Someone to Hold

by Mary Balogh

  “No, Mama,” Abigail protested.

  Camille looked down at Sarah, who was fussing slightly though she was still sleeping. “Have you come back to stay?” she asked.

  “But Uncle Michael needs you,” Abigail said.

  “No.” Her mother smiled. “He was doing very well without me, and he is launched, I believe, on a very gentle, very gradual courtship of a lady who is currently employed as a governess. My presence at the vicarage has probably slowed its course, and that is a great pity, for I believe they are truly fond of each other.”

  “You are here to stay, then,” Camille said, “because you feel you ought to leave there.” Her tone was more bitter than she had intended.

  Her mother sighed. “I am not as penniless as I thought,” she said. “I have heard from Mr. Brumford—your father’s solicitor, if you will recall, and Harry’s after him. It would seem that the dowry I took to my wedding is to be returned to me since the wedding never actually took place, not in any legal form anyway. It was a sizable sum, and it has gained considerable interest in almost a quarter of a century. It is not a vast fortune, but it is certainly enough to enable me to live independently with my daughters, either here in Bath or elsewhere.”

  “Is this part of the money that went to Anastasia a few months ago?” Camille asked sharply.

  Her mother hesitated. “Yes,” she said. “But it has been judged to be mine, not hers. She certainly will not miss it. She still has the bulk of your father’s fortune. And she is married to Avery.”

  “Did you protest the will?” Camille asked.

  “No,” her mother said. “The news came as a surprise to me.”

  Camille stared at her. The money had come from Anastasia, then. She had found a way to give them some of her fortune without making them feel beholden to her. She had found a way to give some of her fortune to Mama. At first she had wanted to divide her entire fortune four ways to include Camille and Abigail and Harry—they had all refused—but had made no mention of Mama beyond suggesting that she and they continue to live at Hinsford Manor, which she now owned.

  Her mother cut her eyes to Abigail without moving her head and then looked pointedly back at Camille. She had thought of it too, then. But she had decided to accept the money anyway, so that she could provide a home again for herself and her daughters. And perhaps she was right to accept. It seemed just. The dowry had been paid by Grandpapa Kingsley on Mama’s wedding to Papa. But there had been no real wedding. Papa had not been entitled to that money. Therefore, Anastasia was not entitled to it either or the interest it had gained over the years.

  “We are going to live together again, Mama?” Abigail asked, her voice painful with hope.

  “Would you like that?” their mother asked. “It would be nothing as grand as the house on the Royal Crescent.”

  Two tears trickled down Abigail’s cheeks. “I would like it,” she said. “If it is what you want, Mama.”

  Mama smiled at her and squeezed her hands again.

  “I will remain here,” Camille said, smoothing a hand over Sarah’s head as she fussed quietly again.

  “I understand,” their mother said. “I honor you and what you are doing, Camille.”

  Camille lifted her head and looked at her. “I am glad you have come,” she said. It would take a shift in her thinking to see her mother as a person rather than just as her mother and Abby’s and Harry’s. But everything in her life these days was causing a shift in her thinking. She wondered if life would ever be a stable thing again.

  Sarah opened her eyes and gathered herself to express her displeasure vocally. But her gaze focused upon Camille and she smiled broadly instead.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” Camille said, and bent her head to kiss her cheek.

  Her mother and sister gazed in silence.

  Seventeen

  Aunt Louise had gone with Aunt Mildred and Uncle Thomas to call upon an old acquaintance they had met at church during the morning, Camille was informed when she arrived at the house on the Royal Crescent during the afternoon. Alexander had taken Grandmama and Mama and his own mother for a drive out to Beechen Cliff with the argument that the weather was too fine to be wasted indoors. Elizabeth, Jessica, Anastasia, and Avery were at the house with Abigail.

  Avery soon maneuvered Elizabeth over to the drawing room window—by design?—and the two of them stood there, talking and looking out and pointing to various things outside. Abigail and Jessica were seated side by side on the sofa. Camille took a chair close to them and Anastasia joined them. It was brave of her, Camille had to admit silently to herself. She and Abigail were the half sisters who had spurned her advances of sibling affection, and even Jessica, who was her sister-in-law and lived with her and Avery as well as Aunt Louise, had resented her at first and perhaps still did.

  It was all unfair, of course. Although Anastasia now dressed expensively, she certainly made no parade of her wealth. She dressed with simple, understated elegance. And she behaved with quiet dignity. She was also looking pretty and happy if a little uncertain at the moment. It was increasingly difficult to dislike her. And a bit impossible not to.

  “I hoped I would have the opportunity of a private word with my sisters this afternoon,” she said, first glancing Avery’s way and then looking at them each in turn. “We will be making some sort of announcement to the whole family this week, but I wanted the three of you to be first to know that Avery and I are expecting a child and that we are ecstatically happy about it. We do hope you will be pleased too at the prospect of being aunts.”

