Someone to Hold

The three men left without further incident, everyone sat down again, conversation buzzed, waiters rushed about clearing debris, making up the table again with fresh linen and bringing fresh tea and food, and within minutes anyone arriving at the Upper Rooms would not have known that something very ungenteel had just happened there. Indeed, it seemed probable to Joel that many people who had been there the whole time did not realize it either. A number of conversations were probably on the topic of how dangerous new boots and shoes could be before the soles had become properly scuffed by use.

Perhaps it was as well he had been unable to purchase a ready-made pair yesterday.

“I owe you a debt of gratitude, Mr. Cunningham,” Camille’s mother said to him. “I am deeply ashamed that I once approved that young man’s courtship of my daughter.”

“I understand we are to go picnicking tomorrow, Mr. Cunningham,” Lady Overfield said. “I look forward to it enormously. I confess to a great curiosity to see your new home.”

Twenty-one

Camille was basking in the sunshine out in the garden the following morning. She was seated on a stone bench while Sarah sat at her feet, grasping blades of grass and pulling them out before looking up at Camille, thoroughly proud of herself. Winifred was sitting cross-legged on the ground, watching her. Several other children were outside, involved in various games. Everyone was enjoying the brief holiday from school, though most of the children had greeted Camille cheerfully.

She had not been invited. The family was going up to Mr. Cox-Phillips’s house, now Joel’s, this afternoon for a picnic and probably a tour of the house.

She had not been invited.

Yesterday, on her first full appearance in public, she had been called a bastard. She hugged her elbows with both hands and smiled down at the baby, whose triumphant smile displayed her two new bottom teeth. Joel, like a knight errant, had punched Viscount Uxbury in her defense. And somehow Avery’s words had covered up the whole potential scandal, at least temporarily. It was too much to hope, of course, that absolutely no one outside their family group had seen what happened or heard the fatal words. Joel was the one who had acted, and he had drawn blood and possibly a tooth.

And then he had sat down again with Mama and Elizabeth and Alexander and continued with his tea and conversation as though nothing had happened. He had not spoken a word to her.

He had not invited her to today’s picnic.

If he had taken a horn up onto a rooftop and bellowed through it, his message could not be louder than his silence was. Well, then. She squared her shoulders and wished the bench was not quite so hard.

“I prayed every night that Sarah’s teeth would come through,” Winifred said as the baby held up her arms and Camille picked her up and set her on her lap, “and they did.”

Winifred’s occasional piety could be even more annoying than her general righteousness. But Camille smiled. “It is good to know,” she said, “that prayers are answered. She is a good deal more contented now.”

And then, suddenly, he was there, standing in front of the bench in his old coat and scuffed boots, looking down at them, a smile in his eyes. His head blocked the sun and made Camille feel chilly. And Sarah, the treacherous child, gurgled and reached up her arms again. He swung her up, held her above his head while she chuckled and drooled onto his neckcloth, and lowered her to sit on one arm.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said.

“Sarah has two teeth,” Winifred told him. “I prayed that they would come through and they did.”

“That’s the girl,” he said, patting her shoulder with his free hand. But Hannah was coming for Sarah. It was time for her feed. Winifred went inside with them. Joel stayed where he was, his eyes fixed upon Camille. “I had a note from Anna this morning. She told me you are not coming to the picnic.”

Damn Anna, Camille thought, using a shocking word in her mind she would not dream of speaking aloud. “No,” she said. “I have other things to do.”

He folded his arms and stared down at her. “I am sorry, Camille,” he said. “I have been behaving like an ass. It is just that— Well, the earth moved on Sunday. It moved more than it always does, that is. I—”

“That is quite all right,” she said. “You do not need to explain or apologize if that was your intention. Sunday was my suggestion, if you will recall, and I do not regret it in any way. It was very enjoyable. But that was the past, and it is always wise to let the past go and concentrate upon the present and as much of the future as can be reasonably planned for.”

“Damn it,” he said, “I have hurt you.”

“I would be obliged if you would watch your language,” she said, ignoring the fact that her mind had quite consciously used the same word a mere minute or so ago.

“Why will you not come?” he asked.

She looked hard at him. “I have not been invited,” she said. “In my world—in my former world that is, one does not attend events to which one has not been invited.”

He scratched his head, leaving his hair untidy. It was growing, she noticed. “Good God, Camille,” he said, “you were so central to the whole plan that it did not occur to me that you would need an invitation.”

Indignation warred with something else. She was central to the whole plan? Whatever did that mean?

“I want you to see it,” he said. “I went up there on Wednesday and saw the house and the garden. Garden is actually a misleading word. It is more like a park. And house is the wrong word too. It is huge and terribly impressive. My great-uncle may have been elderly, but nothing has been neglected and allowed to grow shabby. I still cannot believe it is mine. I still cannot imagine myself living there. But ideas went teeming through my head while I was there and I wished you were with me.”