Someone to Hold

Anna had rejected the only marriage offer he had made a few years ago, presumably because she did not love him. She had told him at the time that she thought of him as a brother. She had accepted Netherby’s offer, presumably because she did love him and he felt nothing like a brother. It was as simple as that. He was not suffering from unrequited love. His life was full and active and really far happier than he had ever expected it would be. But he would rather she had not been coming back to Bath so soon after the last time.

“When do you think you will be able to start?” Mrs. Kingsley asked him as they descended the stairs.

* * *

Joel was striding back downhill half an hour later, hoping to reach level ground before the lowering clouds overhead decided to drop their rain upon him. He wondered what Anna would have to say when she knew he was painting her sisters’ portraits. And what she thought of the fact that Camille was teaching at the school. Dash it, but he missed the long, almost daily letters they had exchanged when Anna had first left Bath.

Miss Camille Westcott was going to be difficult to paint. How was he to penetrate all that prickly hostility to discover the real person within, especially when she was determined that he would not succeed? It was altogether possible she would be his biggest artistic challenge yet. As he reached the bottom of the hill and strode briskly in the direction of Bath Abbey, the rain began to fall, not heavily, but in large drops that promised a downpour at any minute. He felt the first stirrings of the excitement a particularly intriguing commission always aroused in him. It did not happen often, but he loved it when it did. It made him feel more like an artist and less like a mere jobber—though he hoped he was never just that.

He ducked into the abbey just as the heavens opened, and took a seat in a back pew. He found that he was actually looking forward to sharing the schoolroom tomorrow. That had not happened since Anna left.

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.