Someone to Hold

It was always an important part of his lessons, getting his pupils to look at one another’s work, not to rank them best to worst, but to see how the vision each had of a subject was very different from everyone else’s. Not necessarily inferior, not necessarily superior, just different.

She was Anna’s sister. No, correction—Anna’s half sister. But how could there be even that close a relationship between the two women? Anna was all grace and light and warmth and laughter. Miss Camille Westcott was . . . different.

Not inferior? Not superior? Just different?

* * *

Her grandmother and Abigail had returned from their outing by the time Camille arrived home, all flushed and breathless from the sun and the wind and her climb up the hill. They both came out of the drawing room to stand at the top of the stairs and stare down upon her in what looked like mingled consternation and relief.

“Camille?” her grandmother asked. “Wherever have you been? Why did you not wait for the carriage and one of us to accompany you? You did not even take a maid. That is most unlike you.”

It would have been most unlike Lady Camille Westcott, certainly. Grandmama did not seem to fully understand how everything had changed.

“I have taken employment,” she told them, not even attempting to lower her voice so no servant would hear. They would know soon enough anyway. And this pretense of continued gentility must cease.

“What?” Her grandmother’s hand went to her throat.

“Oh, Cam,” Abigail cried, hurrying downstairs, both hands extended, “whatever have you done? What sort of employment?”

“Not the school, surely,” her grandmother said. “Oh, I knew as soon as I read that notice in the paper aloud yesterday that I ought to have bitten out my tongue instead and thrown the paper on the fire. Not the orphanage school, Camille?”

After Camille had returned from that first visit to the orphanage, she had mentioned telling Miss Ford that she might be interested in the post if it ever became available. Her grandmother had been aghast.

“I have been there and spoken to Miss Ford,” Camille said. “She has agreed to take me on as the new teacher.” She did not add that the matron had been dubious about her qualifications and lack of experience and had finally agreed to give her a fortnight’s trial, with no guarantee that she would offer permanent employment at the end of it.

Both her grandmother and Abigail argued and wheedled and cajoled and even shed tears for upward of half an hour after Camille had joined them in the drawing room.

“You do not need to work for a living, Camille,” her grandmother argued. “I offered to make you both an allowance when you first came here, and you refused. Now I must insist that you accept, that you resume living in the manner to which you are accustomed. Your lives have changed, of course, but there is no reason in the world to believe they have been totally destroyed. Your mother was always held in the highest esteem as a Kingsley, and you and Abigail are impeccably well-bred, Camille. You are both young and accomplished and beautiful. You are my granddaughters. I am highly respected in Bath society and not without influence, you know. Your father’s relatives have not turned their backs on you either. On the contrary, they have all written to you, some of them more than once. There is every reason to believe you will both be able to make perfectly decent marriages, even if you must aim a little lower than the titled ranks of the nobility. Not only do you not need to work, Camille—you may actually do yourself real harm if you do. You may find that you will no longer be accepted for who you are.”

“And who is that, Grandmama?” Camille asked. She was genuinely unable to answer the question for herself, though she had been asking it for a few months now. Her grandmother could not answer it either, it seemed, or perhaps she had realized the futility of arguing with the granddaughter she had always called stubborn even when Camille was a child. She got to her feet and left the room, shaking her head in clear frustration.

And of course she left Camille feeling guilty. Perhaps Grandmama was right. Perhaps their lives—hers and Abigail’s—would settle into something resembling the way they had been if they effaced themselves and allowed family members to smooth the way for them to find a level of society where they would fit and husbands who would settle for their breeding and would not refine too much upon their birth. Perhaps Abby would be happy with that solution. Camille ought to be too. What was the alternative, after all?

But she could not settle for a pale shadow of her former existence. Good heavens, she had been Lady Camille Westcott, daughter of an earl. She had moved freely among the highest echelons of the ton. She had been betrothed to the very handsome, very eligible Viscount Uxbury. Oh no, she would not settle. She would rather teach in an orphanage school.

There was a loud silence in the room, she realized suddenly, even though she was not alone. But the silence would not have been loud if she had been, would it?

“Cam,” Abigail said, a soft cushion clasped to her bosom, “why the orphanage? Why does it hold such an attraction for you? I agree it is time we softened our attitude to Anastasia. I thought we both agreed to that after she and Avery called here on the way home from their wedding journey. I think we ought to write to her occasionally and somehow hold out an olive branch. She is, after all, Avery’s wife and Jessica’s sister-in-law and none of what has happened is her fault. She is part of the family whether we like it or not. But why your fascination with that horrid place where she grew up?”