Someone to Hold

No, that wasn’t true. He was very, very sure of one thing. He was desperately in love with her. And he just as desperately wanted to marry her.

But still the moment did not feel quite right. He did not want a marriage proposal to sound as if it had just stumbled out of his mind into his mouth and out through his lips.

He stood up beside her and took her hand again. “Thank you for staying,” he said. “Thank you for listening.”

They made their way back to the house in near silence.

Twenty-two

After returning from taking Sarah and Winifred and two other young children to see the ducks down by the river and feed them bread crumbs the following morning, Camille sat beside Miss Ford and the nurse for luncheon.

“Are any of these children ever adopted?” she asked during a lull in the conversation. She had never heard of it happening, but then, she had not been here long.

“Occasionally,” Miss Ford said. “The babies, that is. People looking for adoptive children rarely look for any above a few months old. This is not the sort of orphanage upon which unscrupulous employers cast their sights for cheap labor.”

“What is the procedure for adoption?” Camille asked.

“In most cases,” Miss Ford told her, “the real parent or whoever it is who is supporting the child here is consulted and grants or withholds permission. If the answer is yes, the legal details are handled by our solicitor, but the governing board is very careful to investigate the prospective parents. We offer love here and safety and a good quality of care, as you know. We try to make sure it is to the child’s advantage to become part of a family.”

“And if the real parents are unknown?” Camille asked.

“We follow the same careful investigative procedure,” Miss Ford said. “Having our children adopted feels a little like giving up our own children, you know. We will do it gladly if it is for the child’s benefit, but it is never easy to say goodbye. Understandably, most adoptive parents do not want to come back here for visits.”

“Do you remember Sammy and his golden curls?” the nurse asked, and she and Miss Ford were off into reminiscences of babies they had lost to adoption.

Camille returned to her room and wrote to Harry to congratulate him upon his promotion. It was the first time she had written directly to him. It was painful. Harry had been the Earl of Riverdale. She had been forever annoyed with him because he was having the time of his life, surrounded by companions who numbered more sycophants than real friends, merely wearing a black armband in deference to their father’s passing while Mama, Abby, and she were swathed in funereal black. But he had been a good-hearted boy, cheerful, intelligent, affectionate. She had loved him dearly without fully realizing it. And she loved him now and felt the pain of what had happened to him. His letters were always high spirited, but what was the reality? Would he even be alive to read her letter? Her fear for him was always there, deeply suppressed but very real.

The price of love, she thought, was pain. Was it worth it? Was it better not to love at all?

In the middle of the afternoon she walked up to the Royal Crescent, as she had done yesterday before the picnic, to raid her wardrobe for something more suitable to wear to the evening’s ball than any of the few garments that hung in her room at the orphanage. It felt a little like digging into a past life she had left behind longer ago than a few months, but there was something undeniably enticing about it. What woman did not like to dress up and look her best at least once in a while?

She chose a gown of silver lace over blue satin, its waistline high beneath her bosom, its neckline low, the sleeves short and puffed. The hem was deeply scalloped and embroidered with silver thread. She donned long silver gloves and silver slippers and would carry a delicate fan that opened to reveal a brightly colored painting of fat winged cherubs hovering above a romantically handsome, languishing young man who looked as though he had been badly wounded by one of Cupid’s darts. It amused Camille—though she had never thought of it before—to imagine that the holder of the fan perhaps held the fate of a young man’s love literally in the palm of her hand. Her only jewelry was the pearl necklace her father had given her on her come-out—actually it was his secretary who had delivered it to her—and the matching earrings that had been her mother’s gift. Her grandmother’s dresser styled her hair high on her head with intricate twists and curls and some waved tendrils to lie along her neck and over her ears.

For a moment, looking at herself in her mirror, she felt a wave of nostalgia for that familiar world she had left behind so abruptly. But it surprised her to realize that she would not go back now even if she could. She did not believe she particularly liked the person she had been then, and she certainly did not like the person to whom she had been betrothed. She turned away and went to Abigail’s room, where she found her sister looking like a relic of springtime in a pretty pale yellow gown Camille had not seen before. She was in a fever of excitement and anxiety.

“Will it be like a real ball, do you think?” she asked. “Oh, you do look lovely, Cam. I always wish I had grown as tall as you.” Abby had attended a few local assemblies in the country, but no formal balls. She had never had a coming-out Season.

“It will not be like a London squeeze, I suppose,” Camille said, “but I understand the whole of Bath polite society has been invited, and I would imagine it is being touted as the grandest event of the summer. The Westcotts have more than their fair share of titles among them, after all. It will be well attended.”