Someone to Hold

“What is it, Joel?” she asked. “Something is troubling you.”

“Do I look as if something is?” he asked in return.

“Yes, indeed,” she said. “I know you well, remember.”

Camille felt annoyed with herself for feeling stabbed to the heart—and for shamelessly listening while Uncle Thomas continued to talk to Cousin Althea.

“I must admit to having been a bit shaken this morning,” Joel said. “I went to call on a very sick old man of my acquaintance, only to discover that he had died an hour before I got there. Ever since I have been berating myself for not going yesterday.”

“Oh, Joel!” Camille’s words, from several places down the table, were startled out of her. “Mr. Cox-Phillips has died?”

“Yes,” he said, glancing bleakly her way. “An hour before I got there. His butler was upset. He had tears in his eyes. I beg your pardon,” he added, looking about at everyone else, obviously uncomfortable with having become the focus of attention again. “This is not a topic for such an occasion.”

“But how very distressing that must have been for you,” Elizabeth said. “Was he a particular friend of yours, Mr. Cunningham?”

“He was my great-uncle,” he said after a brief hesitation. “My grandmother’s brother.”

“Joel?” Anastasia leaned closer to him across the table, her eyes wide. “Your great-uncle? Your grandmother?”

“He invited me to call,” Joel explained. “I assumed he wished to discuss some painting commission with me, but when I went earlier this week, he told me it was his now-deceased sister who took me to the orphanage as a baby after my mother died in childbed. So you see, Anna, you are not the only one to have discovered your parentage this year.”

“Cox-Phillips.” Aunt Louise frowned in thought. “He used to be in the government in some capacity, did he not? Netherby—my husband—had an acquaintance with him. I had assumed him to be long deceased. Not that I have spared a thought for him in years, I must confess. If memory serves me correctly, though, he was some connection of Viscount Uxbury’s. I remember hearing it when Uxbury began to show an interest in Camille.”

It seemed to Camille that everyone—except Avery—determinedly did not look her way.

Avery, unapologetically resplendent in satin and lace long after they had passed out of fashion with most other gentlemen, sat at his elegant ease, a glass of port in one hand, a jeweled quizzing glass in the other, his smooth blond hair like a shining halo about his head. His heavy-lidded eyes were fixed upon Camille.

“Yes, he was,” Joel said. “Uxbury is there at the house now.”

“The less said about him, the better,” Aunt Mildred said. “I do not feel at all kindly toward that young man.”

“He must be Cox-Phillips’s heir, then,” Avery said. “That could be unwelcome news to you, Camille, though I do not suppose he will spend any great amount of time here as your near neighbor. He does not strike me as the sort to make his permanent home in Bath.”

“Perhaps,” Camille said, “he will be discouraged by the possibility that you will come to my defense again, Avery, with your bare feet.”

His eyes gleamed with appreciation, and his hand closed about the handle of his quizzing glass. “Ah, you have heard about that slight episode, have you?” he said.

“What is this about bare feet?” Aunt Louise asked sharply.

“You would not wish to know, Louise,” Uncle Thomas said firmly. “More to the point, you would not wish Jessica or Abigail to know.”

“Know what?” Jessica cried, leaning forward across the table to fix her eager gaze upon her half brother. “What did you do to Viscount Uxbury, Avery? I hope you punched him in the nose without first removing any of your rings. I hope you ran him through the ribs with the point of your sword. I hope you shot him—”

“That is quite enough, Jessica,” Aunt Louise said sternly.

“He is a thoroughly nasty man, Aunt Louise,” Anastasia said, “and I can only applaud Jessica’s bloodthirsty wishes for his fate. He was horrid to me at my first ball and he was horrid about Camille—worse, in fact, because he had been betrothed to her. I am so glad, Camille, that you escaped his clutches in time, though I daresay you were unhappy at the time. Avery avenged you, and I do not care how many ladies know how he did it and are shocked. And if Avery had not avenged you, then Alex would have. They love you.”

There was a brief silence about the table as Anastasia looked at Camille and Camille frowned back at her. She blinked, feeling that hotness behind her eyes that sometimes presaged tears. She nodded curtly.

“I am not shocked,” her mother said. “I am enchanted.”

“But . . . bare feet, Avery?” Abigail said.

“You see,” he said softly, raising his glass to his eye to survey her through it and sounding horribly bored in that annoying way of his, “I had no choice. I had removed my boots. And my stockings.”

“Mr. Cunningham,” Aunt Mildred said, “accept my congratulations at having discovered your identity at last and my commiserations at your loss of your great-uncle so soon after you found him.”

And everyone’s attention returned to Joel.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

Sixteen

After having felt a great deal of nervous apprehension about walking in upon a family gathering of such illustrious persons, most of whom he had not met before, Joel had found his welcome gracious, even warm. He might have almost enjoyed the evening if Camille had not been there, looking a bit like a regal Amazon, to make it impossible for him to put aside his great sense of guilt, at least for a few hours. Fortunately, perhaps, dinner was served soon after his arrival, and he had found himself seated between Lady Overfield and Lady Molenor, with Anna across from him and Camille farther along the table on the same side as he, where he need not be constantly looking at her.