Someone to Hold

by Mary Balogh

  She did not cry herself to sleep. But she did cry and had to lie on her bed with a handkerchief half stuffed into her mouth, lest she wake everyone in the building. She tried to remember the last time she had wept, and could not recall any such occasion since she was seven and had saved her meager allowance for two whole months until she could purchase a fine linen man’s handkerchief. She had then spent hours and days painstakingly embroidering the initial of her father’s title—R for Riverdale—across one corner with I love you, Papa, beneath, the whole message decorated with flowery twirls and curlicues and a few little flower heads thrown in. It was the first time she had given him a birthday present all her own. He had glanced at it on the great day, thanked her, and put it into his pocket.

  His lack of enthusiasm had been deflating enough when she had hoped, even expected, pleasure, astonishment, pride, paeons of praise, warm hugs, effusive thanks, and eternal love to pour out of him. How silly a seven-year-old child could be. And how vulnerable. A few days later she had gone into her father’s study on some now-forgotten errand and had seen the handkerchief crumpled up on his desk. When she had gone to fold it neatly, she had discovered that it had been used to clean his pen and was liberally stained with ink that would never wash out. She had dashed upstairs—she had been taught that a lady never dashed anywhere—squeezed between her bed and the wall in the nursery room she shared with Abigail and cried and cried until she retched dry heaves, though she would not tell anyone what had made her so unhappy.

  One would have expected her to have learned her lesson from that episode. But it seemed she had not. She could remember persuading herself at the time that her embroidery stitches must have been poorly executed, and she had worked hard and tirelessly to improve her skills.

  She did not even know precisely why she wept now. The room was tiny and the bed narrow and none too soft and she ought to have waited until Monday because she did not know what she was going to do with herself all day tomorrow and Sunday. But surely none of those facts would have reduced her to tears for the first time in fifteen years. She had upset Abby and Grandmama by coming here. But it was not that either. She had muddled through a week of teaching and had no idea how she was going to get through another—and another. It was not that either, though.

  Admit the truth, Camille.

  She cried because her heart had been broken—though that was not strictly true either. Her heart had not been involved in her betrothal. She had not been in love with Viscount Uxbury. It was just that he had seemed perfect—the perfect gentleman, the perfect suitor: wellborn, elegant, wealthy, mature, steady, serious minded, morally upright . . . She could go on and on. It had not hurt either that he was tall and well built and handsome, though she had not been drawn to him for those trivial facts alone. There had been nothing trivial about Lady Camille Westcott’s opinions and actions. He had seemed perfect. He had seemed—though she had never consciously thought it—everything she would have liked her father to be. He was reliable, the very Rock of Gibraltar. The whole of her future had been built upon that rock.

  And he had let her down. Oh, not so much in forcing an end to their betrothal. She had understood the reason for that, though his rejection had taken her by surprise and hurt her. No, it was what had happened afterward, what she had learned only today. He had said something about her after going uninvited to a ball in Anastasia’s honor, something so insulting that Avery and Alexander had had him removed from the house. He had said shameful things about her during his duel with Avery too, in the hearing of what was undoubtedly a large crowd of gentlemen, not to mention Elizabeth and Anastasia.

  It had been shockingly unkind of him. Oh, and far more than unkind. It had been cruel. And it seemed so out of character for the man she had thought him to be. Hearing of it had shattered the last of her illusions about the perfect gentleman and aristocrat with whom she had expected to spend the rest of her life. It had, in fact—yes, it was not too inaccurate a phrase. . . . It had broken her heart. One did not have to be in love with a man to have one’s heart broken. Perhaps it was because Viscount Uxbury now somehow represented the whole of her life as it had been, though she had not known it at the time. It had all been built not upon rock, but upon sand. And, like even the most carefully built sand castle, it had crumbled and fallen.

  She had laughed with genuine glee when she heard the story of Uxbury’s humiliation at Avery’s hands—or rather at Avery’s feet. It had felt very good to know that after insulting her he had been made to look a fool before his peers. She was only human, after all. But while she had been walking back from Sally Lunn’s with Mr. Cunningham, the misery of it all had come close to overwhelming her, and she had felt her heart fracture. Her father and Viscount Uxbury were very different from each other—yet much the same after all. Could she ever trust anyone again? Was she as entirely alone in this world as she felt?

  Was everyone essentially alone?

  Oh yes, there was a great deal of self-pity in her misery. And she hated that. Hated it.

  She slept eventually after washing her face and turning her pillow and straightening and smoothing out the bedcovers, though it was a fitful slumber punctuated by brief wakeful starts during which she struggled to remember where she was. After she woke up in the morning and washed and dressed, she was faced again with the question of what she was going to do with herself all day. She did not even know—she had not asked—if she was entitled to go to the dining room for breakfast. She considered walking up to the Royal Crescent to explain herself in person to her grandmother and Abby, but there was a light drizzle falling from a leaden sky, she could see through her window, and it looked blustery and cheerless out there. Besides, what more could she say than what she had written? She would see them next week and the family too when they arrived. She would not refuse to see any of them. That would be churlish.

