Someone to Hold
Page 47

“I never saw you,” he said. “I saw your sister a few times and was introduced to her at Mrs. Dance’s soiree. The first time I saw you was in the schoolroom when Miss Ford brought you there. Would your mother’s staying have made life more difficult for you?”
“I do not know.” She shrugged. “But Abby has missed her.”
“And you?” he asked.
“I do not know,” she said again, and it was her turn to look out through the window on her side of the carriage in order to discourage further conversation—though she was the one who had brought up the subject. It was actually a good thing she had read her mother’s letter early this morning before school. She had been unable to weep over it—she had had a class of children to face. Would it have made a difference if Mama had stayed? Abby was only eighteen, little more than a child. And as for Camille herself . . . Well, sometimes she felt as though she had been cast into outer darkness. She had felt when she came to Bath that there could not possibly be anything more to lose. But there was. Her mother had gone away.
The carriage was making a sharp turn between two stone gateposts and then proceeding along a winding driveway until a modestly sized mansion appeared to the right, a panoramic view downward opened up to the left, and a carefully laid-out, well-tended garden stretched out on either side of them.
“This is it,” Joel said unnecessarily.
He helped Camille alight, instructed the coachman to wait, and approached the steps to rap the knocker against the front door. He was looking grim again, and she knew he would rather be anywhere else on earth. She could not feel sorry, though, that she had goaded him into coming. She really believed he would be forever sorry if he did not. Of course, Mr. Cox-Phillips might refuse to see him or to answer any questions if he did admit them. But at least Joel would be able to console himself in the future with the knowledge that he had done everything he could.
An elderly butler admitted them to a hall cluttered with marble busts surely designed to make any chance visitor uncomfortable enough to flee. They all had empty eye sockets but stared anyway. Camille stared right back after the butler had gone off to see if his master was receiving. He had looked as though he might be on the verge of refusing even to check until his eyes had alit upon Camille, and without conscious thought she had reverted to a familiar role and had become Lady Camille Westcott without uttering a word. He had inclined his head deferentially and gone on his way.
“He may have been instructed to toss me out if I should ever have the effrontery to return,” Joel said with a grin that did not quite compensate for the tense look on his face.
“Then it is a good thing I came too,” she said. “I have my uses. I do not for one moment believe these marble busts are either marble or authentic. If they came from Italy or Greece or anywhere other than some inferior workshop in England, I would be very surprised.”
“We concur in that,” he agreed.
The butler returned and invited them to follow him. They were admitted to a library, one that lived up to its name. As far as she could see from a single glance, there was not a space on the walls that was not taken up with bookshelves, and there was surely not a space left on those shelves for even one more book. The room was in semidarkness, heavy curtains having been drawn across the windows, perhaps to preserve the books or perhaps to protect the old man’s eyes from bright sunlight.
There were three people already in the room, apart from the butler, who withdrew after admitting them and closed the door behind him. There was what appeared to be a very old, wizened man in the chair by the fireplace—the fire was lit even though the air was stifling. He even had a heavy blanket covering him from the waist down and a tasseled nightcap on his head. Behind his chair stood a soberly clad individual, every line of whose body told Camille that he could be nothing else but a valet.
The third occupant of the room was silhouetted against the fireplace so that until he moved he appeared only as a tall, broad-shouldered, well-formed man dressed in the very height of London fashion. When he did move, in order to take a few steps away from the fire and toward the door, he revealed himself also to be an extremely handsome man—with a haughty, condescending expression on his face.
“That is quite far enough, fellow,” he said, looking Joel over from head to toe with insolent contempt and the aid of a quizzing glass. “I can see the butler ought to have known better than to come asking if he might admit you when my cousin is not well enough to make an informed decision. I shall be having a word with the servants about allowing in every riffraff petitioner who thinks to take advantage of Mr. Cox-Phillips’s advanced age and frail health. Fortunately for him, such persons will have to get past me in the future now that I am here to protect him. You may take yourself off with the . . . lady.” He turned dismissive eyes upon Camille, who had remained behind Joel, half hidden in shadow.
She felt close to fainting, though not from the heat of the room. The training of years kept her from doing anything so missish or from otherwise humiliating herself. “How do you do, Lord Uxbury?” she said, stepping out of the shadows and looking him steadily in the eye.
He dropped his quizzing glass on its ribbon, and his eyes fairly started from his head. It was a brief setback. He recovered within moments, and a sneer replaced his look of shock. “Well, upon my word, if it is not Miss Westcott,” he said, emphasizing her title, or, rather, her lack thereof, and subjecting her to a sweeping head-to-toe perusal.