Part 20 (2/2)
”Oh, I shall try,” he told her. ”It is my duty, after all. I shall have to marry a rich wife.”
The dancing was about to begin, and it was an intricate country dance during which there would be little opportunity for private conversation. He was still smiling. His eyes were even twinkling, as though he had made a joke. Camille hoped it was a joke. Alexander had always been an honorable, kindly man. Although she had never believed in romantic love herself, she had always expected that when he married it would be for love with a lady who matched him in temperament and amiability-and looks. It chilled her that he might put his duty to the people at Brambledean her father had so shamefully neglected before his own happiness. The old Camille would have understood and applauded. The new Camille wanted to cry out in protest.
But the music began.
Abby, she saw, was dancing with Avery. And it had all been very carefully calculated, she realized as the evening progressed. A duke and an earl danced the opening set with the two illegitimate daughters of the earl's predecessor and thus displayed to the company that they were perfectly respectable, that a slight to them might well result in a snub from both n.o.blemen and their families. Neither Camille nor Abigail lacked for partners all evening, and while Camille danced with both Avery and Uncle Thomas, Abigail danced every set except the first with men who were not part of the family, most of them young and unmarried. Abby might well remember this evening as the happiest of her life.
This, of course, was Bath, not London, and Abby could not always expect the sort of family support that was behind her tonight. But even so . . . Well, perhaps there was some hope after all. Perhaps what had happened was not the unalloyed disaster it had seemed at the time and until very recently.
Joel disappeared from the ballroom after dancing the opening set quite creditably with Elizabeth. Camille thought he must have left until she went into the tearoom later on Uncle Thomas's arm and saw that he was sitting with Miss Ford and a group of ladies who appeared to be hanging upon his every word. His eyes met hers across the room. She sat with her back to him and joined in the conversation at her own table. Ten minutes or so pa.s.sed before she felt a hand upon her shoulder.
”I believe the next set is to be a waltz,” Joel said, addressing her after nodding a greeting to the other occupants of the table. ”Will you dance it with me, Camille?”
”Yes.” She got to her feet and set her napkin down on the table. ”Thank you.”
”Or perhaps,” he said as they walked in the direction of the ballroom, ”you would feel safer if we merely promenaded about the perimeter of the room. I notice that is a favorite activity of a number of people.”
”Have you turned craven, Mr. Cunningham?” she asked, unfurling her fan and wafting it before her face.
”Not at all, Miss Westcott,” he said. ”I have turned chivalrous. I do not want to make a spectacle of you on the dance floor. Not to mention endangering your toes.”
”Are you saying, by any chance,” she asked him, ”that you do not trust my teaching skills, Mr. Cunningham?”
”I believe it is more my learning skills I doubt,” he said. ”But I am willing to give it a go if you are.”
”Give it a go?” She frowned at him. ”What sort of language is that, Mr. Cunningham?”
”The gutter?” he suggested.
And they dissolved into laughter, which was not at all a genteel thing to do, and Camille slid an arm through his.
”As Lady Overfield remarked earlier,” he said, ”the floor will doubtless be so crowded that no one will even notice us or any imperfections in our dancing prowess.”
That proved less true than either of them could have wished. The waltz, it seemed, was not yet as fas.h.i.+onable in Bath as it was in London, and most of the guests preferred to watch or else remain in the tearoom. A number of couples took to the floor, but there was plenty of room for them all to dance freely without fear of collisions-and plenty of room for them all to be observed.
”This,” Joel said as the music began, ”was not the most brilliant idea I have ever had.”
”Yes,” she said, looking very directly into his face, ”it was.”
His hand was warm against the back of her waist, his shoulder firm beneath her own hand. His other hand, clasping her own, felt large and rea.s.suring, and he smelled good of something indefinable-shaving soap, perhaps, new linen and coat fabric, perhaps. And of Joel. She was sure she could have been led here blindfolded and known exactly who held her in waltz position. His body heat enveloped her and she remembered last Sunday with an ache of longing. She so loved his lovemaking.
His gaze was intense, and she wondered if he was having similar thoughts. Oh, Joel, she asked him silently, what did you mean yesterday?
They waltzed with wooden legs again when the music began-one two three, one two three, three to one side, three back again-and Camille watched a flush begin to creep up his neck from beneath his cravat and something like panic gather in his eyes. She smiled at him and laughed softly.
And suddenly they were waltzing again as they had begun to do in the schoolroom, but without the inhibitions of s.p.a.ce and the limits of her breath as she both sang and danced. This time a full orchestra and the ballroom at the Upper Rooms swept them onward, and they danced and twirled in a world that was theirs and theirs alone, their eyes on each other, smiles on their lips.
It was strange being both aware of one's surroundings and all alone within them at the same time. She knew that Anna was dancing with Avery, Alexander and Elizabeth and Abby and Jessica with unknown partners-even though Abby and Jessica had not even made their official come-outs yet and would not be allowed even then to waltz in London until they had been given the nod of approval by one of the hostesses of Almack's Club. She was aware of other dancers and the swirl of color from gowns and the flash of jewels in the candlelight. She was aware of the older members of her family and other people standing about watching. She was aware of the smell of candles and perfumes, of the sounds of dancing feet and swis.h.i.+ng silks and satins beneath the beat of the music. She was even aware that she and Joel were attracting more than their fair share of attention, perhaps because of who she was, more probably because of whom Joel had just become. And yet all of these impressions merely formed a distant background to the world of music and movement and, yes, of romance, in which they danced.
