Five

She was within a few hours of surviving her first week of teaching, Camille thought early the following afternoon. But could she do it all over again next week and the week after and so on? If, that was, she was kept on after her fortnight’s trial. How did people manage to work for a living day in and day out all their lives? Well, she would find out. She might be sacked at the end of next week, but she would not quit on her own, and she would find something else to do if she was judged not fit to teach here. For if she had learned anything in the last week and a half, it was that when one had taken that first determined step out into the rest of one’s life, one had to keep on striding forward—or retreat and be forever defeated.

She would not retreat.

She would not be defeated.

And that was that.

She had done a great deal of soul-searching last evening after reading Aunt Louise’s cheerful, affectionate letter, full of plans for what they would all do in Bath, and after listening to her grandmother and Abigail talk all evening about the myriad pleasures to which they could look forward. The arrival of such illustrious persons would set the whole of Bath society agog, Grandmama had predicted, and everyone would be eager to be a part of any entertainment at which they could be expected to appear. Camille and Abigail would at last be able to step out of the shadows in which they had been lurking to be acknowledged as part of the family.

Camille was not at all sure she wanted that to happen. She was not sure it ought to happen. She knew she was not ready to rely upon the influence of her family to draw her into a sort of life that could not possibly be more than a shadow of its former self. She did not know yet what she wanted or even who she was, but she was sure—at least, she thought she was—that she needed to stand on her own feet until she had discovered the answers. Would she ever discover them?

She had made a new decision before she lay down for the night. As a result, she had arisen at first light this morning to write a letter and make a few other preparations, and still be able to arrive early for school in order to have a word with Miss Ford. She had learned from a chance remark made during luncheon earlier in the week that the room that had been Anastasia’s when she lived and taught here was still unoccupied. It seemed to be looked upon as some sort of shrine. And this, Camille could almost imagine visitors being told as they were shown around the building, was where the Duchess of Netherby once lived when she was known as plain Anna Snow. Camille had asked this morning if she might move into the room and pay for her board out of her earnings. Miss Ford had looked at her with disconcerting intensity for several silent moments before asking if she had ever seen the room. Camille had not, and Miss Ford took her there.

It was shockingly small. Her dressing room at Hinsford Manor had surely been larger. The furnishings consisted of a narrow bed, an equally narrow chest of four drawers, a small table with an upright wooden chair, and a washstand with a bowl and pitcher upon it. There were three hooks affixed to the wall behind the door, a mirror on the door, and a small mat beside the bed.

Camille had swallowed hard, lest she make some inadvertent sound of distress, thought about changing her mind, and then, before she could, asked again if she could have the room. Miss Ford had said yes, and Camille had gone in search of the porter to ask if he could make arrangements to have the bag and portmanteau she had packed earlier fetched from the house at the Royal Crescent. She had also handed him the letter she had written to her grandmother and Abigail before leaving for school.

She had packed in the bags only what she considered the bare essentials for her new life, but even so she wondered if there would be space for everything in the room. The bags had arrived before luncheon, with a note in Abby’s hand, though she had not had time to unpack yet or read the letter. Actually, she had been deliberately avoiding it.

Camille felt a bit sick to the stomach and was glad she had had no time to eat any luncheon. Even now she could change her mind if she wished, of course. Or tomorrow, or the day after. It was not as if she had done something irrevocable. Except she knew that if she admitted defeat on this one point, then she would soon be admitting it on every point.

She would not change her mind. If Anastasia had been able to live and work here, then so could she.

By the early afternoon, she was feeling exhausted and, as usual, untidy and inadequate. The children, in contrast, were as animated and as noisy as they had been all week. Did children ever speak at any volume lower than a shriek? Did they ever run out of energy?

And then the schoolroom door opened to admit Mr. Cunningham, and Camille felt that his arrival was the last straw. As if she did not have enough to think about without wondering what he thought of her as a teacher and as a person—and without knowing that he would be watching and listening, as she had invited him to do, so that he could paint that infernal portrait for Grandmama. She had even offered to answer any written questions with which he cared to present her. Surely he would not dare. She glared at him as though he had already done something to offend her—as he had. He had come.

He stopped on the threshold, as he had done two days ago, one hand on the doorknob, and gazed at the scene before him in open astonishment. As well he might.

“We are learning to knit, Mr. Cunningham,” Jane Evans, one of the youngest and tiniest of the girls, screeched in her high, piping voice a moment before she started to wail, “Miss, I have dropped all my s-s-stitches.”

Again? Was this the third or the fourth time? This had not been a good idea, Camille thought as she hurried to the rescue.

“So I see,” the art master replied. “It is a hive of industry in here. The boys too?”

A typical male remark. Camille did not even dignify it with another glare. She was busy anyway, picking up stitches.

