Someone to Hold

by Mary Balogh

  What on earth, Camille asked herself as she neared the bottom of the hill and turned in the direction of Northumberland Place, did she know about teaching? Specifically, what did she know about teaching a supposedly large group of children of all ages and abilities and both genders? She frowned, and a young couple approaching her along the pavement stepped smartly out of her way as though a fearful presence were bearing down upon them. Camille did not even notice.

  Why on earth was she going to beg to be allowed to teach orphans in the very place where Anastasia had grown up and taught? She still disliked, resented, and—yes—even hated the former Anna Snow. It did not matter that she knew she was being unfair—after all, it was not Anastasia’s fault that Papa had behaved so despicably, and she had suffered the consequences for twenty-five years before discovering the truth about herself. It did not matter either that Anastasia had attempted to embrace her newly discovered siblings as family and had offered more than once to share everything she had inherited with them and to allow her two half sisters to continue to live with their mama at Hinsford Manor, which now belonged to her. In fact, her generosity merely made it harder to like her. How dared she offer them a portion of what had always been theirs by right, as though she were doing them a great and gracious favor? Which in a sense she was.

  It was a purely irrational hostility, of course, but raw emotions were not often reasonable. And Camille’s emotions were still as raw as open wounds that had not even begun to heal.

  So why exactly was she coming here? She stood on the pavement outside the main doors of the orphanage for a couple of minutes, debating the question just as though she had not already done so all yesterday and through a night of fitful sleep and long wakeful periods. Was it just because she felt the need to do something with her life? But were there not other, more suitable things she could do instead? And if she must teach, were there not more respectable positions to which she might aspire? There were genteel girls’ schools in Bath, and there were always people in search of well-bred governesses for their daughters. But her need to come here today had nothing really to do with any desire to teach, did it? It was . . . Well, what was it?

  The need to step into Anna Snow’s shoes to discover what they felt like? What an absolutely ghastly thought. But if she stood out here any longer, she would lose her courage and find herself trudging back uphill, lost and defeated and abject and every other horrid thing she could think of. Besides, standing here was decidedly uncomfortable. Though it was July and the sun was shining, it was still only morning and she was in the shade of the building. The street was acting as a type of funnel too for a brisk wind.

  She stepped forward, lifted the heavy knocker away from the door, hesitated for only a moment, then let it fall. Perhaps she would be denied employment. What a huge relief that would be.

  * * *

  Joel Cunningham was feeling on top of the world when he got out of bed that morning. July sunshine poured into his rooms as soon as he pulled back the curtains from every window to let it in, filling them with light and warmth. But it was not just the perfect summer day that had lifted his mood. This morning he was taking the time to appreciate his home. His rooms—plural.

  He had worked hard in the twelve years since he left the orphanage at the age of fifteen and taken up residence in one small room on the top floor of a house on Grove Street just west of the River Avon. He had taken employment at a butcher’s shop while also attending art school. The anonymous benefactor who had paid his way at the orphanage throughout his childhood had paid the school fees too and covered the cost of basic school supplies, though for everything else he had been on his own. He had persevered at both school and employment while working on his painting whenever he could.

  Often after paying his rent he had had to make the choice between eating and buying extra supplies, and eating had not always won. But those days were behind him. He had been sitting outside the Pump Room in the abbey yard one afternoon a few years ago, sketching a vagabond perched alone on a nearby bench and sharing a crust of bread with the pigeons. Sketching people he saw about him on the streets was something Joel loved doing, and something for which one of his art teachers had told him he had a genuine talent. He had been unaware of a gentleman sitting down next to him until the man spoke. The result of the ensuing conversation had been a commission to paint a portrait of the man’s wife. Joel had been terrified of failing, but he had been pleased with the way the painting turned out. He had made no attempt to make the lady appear younger or lovelier than she was, but both husband and wife had seemed genuinely delighted with what they called the realism of the portrait. They had shown it to some friends and recommended him to others.

  The result had been more such commissions and then still more, until he was often fairly swamped by demands for his services and wished there were more hours in the day. He had been able to leave his employment two years ago and raise his fees. Recently he had raised them again, but no one yet had complained that he was overcharging. It had been time to begin looking for a studio in which to work. But last month the family that occupied the rest of the top floor of the house in which he had his room had given notice, and Joel had asked the landlord if he could rent the whole floor, which came fully furnished. He would have the luxury of a sizable studio in which to work as well as a living room, a bedchamber, a kitchen that doubled as a dining room, and a washroom. It seemed to him a true palace.

  The family having moved out the morning before, last night he had celebrated his change in fortune by inviting five friends, all male, to come and share the meat pies he had bought from the butcher’s shop, a cake from the bakery next to it, and a few bottles of wine. It had been a merry housewarming.

  “You will be giving up the orphanage, I suppose,” Marvin Silver, the bank clerk who lived on the middle floor, had said after toasting Joel’s continued success.

  “Teaching there, do you mean?” Joel had asked.

