sat.u.r.day too,” she said to Joel. ”Camille has taught you to waltz, and I simply must see for myself how apt a pupil you have been.”

”I can go up and see the house whenever I wish,” Joel said impulsively. ”I believe I would rather not go alone.” But, no, it would not do to invite Anna to accompany him-or even Anna and Netherby. ”The gardens seem extensive and well tended, and the view is spectacular. Perhaps some of your family would like to come up there with me-for a picnic, maybe, which I will provide, of course. On Friday afternoon?”

He was struck by the dizzying fact that he could afford such an extravagance.

”Oh, Joel,” Anna said. ”That would be wonderful. Would it not, Avery?”

”I can confidently predict,” Netherby said, ”that your newly acquired property will be mobbed by Westcotts on Friday, Cunningham.”

That was settled, then, it seemed.

Camille did not come to his rooms. But of course she did not. Had he expected she would? It seemed to Joel far longer than two days since he had seen her. Now, with school canceled for the rest of week, he would not see her until Thursday afternoon. It seemed like an eternity away.

He did not go to her either. He did not know why. He felt a bit . . . shy? That was not at all the right word. But something had happened on Sunday to change everything, and he was feeling a bit-well, panicked. And he was feeling too overwhelmed by everything else to sort out his feelings for her and do what must be done. Except that it was not just what must be done, was it? Surely, it was what he wanted to do. Quite frankly, he did not know anything any longer, least of all the meaning of love. And his obligation to Camille was not only about love, anyway. She might be with child by him. And even if she was not . . .

And so his thoughts chased one another about in his head.

On Wednesday morning, not in the finest of moods, he took himself off with firm step and gritted teeth to a tailor and a bootmaker and a haberdasher.

Twenty.

Camille half expected to see Joel on Monday while telling herself she did not expect him at all. She more than half expected him on Tuesday after her attention was drawn to the death notice in the morning paper. It was also the day of the funeral, she knew. He did not come, even though Miss Ford told her she had been to call upon him and that she had seen the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Netherby's carriage approaching the house as she left. Miss Ford also told her that she had canceled school for the rest of the week so that Camille could spend time with her family during their brief visit to Bath.

He would not need to come on Wednesday, then, with the school closed. And, indeed, he did not come. Camille tried to tell herself that she was not disappointed. She tried, in fact, not to think of disappointment as a possibility. Why should he have come at any time during those three days, after all? Just because she had invited him to take her to bed and he had obliged her?

Ah, but it had not felt as sordid as that at the time. And at the time-or, at least, between times-they had talked and laughed and even been silly and had behaved like the best of friends.

Oh, she knew nothing! He did not come.

She was busy during those days. She taught on Monday and Tuesday. The main focus of attention was the knitted blanket, which had fired the children's imaginations. Some of the girls wanted to learn to crochet so that they could help weave the squares together eventually and make a pretty border about the finished product. A few wanted to learn to embroider so that they could implement the idea one of the boys had to st.i.tch the name of each knitter across the relevant square. A few of the boys dashed away to measure the babies' cots and work out the size of each square and how many they would need to knit in order to make a blanket of the right size. Another of the boys made a design for the blanket, using the four colors of wool they were working with. During their knitting sessions the children took turns reading stories to the others.

Camille played with Sarah as often as she was able and gave some attention to Winifred, having realized that that was what the girl craved. She walked to the Royal York Hotel on Monday afternoon, having received a note from Aunt Louise to inform her that her grandmother and Aunt Matilda had arrived. She went to a reception her maternal grandmother gave Tuesday evening and surprised herself by almost enjoying it. It felt treacherously like old times to mingle and make polite conversation with Grandmama's carefully selected guests.

Her mother took her aside late in the evening, and they sat together on a love seat while her mother told her she was going to return to Hinsford.

”To live?” Camille frowned.

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