“In some countries, sir,” Cyrus North informed him, “it is only the men and boys who knit, while the women and girls spin the wool. Miss Westcott told us so when Tommy said only girls knit and sew.”

How else was she to have persuaded the boys not to mutiny?

“We are making a rope, sir,” Olga Norton shrieked. Her segment of it was already a couple of inches long, she and a few of the other older girls having already learned to knit had considerable practice. They were both able and willing to be Camille’s helpers in the gargantuan task of showing the boys and the younger girls how it was done and in rescuing them from almost constant difficulties and mishaps.

Paul Hubbard was darting after his ball of wool, which had dropped from his lap yet again to roll merrily across the floor, unwinding as it went.

“Ah, a rope. Yes, of course,” Mr. Cunningham said cheerfully, proceeding all the way into the room and closing the door behind him. “In twenty different sections. Why did I not see at a glance? I feel compelled to ask, however. Why a rope?”

He was clearly enjoying himself—at her expense, Camille thought. It really was the maddest idea she had had yet.

A chorus of voices was raised in reply, and a score of stitches were dropped and half a dozen wool balls rolled in pursuit of Paul’s. It was only amazing, perhaps, that most of the children had stitches on their needles at all and that almost all had at least a small fringe of what looked roughly like knitted fabric hanging from them.

He was grinning. How dared he? He would be undermining her authority.

“We went on another outing this morning,” Camille explained, silencing at least for a moment the clamor around her. “We walked over the bridge and along Great Pulteney Street to Sydney Gardens. Everyone was obedient to the command to walk in a line two by two, holding hands with a partner. Unfortunately, though, each pair chose a different speed and a different moment at which to hurry up or slow down or halt completely to observe something of interest. I was really more surprised than I can say when we arrived at the gardens to discover that everyone was present and accounted for even if a few were still straggling up from some distance away. And the same thing happened on our return to the school. I would not have been at all shocked to discover that I had lost a pupil or three on the way.”

“Oh, not three, miss,” Winifred informed her. “We were walking in twos, holding hands.”

Only Winifred . . .

“A good observation, Winifred,” Camille said. “Two pupils or four, then.”

“Or you could have lost some of us in the maze, miss,” Jimmy Dale added to a flurry of laughter. “We all went into it, sir, and we all got lost because we kept dashing about in a panic and listening to one another instead of working out a system, which is what Miss Westcott said afterward we ought to have done. She had to come in there herself to rescue the last four of us or we might still be there, and we would all have missed our luncheon and Cook would have been cross.”

“Miss Westcott did not get lost herself in the maze?” Mr. Cunningham asked. He was still grinning, his arms crossed over his chest, and still clearly enjoying himself enormously. And he was looking more handsome than Camille wanted him to look. Whatever must he be thinking of her? Paul had retrieved his ball of wool and was chasing someone else’s, causing the two lengths of wool to tangle together.

“She did get lost,” Richard said, “but she found the four who was missing and brought them out by using a system. She was not in there more than ten minutes.”

“Eleven,” Winifred said.

“The four who were missing, Richard. Plural,” Camille said. “We are knitting a rope, Mr. Cunningham, so that everyone can hold on to it whenever we go walking. As well as keeping everyone together and safe, it will teach cooperation. The older pupils will have to shorten their stride to accommodate the younger ones, and the brisk walkers will have to slow down a bit while the loiterers will have to keep a steady pace.”

Mr. Cunningham was looking at her with laughing eyes, and Tommy announced that he had two more stitches on his needle than he had had when he started the row and asked if that was a good thing.

“Artists,” Camille said firmly, “you will be delighted to know that it is time to go to your art lesson.”

There was one faint cheer and a few protests that the pieces would never grow long enough to be crocheted together into a rope if they did not keep at their knitting. But within minutes the art class was in progress. Mr. Cunningham was teaching his group an actual skill today. He was demonstrating with charcoal on paper how to achieve perspective and depth. The accomplished knitters who remained on Camille’s side of the room settled down with clacking needles to a steady rhythm, and the learners gradually mastered the art of knitting from one end of a row to the other with a regular tension and no stitches either added or dropped. Most followed her suggestion to unwind a length of wool before they actually needed it so that the ball would not be constantly jerked onto the floor to roll away. Within an hour Camille felt able to pick up a book and read aloud to a relatively tranquil room.

She was one step closer to surviving her first week.

And now she was fully and officially exhausted—with bags still to unpack upstairs. She was also still half convinced that she must be the world’s worst teacher. But there was a certain feeling of triumph that she had done what she had set out to do. She had even gone one step further than she had originally planned. She was on her own. On Monday she would start her second week of teaching and perhaps do better.

Why, then, did she feel like bawling?

