Someone to Romance Read online

She paused over one sheet of music, opened it, closed it again, and set it on top of the pile of discards.

  “It enables one to concentrate the whole of one’s attention upon the beauty of a single bloom,” he said. He was sounding pompous.

  “That reminds me of the poem that begins, To see the world in a grain of sand,” she said. “Do you know it?”

  “By William Blake?” he said. “Yes. Another of the lines, I believe, is, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand. It is the same idea in a different image. And a single rose can be more breathtaking than a whole garden.”

  “I could never quite understand Mr. Blake’s point when I was a girl,” she said. “A grain of sand is merely a grain of sand, I used to think.”

  She played a ballad, “Barbara Allen,” though she did not sing the words. She played competently and even made a key change halfway through without stumbling. The guests had not stopped their conversations, but there was a smattering of applause nevertheless when she had finished.

  “Let me see your hands,” Gabriel said, leaning slightly over the keyboard. She spread her fingers and turned her hands palms up while she looked inquiringly at him. “I see four fingers and one thumb on your left hand and four and one on your right. Your music teacher was cruel. And quite wrong.”

  “I was ten years old,” she said. “And he actually did me a favor. I was so furious with him and with my governess and with Avery that I was determined to show them how wrong they were. After that I practiced twice as long as I was required to instead of half as much, as I had been doing. I wanted all three of them to eat their words.”

  “And did they?” he asked.

  “Not to my knowledge,” she said. “But I did learn to play well enough not to make an utter cake of myself in company. You have not chosen your music, Mr. Thorne. I shall not let you escape, you see, after you’ve admitted to being able to play.” She got to her feet, folded her sheet of music, and set it on top of the pile.

  “My music is here,” he told her, tapping a finger against his temple. Though that was not strictly true. He had to think, yes, in order to bring a tune to mind, but the music was not in his mind. And when he sat at the pianoforte, he had to rid his mind even of the tune so that it would not interfere with his fingers as they played. He did not know where the music itself came from after that. He did not know how his fingers hit the right notes or how they knew what other notes to play in order to create the full melody and the accompaniment. It all came from some unknown somewhere inside him, yet it seemed too vast to fit within his frame. It was a good thing he had never tried to describe the process to anyone.

  “You have memorized it?” she asked as he sat on the bench and arranged the tails of his coat behind him. “That is impressive.”

  He very rarely played in company, and when he did, it was usually merely to entertain. Fortunately there was a hum of sound as people continued their conversations. This corner of the room actually seemed like an oasis of quiet. Of which Lady Jessica Archer was a part.

  He gazed at the keyboard, not quite seeing it. He listened to the melody of Bach’s “Jesus bleibet meine Freude”—Jesus shall remain my joy—in his head. Then he set his fingers on the keys, let them find the ones he wanted, emptied his mind, and played. Perhaps, he thought for the first few moments, he ought to have chosen something lighter, something simpler, something more obviously entertaining. He was very aware of Lady Jessica standing beside the bench, watching his fingers.

  And then the music took possession of him. He closed his eyes, tipped back his head, frowning, as the main melody, stately and dignified, asserted itself through his left hand while his right hand after the first introductory moments continued with the ripple of joyful accompaniment. It was a soul-wrenching contrast, part of his mind thought, between deep emotion and exuberant joy. He had heard it played on the organ in the church at Brierley when he was a boy, and the music had been a part of him ever since.

  His eyes were closed again as he finished and listened to the echo of the final notes receding to wherever the music lived when it was not being played. He was not aware of the silence in the room until it was shattered with applause.

  “That was exquisite.”

  “I say. Bravo, Thorne.”

  “How absolutely lovely.”

  “What was that?”

  “You really ought to be on a concert stage, Mr. Thorne.”

  “Beautiful.”

  “Oh, do play again.”

  A number of voices spoke at once.

  “Well,” Lady Jessica said after a rather lengthy pause. “I am very glad I went first. Wherever did you learn to play like that?”

  “I did not,” he said.

  “You are self-taught?” She opened her fan and plied it before her face.

  “I do not read music,” he told her.