  They all stared at her as though transfixed by shock. But it was really not so surprising. Anastasia and Avery had been married for a few months, and there was a certain look about Anastasia, a glow of contentment and physical well-being that should have spoken for itself. Such an announcement from one sister to three others should surely be eliciting squeals of excited delight, but Jessica looked rather as though she had been punched on the chin, Camille felt like a mere observer, and Abigail—ah, dear Abby!—was recovering herself. She set her hands prayer fashion against her lips and smiled slowly and radiantly around her fingers until even her eyes sparkled.

  “Oh, Anastasia,” she said with quiet warmth, “how absolutely wonderful! I am so pleased for you. And thank you for telling us first. That was terribly sweet of you. Goodness, I am going to be Aunt Abigail. But that makes me sound quite elderly. I shall insist upon Aunt Abby. Oh, do tell us—do you hope for a boy or a girl? But of course you must wish for a boy, an heir to the dukedom.”

  “Avery says he does not care which it is provided only that it is,” Anastasia said, and Camille could see now the bubbling excitement she had been keeping at bay. “If it is a girl this time, she will be loved every bit as dearly as an heir would be. And really, you know, Abigail, I would not think of a boy as the heir, but only as my son and Avery’s.”

  Jessica had caught some of Abby’s enthusiasm and was leaning forward on the sofa. “Is that why you were being lazy and sleeping late every morning a while ago?” she asked.

  “Laziness. Is that how Avery excused my lateness?” Anastasia asked, grimacing and then laughing.

  “Oh goodness,” Jessica continued. “I am going to be an aunt too, Abby. Or a half aunt, anyway. Is there such a thing as a half aunt?”

  Across the room Camille met Avery’s lazy glance. She looked away before he turned back to the window.

  “I am delighted for you, Anastasia,” she said, and she was jolted by the look of naked yearning her half sister cast upon her before masking it with a simple smile.

  “Are you, Camille?” she said. “Thank you. After the baby is born, you and Abigail must come and stay for a while at Morland Abbey if Miss Ford can be persuaded to do without you at the school—and if you can be persuaded to do without it. I want my children to know all their relatives and to see them frequently, especially their a
unts and their uncle. Family is such a precious thing.”

  Camille did not think she was being preached at. Anastasia was merely speaking from the heart and from the lonely experience of having grown up in an orphanage unaware that she had any family at all. Camille’s own heart was heavy. She knew how precious a baby felt in her arms even when it was not her own. Sarah was not her own, and Anastasia’s would not be. Oh, how wonderful it must be . . . But the force of her maternal longing startled her.

  Abigail and Jessica were laughing merrily—quite like old times. They were suggesting names for the baby and getting more outrageous by the moment. Anastasia was laughing with them. Avery was saying something to Elizabeth and pointing off to the west. The splendor of his appearance contrasted markedly with the simplicity of Anastasia’s. He was wearing a ring on almost every finger, while her only jewelry was her wedding ring. Wise Anastasia. She had chosen not to compete with him. Or perhaps it had been an unconscious choice.

  Camille decided to leave before her mother and grandmother returned from their excursion. If she stayed, there would be tea and at least an hour of conversation, and then like as not either Alexander or Avery would insist upon conveying her home. She had made the decision to spend some of her time with her family in the coming week, but she did not wish to be sucked back into the fold at the expense of her newly won independence. She was not to escape entirely, however. Avery turned away from his conversation with Elizabeth when Camille got to her feet.

  “I shall do myself the honor of escorting you, Camille,” he announced in the languid manner that characterized him. “I shall leave the carriage for you and Jessica, Anna.”

  “There is really no need,” Camille said sharply. “I am quite accustomed to walking about Bath unaccompanied. I have not yet encountered even one wolf.”

  “Ah,” he said, raising his quizzing glass halfway to his eye, “but it was not a question, Camille. And in my experience there is very little one needs to do. One shudders at the thought of ordering one’s life about such a notion of duty.”

  She knew Avery well enough to realize that there was never any point in arguing with him. She took her leave of everyone else.

  “I wonder,” she said tartly when they were on the pavement outside the house and the door had closed behind them, “if you told Anastasia that she was going to marry you and, when she refused, informed her that you had not been asking.”

  “I am wounded to the heart,” he said, offering her his arm, “that you would think me so lacking in charm and personal appeal that Anna would not have said yes on the instant when I told her she was to marry me.”

  She took his arm and looked at him, quelling the urge to laugh. “How did you persuade her?” she asked.

  “Well, it was like this, you see,” he said, leading her toward Brock Street and, presumably, toward the steepness of Gay Street down into the town, a route she normally avoided. “The dowager countess and the aunts and the cousins, with one or two exceptions, were trying to convince her that the most sensible thing she could do was marry Riverdale.”

  “Alexander?” she said, astonished. But it would indeed have made sense. A marriage between the two of them would have reunited the entailed property and the fortune to sustain it.

  “I offered her an alternative,” Avery said. “I informed her that she could be the Duchess of Netherby instead if she wished.”

  “Just like that?” she asked him. “In front of everyone?”

  “I did not drop to one knee or otherwise make a spectacle of myself,” he said. “But now that you have put a dent in my self-esteem, Camille, I must consider the fact that my title outranked Riverdale’s and my fortune very far surpassed his. Do you suppose those facts weighed heavily with Anna?” He was looking sideways at her with lazy eyes.

