Someone to Hold

“This is all yours?” she asked him.

“I rent the whole floor, yes,” he said. “I had just the bedchamber for twelve years, but last week the family who occupied the rest of the floor moved out and I was able to rent it all. I still have not recovered from the novelty of having all this space to myself. It makes me feel very affluent.”

“The bedchamber,” she said, “is a bit bigger than my room at the orphanage.” Though not by very much. And it had been his home for twelve years. Before that he had, presumably, shared a dormitory with four or five other boys at the orphanage. Her thoughts touched upon the size of Hinsford Manor, where she had grown up, and veered away again. But really, how vastly different their experiences of life had been.

“It was my sleeping area, my living room, and my studio,” he said. “It was where I stored my paintings and supplies. There was barely room for me.”

They stood side by side just beyond the doorway, gazing in. He must have felt the awkwardness of it just as she did. They both turned away rather hastily.

“And now you paint in that room?” she asked, nodding to the room ahead. “There is plenty of light.”

“No.” He indicated the closed door. “My studio is in there. It is the most prized of my new rooms. My private domain. Let me take your bonnet and pelisse and hang them up to dry. I’ll light the fire in the kitchen range and put the kettle on for tea. Come and sit at the table while you wait.”

He hung her things on hooks in the hallway and she followed him into the living room and through another door into the kitchen and dining area. He tossed his damp coat onto an arm of the sofa in passing and pulled on a jacket that had been thrown over the back of it. The jacket was even shabbier and more shapeless than his coat and gave him a comfortable, domesticated look that somehow emphasized his virility and made her even more aware that she was alone with a man in his home in an empty house two stories above the street.

He busied himself getting a fire started and filling the kettle from a pitcher of water in the corner while Camille sat at the dining table and watched him. He spooned some tea from a caddy into a large teapot and took two mismatched cups and saucers from one cupboard and a bottle of milk and a sugar bowl from another. He found a couple of spoons in a drawer.

“You drank your tea without milk yesterday and at luncheon earlier,” he said. “Do you prefer it that way?”

“Yes,” she said. “I will take a little sugar, though, please.”

He poured a few drops of milk into one of the cups and brought the sugar bowl to the table. He hesitated a moment and sat down on the chair adjacent to hers. It was going to be a while yet before the kettle boiled. He was as uncomfortable as she, Camille thought. This was very different from being at Sally Lunn’s.

“Do people come here to have their portraits painted?” she asked him.

“No,” he said. “It was impossible until this past week. There simply was not enough room. There is now, but my general policy will not change. My studio is my private place.”

It was the second time he had said that. Was he warding off any request she might make to see his paintings?

“Does anyone come here at all?” she asked.

“The fellows on the two floors below have entertained me in the past,” he said, “as well as a few other friends of mine. I was finally able to return the compliment and invite them all here last week, the day after I moved in, for a sort of housewarming.”

“All men?” she asked. “No women?”

“No women,” he said.

“I am the first, then?”

Silence, she realized again, was not always really silent. It acted as a sort of echo chamber for unconsidered words that had just been uttered. And it had a pulse and made a dull, thudding sound. Or perhaps that was her own heartbeat she could hear.

“You are the first, Camille,” he said with a slight and slightly crooked smile. “Because of the rain,” he added. He gave her name its proper French pronunciation—eel at the end instead of ill, as her family tended to do. She liked the sound of her name on his lips.

Their eyes met and held, and Camille found herself wondering foolishly if other gentlemen of her acquaintance were as masculine as he was and she had just not noticed. Was Viscount Uxbury—? But no, he most certainly was not, despite a handsome face and a splendid physique. She would have noticed. Good heavens, she had been going to marry him, yet she had never felt even a frisson of . . . desire for him. Was that what she felt for Mr. Cunningham—Joel—then? Or was she merely still breathless from that run followed by the climb up the stairs?

“I suppose,” she said, “you planned to be busy painting this afternoon. But instead you agreed to come walking with me when I might have guessed that the rain would come back.”

“I have a portrait to finish off,” he said. “Two of them, actually. They are both near completion. But there is no particular hurry.”

“And then it will be our turn?” she asked. “Abigail’s and mine? Do you ever run out of work? Is the possibility a bit frightening?” In the past she had never really thought of being without money.

“It has not happened yet,” he said, “and I do try to keep a little by me for that rainy day everyone warns of. Sometimes I wish there was more time to paint for my own pleasure, though. There will probably be another commission next week, though I do not know how many portraits it will involve.”