The most wonderful, wonderful feeling in the world, she thought without trying to a.n.a.lyze the thought or distrust it or be made fearful by it-the most wonderful feeling in the world was being in love.
When the music ended, the two worlds came together, and Camille removed her hand from Joel's shoulder, slipped her other hand free of his, and smiled regretfully at him.
”I believe, Mr. Cunningham,” she said, ”I must be the world's best teacher.”
”Only, Miss Westcott,” he said, ”because you have the world's best pupil.”
They grinned inelegantly at each other.
”There is nowhere here to be even remotely private, is there?” he said. ”Come for a stroll outside with me, Camille?”
In the late evening, when it was dark out there? Without a chaperon? Without- ”I'll fetch my shawl,” she said.
The sounds of music and voices and laughter dimmed as soon as they stepped outdoors. There was the mere sliver of a new moon overhead. But the sky was cloudless and there was more than enough starlight to see by. The air had lost the heat of the day but was on the warm side of cool. There was no discernible wind.
”It is lovely out here,” she said, lifting her face to the sky.
”It is,” he agreed as they strolled the short distance along Bennett Street to the Circus. They crossed the road to the great circular garden at the center of it and strolled inside the rails. All around them rose the three ma.s.sive curved segments of the circle of houses with their elegant, cla.s.sical design. There were very few lights behind any of the windows. It was late.
”I painted all day,” he told her. ”I painted furiously and without a break and achieved that total focus I always aim for when I am creating. I painted your sister-from the sketches I made, from memory, and from that part of myself I can never describe in words. The portrait is not by any means finished, but I am terribly pleased with it. There is something so . . . delicate about her being that I have very much feared I would never quite capture it either in thought or in vision or on canvas. But I think I have caught her beauty, her joy in living, her vulnerability, her sadness, her unquenchable hope. Oh, I could pile word upon word and still not express what it is about her I sense. I have never painted anything so quickly. But it is not slipshod or shallow or . . .” His voice trailed away.
”I shall look forward to seeing it when it is finished,” she said, her voice prim. They were strolling about the inner perimeter of the garden.
He sighed. ”What I was trying to do,” he said, ”was focus my mind upon one thing so that all the thoughts that have been teeming through it and tormenting me for days would be silenced. I was more successful than I expected. But the thing is, Camille, that somewhere behind my concentration upon the one thing, my thoughts were being tamed and sorted so that when I finally stepped back from the canvas, I knew one thing with perfect clarity . . . well, two things, actually.”
She turned her head to look at him. She was using both hands to hold together the edges of her shawl, but he took one of her hands in his and laced their fingers. She grasped both edges of the shawl with the other hand. She did not say anything. But what did he expect her to say? She would think he had brought her out here to tell her about his day of painting.
”One thing I knew, the lesser thing,” he said, ”was that I am indeed going to keep that house and use my money to do something with it that will share the bounty and the beauty, something that will lift people's spirits and feed their souls. Particularly children, though not exclusively. I do not know either the what or the how yet, but I will. And I will live there to give it the warmth of home as well as everything else. I will have animals there and . . . people.”
Good G.o.d, he was a coward. He had not known that about himself until recently. He drew her arm beneath his own, their hands still clasped. He stopped walking and they faced outward, looking toward the steep descent of Gay Street.
”The other thing I knew with perfect clarity,” he said, ”was that I love you, that I want you in my life whatever that turns out to be, that I want to marry you and have children with you and make a family with you in that house-with children of our own bodies and adopted children and dogs and cats and . . . well, snakes and mice too, perhaps, if we have sons or intrepid daughters. I am not sure I can ask it of you. You have lived a very different life. You have grown up the daughter of an earl in an aristocratic household. You are a lady through and through. When I saw you tonight I thought you the most beautiful woman I had ever seen-I did not exaggerate that. I also thought you the grandest, the most remote, the most unattainable. It felt presumptuous to love you.”
”Joel,” she said, cutting his eloquence short. ”You can be sure.”
He looked at her blankly in the near darkness. He could be sure? He heard the echo of his own words-I am not sure I can ask it of you.
”Can I?” he asked.
”You will need a lady to run that house of yours while your head is among the clouds,” she said. ”One thing I can do with my eyes blindfolded and my hands tied behind my back is run a household. I may find it hair-raising to have shrieking children and barking dogs and squeaking mice and absentminded artists underfoot, but if I can walk into an orphanage and start teaching a schoolroom full of children of all ages and ability levels; if I can get them to knit a purple rope as a collective project and march them all about Bath clinging to it; if I can teach a certain absentminded artist to waltz, I can do anything.”
”But . . .” He was squeezing her fingers and her hand very tightly, he realized before relaxing his grip. ”Would you want to, Camille?”
She sighed, a sound of exaggerated long-suffering. ”The thing is, Joel,” she said, ”that I really am a lady by upbringing and cannot shrug off the training of a lifetime in a few brief months. I did it once, shockingly, almost a week ago when I asked you to take me home with you. I do not believe I could do it again. I could not possibly ask you to marry me. A lady does not, you know. That is a gentleman's task.”
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