“Do you think—” Abigail stopped and fussed over donning her shawl and picking up her fan. “Do you think we may have a few partners, Cam? Apart from Uncle Thomas and Alexander, that is?”
“I think,” Camille said, “our aunts will take their duties as hostesses seriously, Abby. A hostess does not like to see wallflowers decorating her ballroom. It reflects badly upon her.”
“They will find us partners, then?” Abigail wrinkled her nose.
“It is the way things are arranged,” Camille told her. “And sometimes gentlemen will ask to be presented. It is not done, you know, for them to rush up and ask for a dance when there has been no introduction.”
She hoped she was speaking the truth. She hoped her sister would have dancing partners and that they would not be just older married men who had been coerced into it or had taken pity on her. She did not care for herself. She would be quite content merely to watch the festivities and spend a little more time with her family before they returned home. And, as Abby had just said, Uncle Thomas and Alexander and even Avery would no doubt dance with her. And . . .
Joel?
She had tried very hard all day not to think about yesterday. What exactly had he been saying? He probably did not even know himself, though—he had compared his mind to a hornets’ nest. But—I would like to have children of my own. I would like to give them what I never knew, a father and a mother. And he had spoken of adopting children. He had mentioned Sarah. And then, after seeming to be building to something, he had thanked her for coming and for listening and led the way down the hill.
Oh, she was going to go home to Hinsford with Mama and Abby. She was simply going to give up the struggle and be abject. No, she was not. She was going to remain at the school. She was going to stay firm and . . . Perhaps she would set up her own establishment somewhere and live independently. She could do it with the money she was taking from Anna. She could live very well on it, in fact. She was sure even a quarter of her father’s fortune was a very handsome sum. Yes, perhaps she would do just that or. . . .
Oh, Joel.
Abigail was ready to go downstairs, and soon they were in the carriage with their mother and grandmother on the way to the Upper Assembly Rooms even though the distance was a very short one. Mama held Abby’s hand tightly, Camille noticed. She herself opened and closed her fan on her lap and wondered if there would be any waltzes.
* * *
Joel had become something of a local celebrity. He was already known by some people, of course, as a portrait painter, and those people were able to point him out to everyone else as the penniless orphan who had turned out to be the long-lost great-nephew—some even said grandson—of the very wealthy Mr. Cox-Phillips, who had lived in one of the mansions up in the hills. The elderly gentleman had discovered the truth in the very nick of time, or so the story ran, and left every last penny of his millions to the young man, whom he had been able to clasp to his bosom for the first and last time almost with his dying breath.
Joel’s celebrity had been enhanced rather than diminished when the story began to circulate and then ignite fashionable drawing rooms that he had punched Viscount Uxbury in the face during a tea at the Upper Rooms, knocking all his teeth down his throat in the process, for insulting a lady.
It was with a great deal of trepidation, then, that Joel approached those same Upper Rooms on Saturday evening, uncomfortable in new evening clothes and shoes and wondering if it was imperative for a man to dance at such an event when he had only ever danced at the orphanage. And wondering too if there would be enough dark corners in which to hide. And wondering if it was too late to turn around and go back home. But he was mortally tired of his own cowardice. One thing was certain. He could not return to his old, comfortable life. Very well, then. He would move on with the new.
Besides, Camille might well take herself off to Hinsford Manor tomorrow with her mother and sister, and he was not going to allow it to happen without a fight—or without at least talking to her first.
He walked purposefully up to the door of the rooms, gave his name to the bruiser of a uniformed man who half filled the doorway—at least one person in Bath, it seemed, did not know him by sight—and stepped inside.
Every citizen of Bath except the bruiser at the door must have been invited, he thought over the next few minutes. The tearoom was crammed, the ballroom was full, and if he was not drawing attention wherever he went, then his imagination was far more vivid than he had realized. An orchestra on a raised platform was tuning its instruments, though the dancing had not begun. The place hummed with conversation and laughter, and if someone would just open a trapdoor in the floor Joel would gladly disappear through it without even checking for steps first.
And then Lady Molenor claimed him, all sparkling jewels and nodding hair plumes and gracious manners, and she was closely followed by the Dowager Duchess of Netherby, formidable in a royal blue gown and matching turban with a jewel the size of a robin’s egg pinned to the front of it. They bore him off between them to greet the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, who was seated in the ballroom on a chair that resembled a throne, happily receiving the homage and birthday greetings of all and sundry while Lady Matilda Westcott, her daughter, plied a fan in the vicinity of her face, all solicitous concern for her mother’s comfort. Anna, looking very lovely indeed in deep rose pink, came to hug him, and Lady Jessica Archer and Miss Abigail Westcott fluttered their fans at him and smiled brightly before walking off arm-in-arm to display their prettiness before the gathered multitudes. And . . . Camille was there, standing for the moment a little off to one side of her grandmother, alone.