The carriage lurched into motion and he recalled that he was not the only one whose emotions had been aroused during this visit. Camille had come here with him after a full day of teaching to offer moral support, only to find herself horribly insulted by the man she had once been close to marrying.
“I am so sorry,” he said.
“About Viscount Uxbury calling me a doxy?” she said. “About his saying that I was not fit to be in that house? Why would you be sorry? You did not say it. Nor did you drag me here.”
“Despite the old saying about sticks and stones,” he said, “words do hurt. And you once held him in high enough esteem to agree to marry him.”
“I always thought that above all else he was a gentleman,” she said. “It hurts to know I was so wrong. And it always hurts to be accused of being something one is not. Yet I cannot help remembering that when Anastasia was admitted to Avery’s salon and offered a seat, I was outraged because she was not fit to be in that house with respectable people, among whose number I counted myself. Sometimes other people’s words become uncomfortable mirrors in which we gaze upon ourselves.”
“I must repeat what I have said before,” he said. “That man is altogether unworthy of you, Camille. He is a thoroughly nasty customer, and you had a fortunate escape from him. What I was really apologizing for, however, was my own negligence in not smashing that aristocratic nose of his and blackening both his eyes. I ought to have done that much for you—and rammed his teeth down his throat. I have been put to shame by the Duke of Netherby.”
“What Avery did was quite splendid in its context,” she said, reaching up for the worn leather strap as the carriage rattled out of the driveway and onto the road. “According to your account, he had been challenged to a duel, and honor as well as pride dictated that he accept. Today’s context was different. Both of you were guests of a dying man, and in his presence in his home. It would have been inappropriate to come to blows with Viscount Uxbury or even to engage in heated words. He did not behave like a gentleman. You did. You behaved with dignity and restraint, and for that, I thank you.”
“You had the last word, though,” he said, grinning at the memory, “by hoping he had recovered from the kick to his chin.”
“I lied.” She smiled suddenly, a bright, mischievous expression. “I did not hope any such thing. But I did want him to know that I know.”
“Well, I am sorry any of it happened,” he said. “It was poor thanks for your kindness in accompanying me here.”
“I suppose,” she said, “it was punishment for forcing my company upon you. I am not sorry I came, however. Mr. Cox-Phillips is very ill indeed, is he not?”
“Yes,” he agreed, and was assailed by a wholly unexpected wave of near panic. His mother and his grandparents were dead, and his great-uncle, his last link with them, was dying. There could be no doubt about that.
“Will you go back yet again?” she asked.
Part of him wanted to do it right now, to lean forward and knock urgently on the front panel and instruct the coachman to turn around.
“Very probably not,” he said. “There are more questions I would like to ask. Anecdotal questions. I would like to hear stories about his boyhood with his sister, my grandmother, about the arrival of my grandfather in the household, about the infancy and childhood of my mother. He must have stories to tell, must he not? But I doubt he would be willing to tell them even if he were fit and well. Why should he, after all? He does not know me. I am merely the bastard son of a niece for whom he does not appear to have felt much fondness. Anyway, he is neither fit nor well and would not even have told me as much as he did today if he had not been annoyed by the high-handed behavior of his kinsman. Besides, Uxbury has clearly come to stay, and the old man seems to believe that the other two claimants to his property and fortune will not be far behind him. I have no desire whatsoever to confront any of them.”
“Even though they are your relatives too?” she said.
“Exactly because of that,” he admitted. “I am not proud that Uxbury is somehow connected to me. I do not even know how and am not much interested in learning.”
“But I do wish circumstances had permitted you to smash his nose and blacken both his eyes and ram his teeth down his throat,” she added.
He grinned, remembering how at Sally Lunn’s she had wished she could string the man up by his thumbs. She chuckled, perhaps remembering the same thing, and then they were holding hands and almost doubled up with laughter. He did not know why they were quite so amused except that it had been a miserable and emotionally charged visit in a number of ways, and life had a way of reasserting itself in face of insult and sickness and imminent death.
“Thank you for coming with me, Camille,” he said when he could, and he squeezed her hand, which was still in his, and laced their fingers.
“I have been fearing that I ought not to have talked you into it,” she said. “It was really none of my business.”
“I learned the names of my mother and her parents,” he said. “It is not a great deal, but even that much knowledge gives me more identity.”
“And you have the painting,” she said
“Yes, I have that,” he agreed. “But I am afraid to look at it.”
She tipped her head to one side as she gazed at him and frowned in thought for a few moments. “I believe I would be too in your place,” she said. “You will look at it when you are ready.”