Someone to Hold

Most of all, perhaps, he resented the fact that he might just come to like Miss Camille Westcott. It seemed disloyal to Anna.

A number of the children, including six from his group, took their knitting with them when school was dismissed for the day. They were eager to complete the rope so that they could use it. They were voluntarily assigning themselves homework. Was the sun about to fall from the sky?

When Joel had tidied his side of the room and turned to take his leave of Miss Westcott, he saw that she was seated at one of the small desks, frowning in concentration over a length of knitting in her hands.

“A weak link in your rope?” he asked.

“Oh, it appears perfect,” she said without looking up. “By some miracle there is the correct number of stitches on the needle. However, one was dropped about eight rows back, and one was acquired from an innocent loop two rows ago. I leave you to do the arithmetic.”

“They cancel each other out,” he said, grinning and strolling closer. The short length of knitted fabric looked considerably less than perfect. Some of the stitches had been very loosely knitted and resembled coarse lace, while others had been pulled tight and were all bunched together. The result was that the strip looked a bit like an arthritic snake. “You will turn a blind eye?”

“Certainly not,” she said curtly as she afforded him one withering glance. “I shall make the corrections. Cedric Barnes is only five and he has done his best. However, he must have something to come back to that looks at least half decent or he might lose heart.”

Joel raised his eyebrows as he watched her weave the dropped stitch up through the rows. He turned again to leave, but hesitated.

“You are not eager to go home?” he asked. “On a Friday afternoon?”

“I am home,” she told him as she knitted along the row in order to drop the loop that ought not to be a stitch. She did not explain.

“Meaning?” he asked.

“I have moved in here,” she told him. “It was too far to walk back and forth each day. I have taken the room that used to be Anastasia’s.”

He stared at the top of her head, transfixed with dislike and something that felt very like fury. What the devil was she up to? Was nothing sacred? Was she trying to step right into Anna’s shoes and . . . obliterate her? And why did she persist in calling Anna Anastasia, even if it was her correct name?

“That room is rather small, is it not?” he said.

“It has a bed and a table and chair and enough storage space for those belongings I have brought here,” she said. “It has a washstand and bowl and jug and hooks on the wall and a mirror on the back of the door. It was big enough for Anastasia. I daresay it will be big enough for me.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Why?” he asked, and wondered if he sounded as hostile as he felt.

“I have told you why.” She had dropped the loop back to its original place and was pulling the knitting into shape about it. When he said nothing, she rolled up the ball of wool and pressed it firmly onto the ends of the needles before pinning the little name tag she had prepared to the knitting and taking it over to the cupboard, where she set it on a shelf with the others that had been left behind. “I do not have to explain myself to you.”

“No,” he agreed, “you do not.” And it was a bit ridiculous of him to feel offended. Anna was long gone. She lived in a ducal mansion and was unlikely to need the room here ever again. He turned to leave.

“Anastasia found her family at the age of twenty-five,” she said, fussing with the already tidy shelves of the cupboard, “and had to learn to adjust to relatives who were essentially strangers to her. I remember that when she first learned the truth about herself her instinct was to turn her back on the new reality and return here. I hoped with all my heart that she would do just that so that we could forget about her and carry on with our lives as we always had. That would not have been possible, of course, even if she had come back here. It would not have been possible for us or for her. The contents of a Pandora’s box can never be stuffed back in once they have been released. I have to make the opposite adjustment. I have to learn not to belong to people who have always been my family. I have to learn to be an orphan. Not literally, perhaps, but to all intents and purposes.”

“You are not an orphan in any sense of the word,” he said harshly, irritated with her anew and wishing he had left when he had first intended to. “You have relatives on both sides and have always known them. You have a mother still living and a full sister and brother. You have a half sister who would love you if you would allow it. Yet you insist upon cutting yourself off from all of them as though they do not want you and moving to an orphanage as though you belong here.”

“I know I do not belong,” she said, “except in the sense that I teach here. I do not expect you to understand, Mr. Cunningham. You do not have the experience to understand what has happened to me, just as I do not have the experience to understand what has happened to you in the course of your life.”

“That is where human empathy comes in,” he said. “If we did not have it and cultivate it, Miss Westcott, we would not understand or sympathize with anyone, for we are all unique in our experience.”

She turned her head toward him, her eyebrows raised, while the fingertips of one hand drummed on a shelf. “You are quite right, of course,” she said. “Something catastrophic has happened to my life as I knew it, Mr. Cunningham. In the months since then I have wallowed in misery and denial and, yes, self-pity. You were quite right about that. I will not do it any longer. And I will not cling to relatives who would be kind but would possibly do me more harm than good, unintentional though it would be. I must discover for myself who I am and where I belong, and in order to do that I must put some distance between myself and them, for they would coddle me if I would allow it. Some distance, not a total one. I shall visit my grandmother and Abigail. I shall see my Westcott relatives when they come here, supposedly to celebrate a birthday. Did I tell you they are all coming, not just Anastasia and Avery? For Grandmama Westcott’s seventieth birthday? But . . . I must and will learn to stand alone. I can do that better if I live here. Please do not let me keep you. You must be eager to go home.”