  She rearranged her belongings in the drawers and on the hooks—there was just enough room if she kept her toiletries crowded onto the washstand and put her book and writing things on the table. She set her empty bags by the door. She would ask Roger if there was some storage space where she could keep them. And there, that had taken all of twenty minutes, maybe less.

  She fetched a pile of books from the schoolroom and spent a while going through them and deciding which would be most suitable to read aloud next week. It was a bit of a tricky decision, as the stories would need to appeal to both boys and girls and to children of all ages. Yet last week she had chosen quite randomly, and everything she read had been well received. She was probably overpreparing. But what else was she to do? She made a written list of what she wanted to teach next week—it was a formidably long list—and spent some time racking her brain for ideas on how to go about it. Her mind remained stubbornly blank. This past week she had taught with almost no preparation or forethought, yet everything had proceeded reasonably well, if a little chaotically. But how could she risk using the same method next week?

  She frowned in thought at a sudden memory. What exactly had he said yesterday? You are an abject failure. The children are not mute in your presence. And they are learning and enjoying themselves and liking you. He had been grinning when he said it—something a gentleman would never do—and looking disturbingly handsome and attractive in the process. Oh, and virile too. Attractive? That was a word not usually in her vocabulary. Virile never was. They were somehow not genteel words. They were a little vulgar. She really did not want to think of any man as attractive—or virile. But he had been telling her that she was not a failure while apparently saying she was.

  Camille sighed aloud. Oh, this was all hopelessly complicated, and it was still not even the middle of the morning. Goodness, she ought to have gone for breakfast. Surely her rent included meals. Her room was seeming smaller and more dreary with every passing moment. It was time to step out and explore her new home. Or was it her home? Did the fact that she was renting a room entitle her to wander
about the whole building at will? But she could not remain confined to this space one moment longer. It would seem too much like cowering, and she had done that for too long at Grandmama’s. She was now the newly invented, newly confident Camille Westcott, was she not?

  No one looked aghast as she strolled about. No one went running for Miss Ford. The home hummed with the sounds of young voices and laughter and a few wails of indignation or distress. It was a large building—three sizable three-story homes knocked into one—and had retained much of the elegance the individual houses must have had when first built. It was also pleasingly decorated with light paintwork and curtains pulled back from the windows and bright cushions that lent an air of general cheerfulness. This was no gloomy institution, as she had realized during the tour Miss Ford had given her soon after her arrival in Bath.

  The living accommodations consisted of cozy dormitories on the upper floors for five or six children, and each had an accompanying living room with chairs and tables and cushions and a few playthings. The idea was to give each group of children some sense of home and family, Camille supposed. And each group had its own set of housemothers, who offered them as close a sense of family as was possible under the circumstances. It was the housemothers who cared for the children all day and night when they were not at school, and supervised their play and took them for walks on nonschool days. There were a few smaller rooms on the ground floor, presumably for visitors, in addition to the schoolroom and dining room. A few children played quietly together now in one of them. Most, however, were congregated in the large common room or playroom, it being too wet for them to go outside into the walled garden at the back to play. Altogether it was not an entirely unpleasant home situation for the forty or so children who lived here.

  Camille nodded at the housemothers who were supervising there and hovered uncertainly in the doorway. But three of her younger pupils wanted to introduce her to their family of rag dolls, and then two others, a boy and a girl, wanted her to see the tower they had built of wooden cubes Roger had carved and painted for them. Two boys were knitting under the eagle eye of Winifred Hamlin, who was working on her own strip too, already about eighteen inches long and seemingly without a flaw. The boys called Camille over to show her how much progress they had made since yesterday.

  There were two infants in separate cots. One, a baby of perhaps four or five months, was playing happily with his toes and waving his arms in excitement whenever an adult or one of the children bent over him to tickle his chin and talk baby talk to him. The other, maybe a month or two older, lay on her back and sobbed quietly and refused to be entertained or consoled.

  “She has been here only a week,” one of the housemothers explained when Camille drew closer. “She will settle down soon.”

  “Perhaps,” Camille suggested, “she wants to be held.”

  “Oh, I do not doubt it.” The young woman laughed, not unkindly, as she bent down to smooth a hand over the child’s downy head and murmur something soothing. “But we cannot give all our attention to one child when everyone is clamoring for it.”

  Everyone was not, as it happened. Most of the children seemed perfectly happy with one another’s company. However, the staff was definitely busy. They were cheerful too, as Camille had noticed before. But even so . . .

  “May I pick her up?” she asked. Had the child been crying lustily, she might have been less concerned. But there was a bleak hopelessness to the soft sounds she made. “I have nothing much else to do and feel a bit useless.”

  “Certainly, Miss Westcott,” the housemother said. “That would be good of you. But you must not feel obliged.”

  “What is her name?” Camille asked.

  “Sarah,” the woman told her.