  “You do not get paid, do you?” Marvin had said. “And it sounds as though you need all your time to keep up with what you are being paid for—quite handsomely, I have heard.”

  Joel volunteered his time two afternoons a week at the orphanage school, teaching art to those who wanted to do a little more than was being offered in the art classes provided by the regular teacher. Actually, teach was somewhat of a misnomer for what he did with those children. He thought of his role to be more in the nature of inspiring them to discover and express their individual artistic vision and talent. He used to look forward to those afternoons. They had not been so enjoyable lately, however, though that had nothing to do with the children or with his increasingly busy life beyond the orphanage walls.

  “I’ll always find the time to go there,” he had assured Marvin, and one of the other fellows had slapped him with hearty good cheer on the back.

  “And what of Mrs. Tull?” he had asked him, waggling his eyebrows. “Are you thinking of moving her in here to cook and clean for you among other things, Joel? As Mrs. Cunningham, perhaps? You can probably afford a wife.”

  Edwina Tull was a pretty and amiable widow, about eight years Joel’s senior. She appeared to have been left comfortably well-off by her late husband, though in the three years Joel had known her he had come to suspect that she entertained other male friends apart from him and that she accepted gifts—monetary gifts—from them as she did from him. The fact that he was very possibly not her only male friend did not particularly bother him. Indeed, he was quite happy that there was never any suggestion of a commitment between them. She was respectable and affectionate and discreet, and she provided him with regular female companionship and lively conversation as well as good sex. He was satisfied with that. His heart, unfortunately, had long ago been given elsewhere, and he had not got it back yet even though the object of his devotion had recently married someone else.

  “I am quite happy to enjoy my expanded living quarters alone fo
r a while yet,” he had said. “Besides, I believe Mrs. Tull is quite happy with her independence.”

  His friends had finished off the food and wine and stayed until after midnight. It had felt very good indeed to be able to entertain in his own rooms and actually have enough chairs for them all to sit on.

  Now he strolled about his living and working quarters in the morning sunshine and reveled anew in the realization that all this space was his. He had come a long way in twelve years. He stood before the easel in the studio and gazed at the portrait he had been able to leave propped on it. Apart from a few small finishing touches, it was ready to be delivered. He was particularly pleased with it because it had given him problems. Mrs. Dance was a faded lady who had probably never been pretty. She was bland and amiable, and at the beginning he had asked himself how the devil he was going to paint her in such a way that both she and her husband would be satisfied. He had wrestled with the question for several weeks while he sketched her and talked with her and discovered that her amiability was warm and genuine and had been hard won—she had lost three of her seven children in infancy and another just before he finished school. Once Joel had erased the judgmental word bland as a descriptor, he came to see her as a genuinely lovely person and had had great pleasure painting her portrait. He hoped he had captured what he saw as the essence of her well enough that others would see it too.

  But though his fingers itched to pick up his brush to make those finishing touches, he had to resist. He had made arrangements with Miss Ford to go to the orphanage school early today, since he had an appointment with another client this afternoon, which he had been unable to shift to a different time. But even the thought of going to school early could not dampen his mood, for he would have the schoolroom to himself and his small group today and, if he was fortunate, for the rest of the summer.

  While Miss Nunce had taught at the orphanage school, Joel and his group had had to squeeze into a strictly calculated third of the schoolroom—she had actually measured it with a long tape borrowed from Roger, the porter, and marked it out with chalk. They had crowded in with their easels and all the other necessary paraphernalia of an art class while she conducted her lessons in the other two-thirds. Her reasoning had been that he had one-third of the total number of schoolchildren while she had two-thirds. The art equipment did not factor into her view. But last week, Miss Nunce had resigned in high dudgeon before she could be forcibly ejected.

  Joel had not been there at the time, but he did not mourn her departure. It had not been beyond the woman to intrude upon his third of the room, stepping carefully over the chalk line so as not to smudge it, to give her verdict on the paintings in progress, and invariably it was a derogatory judgment. She was an opinionated, joyless woman who clearly despised all children, and orphans in particular. She appeared to have seen it as her personal mission to prepare them to be humble and servile and to know their place—that place being the bottom rung of the social ladder, or perhaps somewhat below the bottom rung. Sometimes he had thought she resented even having to teach them to read, write, and figure. She had done her utmost to quell dreams and aspirations and talent and imagination, all of which in her view were inappropriate to their parentless condition.

  She had walked out after Mary Perkins went running to find Miss Ford to tell her that Miss Nunce was beating Jimmy Dale. When Miss Ford had arrived on the scene, Jimmy was standing in the corner, his back to the room, squirming from the pain of a sore bottom. Miss Nunce, it seemed, had discovered him reading one of the new books—unfortunately for him, one of the larger, heavier volumes—and actually chuckling over something within its pages. She had taken it from him, instructed him to stand and bend over his desk, and walloped him a dozen times with it before sending him to the corner to contemplate his sins. She had still been holding the book aloft and haranguing the class on the evils of the trivial use of one’s time and of empty-minded levity when Miss Ford appeared. Seeing her, Miss Nunce had turned her triumphant glare upon the matron.

