Someone to Hold
Page 56

“Oh, perhaps.” Anna admitted after thinking a moment. “I long to love Camille, Lizzie, but I find it so difficult to like her. Does that even make sense? Joel surely deserves better. And now I feel disloyal to my sister for saying so. No, it is not jealousy, Lizzie. I never loved Joel in that way. But I did and do love him nevertheless.”
“I do not believe anyone really likes Camille,” Elizabeth said as the carriage slowed on the uphill climb to the hotel, “except, I would hope, Abigail and probably Harry and their mother. But . . . when Miss Ford was describing her as a teacher, I could scarcely believe she was describing the Camille I know. Dancing with the children? Singing with them? Getting them to knit a purple rope? Becoming emotionally attached to an abandoned baby? Is it possible she is becoming human?”
“I have not known her for long,” Anna said unhappily. “Indeed, I have met her only a few times in all. She does not like me, and that is quite understandable. But I admire her immensely for what she is doing. It must be very difficult for her. Yet she is doing it well. Oh, Lizzie, I long to like her as well as love her. Will it ever be possible? But Camille and Joel? I cannot for the life of me see them as a couple.”
“He really is rather gorgeous, is he not?” Elizabeth said, smiling sidelong at her companion.
“Joel?” Anna looked at her in surprise.
“You grew up with him, “Elizabeth said. “To you he is a sort of brother. It took me a while to realize how devastatingly handsome Alex is in the eyes of other women. To me he was always just my tall, good-looking young brother.”
“Joel is gorgeous?” Anna frowned. “Is he really?”
“And Camille would be remarkably handsome,” Elizabeth said, “if she would not always be so intent upon looking like a prune.”
“Perhaps she is not always so,” Anna said. “She is doing well as a teacher. The children like her. I know just how demanding a job teaching is, Lizzie, and how difficult it is to earn the liking and respect of one’s pupils. They must have seen aspects of her you and I have not. And that baby lights up with joy when she sees Camille, according to Miss Ford. Perhaps Joel has seen these other sides of her too.”
“For a brief moment after Miss Ford opened the door,” Elizabeth said as they arrived at the hotel, “I did not recognize the woman as Camille.”
“Oh,” Anna said, “neither did I.”
* * *
Camille hastened over to the bookcase to finish straightening the books. Except that the task had already been completed and there was nothing left to do.
“I must look a fright,” she said.
“In contrast with your cousin and your sister?” he said. “That is because you have been too deeply involved in your day’s work to worry about your appearance. A look of slight dishevelment does not necessarily make a person look a fright, though.”
Slight dishevelment. His words were not reassuring. “Half sister,” she said, frowning. “Does it hurt you to see her looking so happy?”
“No,” he said. “Does it hurt you?”
Happiness—a deep sort of contentment—had surrounded Anastasia with a glow that was almost visible, and Camille did not believe it was just the acquisition of property and fortune that had caused it. Avery had had something to do with it. Whatever could she see in Avery except bored affectation? Except that he had felled Viscount Uxbury with his bare feet—in defense of her, Camille’s honor. There must be something terribly wrong with her, Camille thought, that she could neither feel nor attract love. Was it possible that her quest for perfection had somehow deadened an essential part of herself?
“No,” she said, switching the positions of two books for no other reason than that it gave her something to do. “Why should it?”
He had been going to kiss her. She had been going to kiss him back. But they had been interrupted. Now she was resentful. Or relieved. And horribly embarrassed. Why did he not just leave? He was over there by the door. All he had to do was open it and step through—and leave her to move the desks and chairs back where they belonged. She looked up at him. He was leaning back against the door, his arms crossed, staring broodingly at her.
“I cannot bring myself to look at it,” he said abruptly.
She stared blankly at him for a moment before realizing his thoughts had not been moving along the same lines as her own.
“I could not bring myself to unwrap it in the carriage yesterday. I thought I needed to be alone. But I was alone all evening and all night and this morning until I went up to the Royal Crescent to make more sketches of your sister. I did not once even glance its way. Now I cannot bear the thought of going home alone and knowing it is there and that I do not have the courage to deal with it. There must be something wrong with me.”
What if she had never known her own mother? What if now suddenly and unexpectedly she had been presented with a portrait of her, all neatly wrapped up? She would surely be all fingers and thumbs in her eagerness to tear off the wraps that kept that image from her view. Or would she? Would she too be afraid to look? To see the face she had never looked upon in real life and never would now? To see the face of a stranger she could not quite believe was her mother? To come face-to-face with the loneliness she had spent a lifetime denying? She thought of her own mother, of her resentment that she had gone, leaving her two daughters behind in Bath. But at least Mama was alive. At least Camille could bring her image to mind, complete with voice and touch and characteristic gestures and fragrance.