  Camille had never had much to do with babies—or with children at all—until this past week. She had grown up expecting to be a mother, of course. It would be one of her duties to present her husband with sons for the succession and daughters to marry into other influential families. But being a mother when one was a lady of the ton did not necessarily involve one in looking after the children or comforting them or entertaining them. There were nurses and governesses to do that.

  There was a blanket folded over the foot of the cot. The room was not cold despite the dreariness of the weather outside, but a baby needed coziness. Or so Camille imagined. She spread the blanket over the lower half of the mattress, moved the baby gingerly onto it, wrapped it tightly about her like a cocoon, and lifted her into her arms. The child continued to wail softly, and Camille, acting purely from instinct—good heavens, she knew nothing—held her against her shoulder and rubbed a hand over her back, murmuring soothing words against her head.

  “Everything will work out for the best, Sarah,” she said. Foolish words. How could it? Did anything ever work out for the best? She kissed one soft cheek and felt somehow as though her stomach or her heart had turned over. The crying stopped after a while as Camille took a turn about the room, weaving in and out of groups of children, and then stepped out into the quieter corridor beyond. The bundle in her arms grew warmer until she realized the child was sleeping. And now she felt a bit like crying herself. Again? Was she going to turn into a watering pot?

  No, not that. Definitely, certainly not that. The very idea!

  She returned to the playroom and sat in a deep armchair in one corner, holding the sleeping baby close in her arms. The children around her were all occupied with some activity. The housemothers were busy. Two little girls leaned over the sides of the other baby’s cot, making him gurgle and laugh. Everyone appeared clean and reasonably tidy. It was, Camille thought, a happy enough place, or at least a place that was no more miserable than many family homes, even those of the rich.

  “You see, the trouble is that children can become overattached if they are held too much,” one of the other housemothers said, stooping down on her haunches in front of Camille’s chair and smiling tenderly at the sleeping baby. She was Hannah, Camille recalled, apple cheeked, bright eyed, sturdy, pretty in a wholesome, quite unsophisticated way. “We are taught that when we are being trained. But we are also taught that they need love and approval and dry nappies and hands that do not stick to everything they touch. It is not an easy job. Nurse says it is a bit like walking a tightrope every working day of our lives. We are thankful for your help, though you must not ever feel obliged to offer it. I thought when I first saw you that you were very different from your sister, but I think maybe I was wrong. Miss Snow—the Duchess of Netherby—was much loved here.”

  The nurse was a senior member of staff in charge of all the health needs of the children.

  Camille nodded and smiled—at least, it was either a smile or a grimace. She was not sure which. No one had expected to like her? Did that mean they did anyway? Or at least that Hannah did? She lifted Sarah a little higher in her arms when Hannah had gone away and gazed into her sleeping face.

  “Sir,” someone called in an eager voice, “come and see our tower.”

  And there he was, standing in the doorway, looking his usual semishabby self, with a genial expression on his face, glancing about him, though he appeared not to have noticed Camille sitting quietly in her corner. Mr. Cunningham. He looked perfectly at home, even though he was the only adult male present. But of course he would feel at home. He had grown up here with Anastasia as his best friend and had then fallen in love with her and wanted to marry her. He still loved her, Camille suspected. But was that any reason to dislike him? Did she have any reason to dislike Anastasia?

  He crossed the room, ruffling the hair of a little boy as he passed, and stooped down on his haunches to admire the wooden tower. He was clutching what looked like a sketchbook and a stick of charcoal in one hand. And Camille recalled some of the words he had spoken yesterday—Uxbury insulted Anna when she discovered who he was and refused to dance with him . . .

  . . . when she discovered
who he was . . . Viscount Uxbury, that was, the man who had been betrothed to Camille but had spurned her after learning the truth about her birth. Anastasia had refused to dance with him because he had hurt her half sister? Her, Camille?

  Mr. Cunningham set his book down in order to help construct battlements about the top of the tower—until the little boy whose hair he had ruffled came along and knocked the whole thing down with one swipe of his arm and a giggle. There were cries of outrage from the children who had built it, and Mr. Cunningham stood up, roaring ferociously, grabbed the child, tossed him at the ceiling, and caught him on the way down. The little boy shrieked with fright and glee and then helped Mr. Cunningham and the other two gather up the fallen bricks and start again.

  Other children claimed his attention and he spent some time with each group before exchanging a few words with one of the older housemothers. He had brought the cook some fresh eggs from the market, Camille heard him say, and had wrangled an invitation to stay for luncheon.

  “But you don’t need an invitation, Joel,” the woman told him. “You know that. Not to come home.”

  He laughed and sat down on a chair, his back half turned to Camille—he still had not seen her—and began to draw something in his sketchbook. The baby in his cradle, perhaps—he now had both feet clutched in his hands and was rocking from side to side, jabbering happily to himself. Or perhaps the girls engrossed in their game with the rag dolls. Or perhaps six-year-old Caroline Williams, one of the younger children at the school, who appeared to be reading aloud to an old doll from a large book, sounding out the words and following them along the page with one forefinger. Camille knew that in fact she had difficulty reading, something that was going to have to be addressed in the coming week.