  “And this,” she had pronounced, “is what comes of allowing books in the schoolroom.”

  The books, together with a large bookcase to display them, had been donated a short while ago by a Mrs. Kingsley, a wealthy and prominent citizen of Bath. Miss Nunce had been quite vocal in her opposition at the time. Books, she had warned, would merely give the orphans ideas.

  Miss Ford had crossed the room to Jimmy, turned him by the shoulders, and asked him why he had been reading in class. He had explained that his arithmetic exercise was finished and he had not wanted to sit idle. Sure enough, all his sums were completed and all were correct. She had sent him back to his seat after first removing her shawl and folding it several times into a square for him to sit on. She had asked the day’s monitors to take charge of the room and invited Miss Nunce to step outside, much to the disappointment of the children. Joel would have been disappointed too if he had been there. But then, the incident would not have happened if he had been there. No child at the orphanage was ever struck. It was one of Miss Ford’s immutable rules.

  Less than fifteen minutes later—the children and some of the staff in other parts of the building had heard the teacher’s raised voice alternating with silences that probably indicated Miss Ford was speaking—Miss Nunce had stridden from the building with Roger a few steps behind her to lock the door, lest she change her mind.

  Joel had rejoiced, not just because he had found it difficult to work with her, but because he cared for the children—all of them. He had been greatly relieved too, because Miss Nunce had succeeded Anna Snow, who had left a few months ago, and who had been everything she was not. Anna had brought sunshine to the schoolroom.

  It was Anna whom he loved, though he tried doggedly to use the past tense whenever he considered his feelings for her. She was a married lady now. She was the Duchess of Netherby.

  Two

  Soon after Joel arrived at the school, his art group—children ranging in age from eight to thirteen—was engrossed in the painting of a still-life grouping he had set up on the table. They were using oils on canvas, a difficult challenge for most of them. He walked quietly about the room, observing their efforts while trying not to unnerve any of them or break their concentration. It did not take much to break Winifred Hamlin’s, however. Her hand shot suddenly into the air, and Joel sighed inwardly.

  “Olga’s teapot is smaller than her apple, Mr. Cunningham,” she said without waiting for permission to speak—so why the raised hand?

  It was indeed. Olga’s teapot had been painted with the meticulous care one might expend on a miniature. Her apple, on the other hand, was round and red and yellow and green and shiny and exuberant—and huge. It actually looked more appealing and appetizing than the original, which stood on the linen-draped table with the large teapot and a cup and saucer and a book.

  “And so it is,” he said, resting a hand on Winifred’s shoulder. “When everyone has finished, we will ask her why that is. We will also ask Paul why the objects in his painting are in a straight line and not touching one another. And Richard will tell us why on his canvas the objects are seen from above, as though he were sitting at his easel on the ceiling. If you have finished, Winifred, you may clean your brushes and palette and put them away in the cupboard.” He did not add that she should arrange them neatly. She did everything neatly.

  In Winifred’s painting, he saw, everything was in perfect proportion to everything else and positioned as the real objects were on the table. The table itself was absent, though. The objects dangled in space. He would ask her about that later.

  There was a tap on the door and a few of the children turned their heads when it opened. Several did not, showing admirable concentration upon their work.

  Miss Ford stepped into the room with a severe-looking young woman dressed stylishly but unappealingly from head to foot in fawn and brown. A new teacher? Already? Joel’s heart sank. She looked as hu
morless as Miss Nunce, and he had been hoping for a respite even from a good teacher since it was the middle of the summer and most schools were closed until September. This one remained open only because it was on the children’s living premises and kept them occupied and amused through the long, often hot days. At least, that was the philosophy behind keeping it going.

  “Mr. Cunningham,” Miss Ford said, “may I present Miss Westcott? She has applied for the teaching position, and we have mutually agreed upon a fortnight’s trial.”

  All heads swung about.

  Westcott? Joel’s eyes sharpened upon the new teacher.

  Miss Ford confirmed his suspicions. “Miss Westcott is the Duchess of Netherby’s sister,” she explained. “She is currently living in Bath with her grandmother, Mrs. Kingsley.”

  “Half sister,” the woman corrected, giving the impression that as far as she was concerned, that was half a relationship too much. “How do you do, Mr. Cunningham?”

  She was the elusive Miss Westcott, then, was she? Joel had seen the other one—the pretty one. Anna had been delighted when at the age of twenty-five she had at last discovered her family, but her half sisters had spurned her overtures of friendship and affection. To Anna’s deep distress, they had removed themselves, first from London and then from their erstwhile home in the country to take up residence here in Bath. She had worried about them and had written to ask Joel if he could possibly discover their whereabouts and find out if all was well with them, as far as anything could be well when the very bottom had just fallen out of their world. He had discovered who their grandmother was and had seen her on a few occasions with the other sister, going into the Pump Room to join the fashionable set, who went there daily to take the waters and exchange gossip.