Jane, seemingly in unconscious sympathy, suddenly burst into noisy tears as one of her needles jerked free of the stitches and went somersaulting end over end over her desk to clatter onto the floor. Camille lowered the book with an inward sigh, but one of the older girls had already hurried to the child’s rescue with helping hands and soothing murmurs.

*   *   *

They were knitting a rope in more than twenty parts. Whatever had put such an insane idea into her head? It afforded Joel endless amusement for the rest of the afternoon. Would it not have been less costly, less trouble, and a good deal faster to buy one or, better yet, to ask Roger if there was a length lying around somewhere in the building? She must have applied to Miss Ford to use some of the cash that was reserved for extra school supplies. Joel wondered if she realized it was Anna who had set up that fund quite recently and promised to replenish it whenever it ran low. Who, he wondered, was going to join all the pieces into one when they were finished? Had she thought that far ahead?

And why bright purple?

But perhaps, he thought as the afternoon wore on, it was actually a brilliant idea she had had, just as the shop had been. Knitting was a useful skill to have, for boys as well as for girls, but how could one persuade the boys and the reluctant girls to want to learn and keep at the task unless one could interest them in the production of some specific object? And how could one persuade the children, especially the older ones, to walk the streets of Bath clinging to a purple rope that would connect them together like an umbilical cord and make keeping an eye on them easier for their teacher unless one could give them a proprietary interest in the thing? How was one to devise a practical project on which all could work together regardless of age and gender, and one on which the older and more experienced could help the younger and more halting? She was actually teaching far more than the basic skill itself. And the children were excited . . . about learning to knit.

His own group was attentive enough as he taught some of the tricks of creating depth and perspective. But when they proceeded to work on the exercise he set, they also listened to the story she was reading and an unusual peace descended on the schoolroom, broken only occasionally by a cry of anguish from one of the knitters. Each time that happened, one of the other children went quietly to the rescue so that Miss Westcott could continue with the story. The air of contentment in the room was especially extraordinary for a Friday afternoon in July.

She looked as forbidding and humorless as ever, Joel thought, observing her covertly as he kept an eye on his own group, offering quiet suggestions and comments as needed. She spoke like an army sergeant, even when reading aloud. She displayed none of the sparkle and warmth that had characterized Anna and made her so beloved in the schoolroom. The children ought to be as miserable as they had been under Miss Nunce’s brief, unlamented reign. That they were not was a bit of a puzzle. Miss Westcott was a bit of a puzzle. She looked one thing, yet was another.

He had no idea how he was going to paint her portrait. If he painted her as he saw her, there would be no hint at all of the creative teacher who somehow appealed to children of varying ages and made them excited about learning. And no one looking at such a painting would guess that she was capable of a certain caustic sense of humor—I would not have been at all shocked to discover that I had lost a pupil or three on the way.

He wondered if it was going to be possible to get to know her well enough to paint a credible portrait. Would she allow him to get close enough? And did he really want to? Part of him resented the fact that though different from Anna in manner and methods, she was just as surely capturing the hearts of the children that he still thought of as Anna’s. He resented the fact that when he glanced across the room, it was Anna’s sister he saw and Anna’s sister he heard. She lacked Anna’s beauty and charm. And yet . . .

Most of all, perhaps, he resented the fact that he might just come to like Miss Camille Westcott. It seemed disloyal to Anna.

A number of the children, including six from his group, took their knitting with them when school was dismissed for the day. They were eager to complete the rope so that they could use it. They were voluntarily assigning themselves homework. Was the sun about to fall from the sky?

When Joel had tidied his side of the room and turned to take his leave of Miss Westcott, he saw that she was seated at one of the small desks, frowning in concentration over a length of knitting in her hands.

“A weak link in your rope?” he asked.

“Oh, it appears perfect,” she said without looking up. “By some miracle there is the correct number of stitches on the needle. However, one was dropped about eight rows back, and one was acquired from an innocent loop two rows ago. I leave you to do the arithmetic.”

“They cancel each other out,” he said, grinning and strolling closer. The short length of knitted fabric looked considerably less than perfect. Some of the stitches had been very loosely knitted and resembled coarse lace, while others had been pulled tight and were all bunched together. The result was that the strip looked a bit like an arthritic snake. “You will turn a blind eye?”

“Certainly not,” she said curtly as she afforded him one withering glance. “I shall make the corrections. Cedric Barnes is only five and he has done his best. However, he must have something to come back to that looks at least half decent or he might lose heart.”

Joel raised his eyebrows as he watched her weave the dropped stitch up through the rows. He turned again to leave, but hesitated.

“You are not eager to go home?” he asked. “On a Friday afternoon?”

“I am home,” she told him as she knitted along the row in order to drop the loop that ought not to be a stitch. She did not explain.

“Meaning?” he asked.

“I have moved in here,” she told him. “It was too far to walk back and forth each day. I have taken the room that used to be Anastasia’s.”

