Someone to Hold

He had intended to settle to the painting after sealing the letter, but his mind was churning with myriad thoughts and he owed the subject of the portrait better than that. Perhaps later. Perhaps he was just tired. He had had maybe an hour of sleep at Edwina’s, maybe two here after dawn. Finally he stopped pretending to himself, though he still did not admit his motive. He went to the orphanage, picking up some fresh eggs at the market on the way. There was nothing so very remarkable about his visit, after all. He often went there unannounced, to chat with the staff that had been there for much of his life and to play with the children. They were his family.

And if he went at least partly to see how Camille Westcott was coping with her first full day there, then it was hardly surprising, for she was a work colleague, and she was Anna’s sister. And he was to paint her portrait even if her sister’s was to come first.

The garden was deserted, of course, since the drizzle was still coming down and making July feel more like April. He made his way to the playroom—and saw her immediately, even though it was almost overflowing with busy children and their adult supervisors and she was sitting quietly in a corner. Would she never cease to amaze him? She was holding a sleeping baby. If he was not mistaken, it was the one who had been discovered on the front step early one morning a week or so ago with one thousand pounds in banknotes tucked beneath the blanket in which the child was wrapped—a staggeringly immense fortune in money with a scrap of paper on which were written the words Sarah Smith. Look after her.

Joel played with several of the children, but all the time he was aware of the woman and baby in the corner. He had brought a sketch pad with him, as he usually did, though he did not often make use of it. He was always more of a participant than an observer here. But this time was different, and finally he could resist no longer. He sat down to sketch. He did not even have to look at them while he worked. He marveled that he had seen yet another aspect of Camille Westcott he would never have suspected. Her whole posture of relaxed stillness and her apartness in the corner of the room spoke of maternal love.

Of course she was unaware of it. She frowned when she saw the sketch after Hannah had taken the baby from her. He had seen the moment when she recognized herself and stiffened with displeasure and perhaps denial. Her lips had thinned when he told her there was no crime in loving a child. Yet she had asked him for the sketch, which he had wanted to add to the portfolio of her he had started early this morning. He gave it to her reluctantly and wondered if she would burn it or hang it in her room or hide it at the bottom of a drawer.

They sat at the staff table in the dining room with the nurse and Miss Ford, but they lingered there after the other two had left.

“Have you ever discovered anything of your parentage, Mr. Cunningham?” she asked him.

“No,” he said.

“Do you ever wish you could?” she asked.

He considered the question—not that he had not done so a hundred or a thousand times before, but he had ambivalent feelings about it. “Perhaps I would regret it if I ever did ever find out,” he said. “Perhaps they were not pleasant people. Perhaps they came from unpleasant families. It is only human, however, to yearn for answers.”

“Do you suppose Anastasia has regretted finding out?” she asked him.

“I believe she did for a while,” he said. “But she would not have met and married the Duke of Netherby if she had remained Anna Snow, orphan teacher of orphan children in provincial Bath. And that would have been something of a tragedy, for she is happy with him. She has also discovered maternal grandparents who did not after all abandon her. And she has a paternal grandmother and aunts and cousins who have opened their hearts to her and drawn her into a larger family. On the whole, I do not believe she has many regrets.”

“On the whole?” She was gazing into her teacup, which was suspended between the saucer and her mouth.

“Her new life has brought some unhappiness too,” he said. “She has been quite firmly rejected by the very family members she most yearns to love. And what makes it worse for her is that she knows she has brought a catastrophic sort of misery to those people but has not been allowed to make any sort of amends.”

“Are you trying to make me feel guilty, Mr. Cunningham?” she asked him.

“You asked the question,” he reminded her. “Ought I to have given the answer with sugar added to disguise some of the bitterness? Do you feel guilty?”

“I am tired of this conversation, Mr. Cunningham,” she said.

“And I am tired of being Mr. Cunningham,” he said. “My name is Joel.”

“I have been brought up to address everyone outside my inner family circle with the proper courtesy,” she told him.

“You would probably have called your husband Uxbury all his life if you had married him,” he said.

“Probably,” she agreed. “What I was brought up to does not amount to the snap of my fingers now, though, does it? I am Camille.” She set her cup down on the saucer, still half full. “I see that the rain has stopped. I need to get out of here. Would you care for a walk?”

With her? She irritated him more than half the time, intrigued him for much of the rest of it. He did not believe he liked her. He certainly did not want to spend Saturday afternoon prowling the streets of Bath with her. He had better things to do, not least the completion of a portrait so that he could get on with hers and her sister’s.

“Very well,” he found himself saying nevertheless as he got to his feet.