Someone to Hold

Though maybe those words some semblance were the key. Perfection as she had known it was no longer possible for Camille Westcott, and she was not willing to settle for anything less. She must search for something wholly new instead. It was not easy to like the woman, but he felt a grudging sort of respect for her.

He amended his thought immediately, however, for when she was in the schoolroom, flushed and animated and in full military-sergeant mode and surrounded by organized chaos, he almost did like her. Indeed, he was almost attracted to that teacher self of hers. Perhaps because that self suggested some underlying passion. Now, that was a startling thought.

“You have a disconcerting way of looking at me so directly that I feel as though you could see right through into my soul, Mr. Cunningham,” she said. “I suppose it is the artist in you. I would be obliged to you if you would stop.”

He picked up the teapot and refilled both their cups. “Why do you think you were so single-mindedly devoted to duty and perfection?” he asked. “More than your sister, for example.”

She hesitated as she stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea. “I was my father’s eldest child,” she said. “I was not a son and was therefore not his heir. I suppose my birth was a disappointment to him. But I always thought that if I was the perfect lady he might at least be proud of me. I thought he might love me.”

Good God. She did not seem the sort of woman who had ever in her life craved love. How shortsighted of him.

“And was he?” he asked. “And did he?”

She lifted her gaze to his and held it. In her eyes, easily her loveliest feature, he detected some pain very deeply hidden behind a stern demeanor.

“He only ever loved himself,” she said. “Everyone was aware of that. He was generally despised, even hated by people who were the victims of his selfishness. I longed to love him. I longed to be the one who would find the way to his heart and be his favorite. How foolish I was. I was not even his eldest child, was I? And Harry, his only son, was not his heir. Everything about my life was a lie and remained so until after his death. What I set as my primary goal in life was all a mirage in a vast, empty desert.”

Impulsively, Joel reached a hand across the table to cover the back of hers as it rested on the tablecloth. He knew instantly that he had made a mistake, for he felt an instant connection with the woman who was Camille Westcott, and he really did not want any such thing. And he heard her suck in a sharp breath and felt her hand twitch, though she did not snatch it away. He did not withdraw his own immediately either.

“You must have been expecting that everything would change for the better after you married Viscount Uxbury,” he said. “Did you love him?”

She drew her hand sharply away from his then. “Of course I did not love him,” she said scornfully. “People of my class . . . People of the aristocracy do not marry for love, Mr. Cunningham, or even believe in such a vulgar concept as romantic passion. We . . . They marry for position and prestige and a continuation of bloodlines and security and the joining of fortunes and property. Viscount Uxbury was the perfect match for Lady Camille Westcott, for he was a perfect gentleman just as she was a perfect lady. They matched in birth and fortune.”

She was speaking of herself in the third person and in the past tense, he noticed.

“And he jilted you,” he said, “when suddenly you and the match with you were no longer perfect.”

“Of course,” she said. “But he did not jilt me. He was the consummate gentleman to the end. He gave me a chance to jilt him.”

“And so you did,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

He wondered if she believed it all—that she had not loved the man she was to marry, that what Uxbury had done was the understandable, correct thing, that even in breaking with her he had been the perfect gentleman. He wondered if she bore no grudge. He wondered how badly she had been hurt.

“I would wager you hate him,” he said.

She stared at him tight lipped for several moments. “I would gladly string him up by his thumbs if I had the opportunity,” she said.

He sat back in his chair and laughed at the unexpectedness of her reply. She frowned and her lips tightened further, if that was possible.

“You must have been quite delighted, then, with what happened to him,” he said, “unless you would have preferred to mete out your own punishment.”

There was another moment of silence, during which her expression did not change. “What happened to him?” she asked, and Joel realized that she did not know. No one had written to tell her. But then, who would have done so? He wondered if he ought to keep his mouth shut, but it was too late now.

“The Duke of Netherby knocked him senseless,” he said.

“Avery?” She frowned. “You must be mistaken.”

“I am not,” he said. “Anna wrote to tell me about it.”

She set her cup down on the saucer with a bit of a clatter, her hand not quite steady. “What was she told?” she asked. “I daresay she got it all wrong.”

“Viscount Uxbury showed up at a ball to which he had not been invited,” Joel said. “It was in Anna’s honor and was being held at Netherby’s home in London. Uxbury insulted Anna when she discovered who he was and refused to dance with him, and then he made some rude remarks about you, and Netherby and the new earl—Alexander, I believe his name is?—had him thrown out. The next day he challenged Netherby.”