He stared at the top of her head, transfixed with dislike and something that felt very like fury. What the devil was she up to? Was nothing sacred? Was she trying to step right into Anna’s shoes and . . . obliterate her? And why did she persist in calling Anna Anastasia, even if it was her correct name?

“That room is rather small, is it not?” he said.

“It has a bed and a table and chair and enough storage space for those belongings I have brought here,” she said. “It has a washstand and bowl and jug and hooks on the wall and a mirror on the back of the door. It was big enough for Anastasia. I daresay it will be big enough for me.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Why?” he asked, and wondered if he sounded as hostile as he felt.

“I have told you why.” She had dropped the loop back to its original place and was pulling the knitting into shape about it. When he said nothing, she rolled up the ball of wool and pressed it firmly onto the ends of the needles before pinning the little name tag she had prepared to the knitting and taking it over to the cupboard, where she set it on a shelf with the others that had been left behind. “I do not have to explain myself to you.”

“No,” he agreed, “you do not.” And it was a bit ridiculous of him to feel offended. Anna was long gone. She lived in a ducal mansion and was unlikely to need the room here ever again. He turned to leave.

“Anastasia found her family at the age of twenty-five,” she said, fussing with the already tidy shelves of the cupboard, “and had to learn to adjust to relatives who were essentially strangers to her. I remember that when she first learned the truth about herself her instinct was to turn her back on the new reality and return here. I hoped with all my heart that she would do just that so that we could forget about her and carry on with our lives as we always had. That would not have been possible, of course, even if she had come back here. It would not have been possible for us or for her. The contents of a Pandora’s box can never be stuffed back in once they have been released. I have to make the opposite adjustment. I have to learn not to belong to people who have always been my family. I have to learn to be an orphan. Not literally, perhaps, but to all intents and purposes.”

“You are not an orphan in any sense of the word,” he said harshly, irritated with her anew and wishing he had left when he had first intended to. “You have relatives on both sides and have always known them. You have a mother still living and a full sister and brother. You have a half sister who would love you if you would allow it. Yet you insist upon cutting yourself off from all of them as though they do not want you and moving to an orphanage as though you belong here.”

“I know I do not belong,” she said, “except in the sense that I teach here. I do not expect you to understand, Mr. Cunningham. You do not have the experience to understand what has happened to me, just as I do not have the experience to understand what has happened to you in the course of your life.”

“That is where human empathy comes in,” he said. “If we did not have it and cultivate it, Miss Westcott, we would not understand or sympathize with anyone, for we are all unique in our experience.”

She turned her head toward him, her eyebrows raised, while the fingertips of one hand drummed on a shelf. “You are quite right, of course,” she said. “Something catastrophic has happened to my life as I knew it, Mr. Cunningham. In the months since then I have wallowed in misery and denial and, yes, self-pity. You were quite right about that. I will not do it any longer. And I will not cling to relatives who would be kind but would possibly do me more harm than good, unintentional though it would be. I must discover for myself who I am and where I belong, and in order to do that I must put some distance between myself and them, for they would coddle me if I would allow it. Some distance, not a total one. I shall visit my grandmother and Abigail. I shall see my Westcott relatives when they come here, supposedly to celebrate a birthday. Did I tell you they are all coming, not just Anastasia and Avery? For Grandmama Westcott’s seventieth birthday? But . . . I must and will learn to stand alone. I can do that better if I live here. Please do not let me keep you. You must be eager to go home.”

He stood and stared at her for a few moments, irritated, disliking her. Not understanding her. Not wanting to understand. Dash it all. Why could her maternal grandmother not have lived in the wilds of Scotland? He had not needed any of this. He had needed to get over Anna with all the dignity he could muster and in his own good time.

“You had better come and have tea with me,” he said abruptly, surprising himself. “Have you ever been to Sally Lunn’s? You have not lived until you have tasted one of the delicacies named after her. They are famous.”

Her lips thinned. “I have not yet been paid, Mr. Cunningham,” she said.

Good God, was she penniless? He knew she had been cut off entirely by her father’s will and that she had refused to share any of Anna’s fortune. But . . . literally penniless?

“I have invited you to come and have tea with me, Miss Westcott,” he said. “That means I will be paying the bill. Go and fetch your bonnet.”

“If this is your way of gathering information about me so that you can paint a convincing portrait of me, Mr. Cunningham,” she said before leaving the room ahead of him, “I would warn you that I will not make it easy for you. But if you do get to know me, please let me know what you discover. I have no idea who I am.”

He stared after her for a few moments, half annoyed, half puzzled, and quite sure this was the last thing he wanted to be doing on a Friday afternoon. But despite himself, he found himself grinning before following her out of the room.

I have no idea who I am.

There was that dry sense of humor again—directed against herself.