  “Not for a moment,” she said.

  “You do not consider her mercenary or calculating, then?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said.

  “Ah,” he said. “You know, Camille, it is just as well that Bath boasts hot springs that are said to effect miracle cures whether the waters are imbibed or immersed in. Otherwise it would surely be a ghost of a city or would never have existed at all. These hills are an abomination, are they not? I am not even sure it is safe for you to hold my arm. I fear that at any moment I will lose control and hurtle downward in a desperate attempt to keep my boots moving at the same pace as the rest of my person.”

  “Sometimes you are very absurd, Avery,” she said.

  He turned his head toward her again. “You are in agreement with your sister upon that subject,” he said. “It is what she frequently says of me.”

  “Half sister,” she said sharply.

  He did not reply as they made their way down Gay Street. Camille had to admit in the privacy of her own mind that it felt good to have the support of a man’s arm again. And Avery’s felt surprisingly firm and strong when she considered the fact that he was scarcely an inch taller than she and was slight and graceful of build. But . . . he had felled Viscount Uxbury with his bare feet.

  “Avery,” she asked him, “why did you insist upon coming with me?”

  “The fact that I am your brother-in-law is not reason enough?” he asked. Strangely, she never thought of him in terms of that relationship. “Ah, I beg your pardon—half brother-in-law. But that makes me sound smaller than I am, and I really am quite sensitive about my height, you know.”

  She smiled but did not turn her face his way or answer his question. They were almost down the steepest part of the descent.

  “The thing is, you see, Camille,” he said, his voice softer than it had been, “that though my father married your aunt years ago and so made us into sort-of cousins, and I have felt a certain cousinly affection ever since for you and Abigail and Harry; and although I have known Anna for only a few months and it may seem unfair that I do not feel less for her accordingly, in reality, my dear, I am quite desperately fond of her. If you will forgive the vulgarity—the former Lady Camille Westcott might not have done so, but the present Camille possibly might—I would even go further and say that I am quite head-over-heels besotted with her. But that is only if you will indeed forgive the vulgarity. If you will not, then I will keep such an embarrassing admission to myself.”

  Camille smiled again, though she felt a bit shaken. It made a certain sense, however, she thought, that the cool, aloof, cynical, inscrutable, totally self-sufficient Duke of Netherby would fall as hard as a ton of bricks if ever he did fall. Who, though, could have predicted that it would happen with someone like Anastasia—who had looked as shabby as Joel did now when she first appeared in London. That last thought left her feeling even more shaken.

  “What are you trying to say, Avery?” she asked him.

  “Dear me,” he said, “I hope I am doing more than trying, Camille, when I have braved the perils of such a suicidal hill. What I am saying is that Anna understands. I believe her understanding and patience and love will be endless if they must be, just as her heartache will be. She loves me as dearly as I love her—of that I have no doubt. She is as exuberantly happy about the impending birth of our child as I am terrified. She loves and is loved by a largish circle of family members on both her mother’s side and her father’s. Her maternal grandparents adore her and are adored in return. She has everything that only her wildest dreams were able to deliver through most of her life. No, correction. Almost everything.”

  “Avery,” she said as they reached flat land. “I was courteous when you and she called at my grandmother’s house on your return from your wedding journey. I was courteous last evening. I wished her well this afternoon. I told her I was delighted for her, and I meant it. Why would I not? How could I wish her ill? It would be monstrous of me. And why single out me? Will Abby and Jessica and Harry be recipients of this admonition?”

  He winced theatrically. “My dear Camille,” h
e said, “I hope I never admonish anyone. It sounds as if it would require a great expenditure of energy. Anna craves the love—the full, unconditional love—of all four of you, but yours in particular. You are stronger, more forceful than the others. She admires you more and loves you more—though she scolds me when I say such a thing and reminds me that love cannot be measured by degree. One might have expected that she would be chagrined or contemptuous or any number of other negative things when she heard that you were teaching where she had taught and then that you were living where she had lived. Instead she wept, Camille—not with vexation, but with pride and admiration and love and a conviction that you would succeed and prove all your critics wrong.”

  Camille could not recall any other occasion when Avery had said so much, and most of it without his customary bored affectation.

  “Avery,” she said, “there is a difference between what one knows and determines with one’s head and what one feels with one’s heart. I was taught and have always endeavored to live according to the former. I have always believed that the heart is wild and untrustworthy, that emotion is best quelled in the name of sense and dignity. I am as new to my present life as Anastasia is to hers. And I am not at all sure that the first twenty-two years of my life were worth anything at all. In many ways I feel like a helpless infant. But while infants are discovering fingers and toes and mouths, I am discovering heart and feelings. Give me time.”

  What on earth was she saying? And to whom was she saying it? Avery of all people? She had always despised his indolent splendor.

  “Time is not mine to give, Camille,” he said as they turned onto Northumberland Place. “Or to take. But I wonder if the advent of Anna into your life was in its way as much of a blessing as her advent into mine has been. It is enough to make one almost believe in fate, is it not? And if that is not a wild, chaotic thought, I shudder to think what is.”