you know, there are multiple signs early on that camilla is actually paying a LOT of attention to richard.
she knows someone went to julian to ask to join the class, because she immediately says "oh you're the one" when richard first mentions it. then she tells him he's quite good at greek, since he impressed her with his suggestion about the locative case. later she knows he's friends with judy without him mentioning it. how would she know that, unless she was either watching him or asking about him?
then there's the fact that camilla's the one to invite him to all their early get-togethers. she's the one to invite him to their sunday dinners; she's the one to invite him to francis's country house.
i think it's likely she found him interesting after the library interaction and after knowing he'd asked julian to join the class, and was deliberately trying to get to know him better.
then there's the fact that she's often the one to initiate physical affection with him. there's a scene when he's about to leave for winter break, where he says he'd planned to give her a goodbye kiss but when the moment comes, he panics and freezes up and does absolutely nothing instead, but camilla throw her arms around him anyway. she kisses his cheek when she first sees him again after winter break. the night of their first kiss, she puts her arm through his arm and holds his hand. and she kisses him first.
it's all very out of sync with how richard imagines camilla and her impressions of him.
i could be wrong, but i suspect his feelings for her were at least partially returned for at least part of the time. possibly even far more than he ever realized. i suspect that it was in fact far more than he ever realized. i think she loved him.
the problem was that she was already involved with charles and henry, and both relationships were so complicated and necessarily secretive. and their lives were already so complicated besides.
the other problem though was that richard almost never actually gave her signs that HE had feelings for her. if anything, he often made it look the exact opposite way. he refuses her offer to go to sunday dinners until charles asks. he's often minimally responsive in conversations with her and even tries to avoid her. he confuses her.
there's even a conversation they have while things are tough with bunny, where she's trying to invite him to go for a drive, but he's so dazed and distracted that she thinks she's bothering him and apologizes and tries to leave. she thinks he doesn't want her around in that instance. maybe she's had the same thought in others. most likely she has.
and the moments he has when he does show her he has feelings for her are so abrupt and impulsive and out of synch with his typical behavior that it only confuses her even more.
think about her reactions in those moments.
when richard asks her to come home with him, she asks him "why?"
because it came out of nowhere. because she quite possibly did not have the slightest clue that he was actually attracted to her before that moment.
when he kisses her at the corcoran's house, again she responds with a question. "what was that for?"
now i think this could be camilla brushing it off to try to make things less awkward, but considering everything else about the two of them and their dynamic, i think it's also very likely it's a genuine question.
i think she finds him incredibly confusing and mysterious and doesn't have the slightest idea what's going on his head at pretty much any time.
in other words, i think she sees him exactly the same way that he sees her.
and it is, unfortunately, entirely his own fault.
this happens between richard and many other characters. he tells us early on that the entire greek class was confused by him at first, that they found him mysterious and didn't understand why he wasn't returning their invitations. he's shocked by this, certain that he must have just been coming off as awkward. he assumes that at some point their impression of him as an enigma must have ended, but there's actually a lot of signs that it never did.
he never actually opens up to any of them about almost anything. the only one of them to know he's unhappy at home is henry, and then only because he guessed it himself. the only one of them to know he's on bad terms with his parents is, once again, henry, and then only because he knows richard didn't want to call them while he was in the hospital.
the entire time that he knew the greek class, as much as he may have adored all of them in his head, richard was, first and foremost, a closed book.
sophie breaks up with him for this exact reason. because she never knew what he was thinking. because he never told her.
the sad thing is i think camilla was having almost the exact same problem.
she was in an abusive relationship with charles and in denial about it and also terrified to tell anyone about it at all.
but she tries to open up to him about it.
that dorm scene between the two of them. auuugh. it breaks my heart. richard's behavior in this scene is just such an immense betrayal of camilla that i think if he could even begin to understand how much he hurt her, he'd despise himself.
she opened up to him about her abuse. and she did it gently. empathetically. she didn't push him to hate charles. she didn't hate charles herself. she told him he didn't have to take sides.
but throughout the entire book, every single damn time richard has encountered signs of someone else's abuse, he's responded by looking away. he hadn't addressed his own abuse and it destroyed his ability to handle anyone else's. he was too damn frightened. and he was jealous too.
he let the worst in himself win and he pushed camilla away.
he asked her to leave. and she stepped closer to him. and he asked her to leave again.
and it was just such a betrayal.
even after this though, there's still kindness between them. when they meet at the inn after he loses charles, she notices him looking longingly at her plate and immediately pushes it towards him. they're on good terms when they meet as much older adults, when they visit francis after his suicide attempt. they're friendly.
and richard does exactly what he's done before. he shows her affection in the only way he's ever shown it. perhaps the only way he knows how. briefly, impulsively, and completely out of nowhere.
he tells her he loves her and asks her to marry him when he hasn't even seen her in nearly a decade.
and even so, there's suggestions that she was actually considering it.
she doesn't tell him no. she asks questions, talks about logistics, tries to understand how any of this makes sense. tries to understand why he only sometimes seems to love her and whether this time it's actually going to last.
or if he's just going to abandon her when the going gets tough like he did in that dorm room.
she doesn't tell him she doesn't love him. she tells him she loves henry. and when he says he loves henry too, he thinks he sees her waver.
and i think she did waver.
when camilla tells him "it's not enough," she doesn't mean "i don't love you". she doesn't even mean "you're not as good as henry was".
she means "you never opened up to me and you never trusted me and you let me down when i needed you the most."
and it is just such a tragedy.
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