Someone to Hold

“Next week?” she said.

“On Tuesday,” he said, “I have agreed to call upon a Mr. Cox-Phillips. He lives some distance outside Bath up in the hills where most of the houses are mansions. I daresay he is very wealthy and can well afford my fee.”

“Cox-Phillips?” She frowned in thought. “Do you know him?”

“No,” he said, “but he must know me or at least have heard of me. My fame must be spreading.” He grinned at her and got up to check the kettle, though it was clearly not boiling yet. “Do you know him?”

“I know who he is,” she said, “or, at least, I suppose he must be the man I am thinking of. He was somebody important in the government a number of years ago, an acquaintance of my uncle, the late Duke of Netherby. I remember my aunt Louise talking about him. She used to describe him as curmudgeonly. He has some family connection to Viscount Uxbury.”

“Curmudgeonly?” Joel said, sitting down again. “That does not bode well for me. He may not like being told he must wait for a few months until I have time to paint for him.”

“You must play the part of temperamental artist,” she said, “and pit your will against his.”

“Who says it would be playing a part?” he asked her, grinning again. “If he cuts up nasty, I shall just refuse whatever commission he has in mind. Perhaps I will not even go up there.”

“The word curmudgeonly has frightened you off?” she asked him. “But your curiosity will surely outweigh your fear. I hope so, anyway. I want to hear all about your visit when you come to school on Wednesday, assuming, that is, that you survive the ordeal.”

He gazed at her without answering, and his fingers drummed a light tattoo on the table. “I need my sketch pad,” he said. “You should do that more often, Camille.”

“Do what?” She could feel her cheeks grow warm at the intentness of his gaze.

“Smile,” he said. “With a certain degree of mischief in your eyes. The expression transforms you. Or perhaps it is just another facet of your character I have not seen before. I left my sketchbook at the orphanage, alas, though I do have others in the studio.”

“Mischief?”

“Of course you are not doing it any longer,” he said. “I ought not to have drawn your attention to it.”

“The kettle is boiling,” she said, and she pressed both palms to her cheeks when he got up and turned his back. But the thing was that she really had been smiling and joking and rather enjoying the image of him confronting Lord Uxbury’s crotchety relative, his knees knocking with fright but his artistic temperament coming to his rescue. And now she was probably blushing. She watched him pour the boiling water into the teapot and cover it with a cozy to keep the tea hot while it steeped. She had never seen a man make tea. He did not look effeminate doing it, though, despite the fact that the cozy had daisies embroidered all over it. Quite the opposite, in fact. “Mischief is for children, Mr. Cu— Joel.”

“And for adults who are willing to relax and simply be happy,” he said, turning to lean back against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest.

“You think I am not willing?” she asked him.

“Are you?”

“Ladies are not brought up to cultivate happiness,” she said. ‘There are more important things.”

“Are there?”

She frowned. “What is happiness?” she asked. “How does one achieve it, Joel?”

He did not immediately answer. Their eyes locked and neither looked away. Camille swallowed as he pushed away from the counter and came toward her. He set one hand on the table beside hers and the other on the back of her chair. He drew breath as though to say something, but then leaned over her instead and kissed her.

Somehow she had known it was coming, yet when it happened she was so surprised, so shocked, that she sat there and did nothing to prevent it. It did not last long—probably no more than a few seconds. But during those seconds she became aware that his lips were slightly parted over her own and that there was heat in them and in his breath against her cheek. She was startlingly aware of the male smell of him and of a tingling awareness and yearning and . . . desire that were shockingly physical.

And then he drew back his head, and his eyes, darker and more intense than usual, gazed into hers, their expression inscrutable.

Camille spoke before he could. “That is how one achieves happiness?” she asked. Goodness, she had just been kissed. On the lips. She could not remember ever being kissed there before, not even by her mother. If she had been, it was so long ago that memory of it had faded into the dim, distant past.

“Not necessarily happiness itself.” He straightened up. “But sometimes a kiss is at least pleasurable. Sometimes it is not.”

“I am sorry I have disappointed you,” she said, all instinctive haughtiness. “But I have never been kissed before. I have no idea how to go about it.”

“I was not saying it was not a pleasure to kiss you, Camille,” he said. “But I certainly did not intend to do it, and it ought not to have happened. I brought you in here out of the rain, but it was unconsidered and unwise. Even a man who is not a gentleman understands, you see, that he ought not to bring a virtuous woman to his rooms, and that if he does for some compelling reason—like a heavy rain—then he should not take advantage of her by kissing her.”

“I do not feel taken advantage of,” she said. Perhaps she ought, but she did not. It had happened, and on the whole she was not sorry. It was another new experience to add to all the others of the last few months, and she knew she would relive those few seconds for days to come, perhaps longer. Was that very pathetic of her?