  This was a party, a soiree, not a concert. He felt embarrassed and was very glad to see that conversations were resuming and servants were circulating with trays of drinks and dainties.

  “I wish I could play like that,” she said softly.

  He got to his feet, moved the pile of music to the floor, and gestured to the bench. “Come and sit beside me,” he said, “and we will play something together.”

  “Without music?” she said.

  “I will teach you,” he told her. “You can play the lower notes. They are really quite simple, but they set the tempo, the bass upon which the melody is set.”

  She eyed him doubtfully and then eyed the bench before seating herself and sliding along it to make room for him. He had done this at parties in Boston. It had always been good for some light entertainment.

  “You are Gabriel,” she said, turning her face toward his. “But the angelic connotation is somewhat marred by your other name. Mr. Gabriel Thorne.”

  “A rose is spoiled by the thorn on its stem, then?” he asked, turning his head to look into her eyes.

  “Are you indeed an angel, then?” she asked him. “Mr. Thorne?”

  And it struck him that they were no longer talking about roses. It occurred to him that she knew, or at least suspected.

  “By no means,” he said. “How tedious life would be.”

  “The other Gabriel is no angel either,” she said.

  “Apparently not,” he said. “If one is to believe Mr. Rochford’s story, that is.”

  “And you do not?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  She shook her head slightly, set down her fan on the bench between them, and rubbed a finger over one of the white keys as though she had spotted a dust mote there. “Let us discover how good an instructor you are, then, Mr. Thorne,” she said. “My guess is that I am about to make an idiot of myself in front of almost my whole family as well as some distinguished guests.”

  “Impossible,” he said. “With me as your teacher?”

  They turned their heads at the same moment—a massively uncomfortable moment as it turned out. Their faces were only inches apart. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, her eyes wide. He had not really noticed before how thick and dark her eyelashes were or how her upper lip curved slightly upward when her lips were parted, as they were now. Or how pearly white her teeth were. He had not noticed how very kissable a mouth she had.

  It was not a thought he cared to pursue at this particular moment. And yet . . . He had promised to romance her. Was that what he was attempting to do now? In full view of a roomful of people? By coaxing her to do something she was reluctant to do?

  The flush in her cheeks deepened before she looked back to the keyboard. He was no accomplished lover. How did one romance a woman in a way that would speak to her heart? Unfortunately, it seemed that women thought with their hearts, while men thought with their minds. Or with another part of their anatomy equally distant from the heart. He had feelings. Of course he did. O
ften they came close to overwhelming him. But they were something he had always carefully guarded. Even the deep affection he had felt for Cyrus had not been fully apparent to him until after the accident, when it was too late to show it.

  Agreeing to romance Lady Jessica Archer had been little short of madness.

  “We will keep it simple,” he said. “You will need to use just your left hand.”

  “Wonderful,” she said. “I am right-handed.”

  He showed her how to play a simple rhythm with a pattern of notes that could be repeated endlessly though they could be varied with tempo changes. He did not burden her with that possibility, though. He played the rhythm with her, an octave higher, until she had it, then added a melody above it with his right hand. She turned her head to smile at him, a flashing brightness of an expression that almost made him falter. She did falter and had to search for both the notes and the rhythm again while he adjusted the melody to hide the gaffe. Eventually he stopped parroting her rhythm with his left hand and played a variation on it while he changed the melody with his right hand.

  She flashed that smile at him again, and he smiled back at her.

  “It is permitted,” he said, “to play at a tempo slightly above that of a tortoise crawling across a beach.”

  “Oh, is it, indeed?” she said.

  And she changed the tempo so suddenly that he had to scramble to keep up. And then she sped it up again. They played for a minute or two in perfect time with each other until she missed a note, exclaimed with dismay, tried to correct herself, and got hopelessly entangled with wrong keys, lost rhythm, and wayward fingers.

  She bent her head over the keys and laughed. Actually, it was more like a peal of giggles while he ended his contrived melody with a grand flourish and laughed with her.

  There was a ripple of laughter and applause from the rest of the room, but they both ignored it.

  “Thumbs,” she said. “All thumbs. Indeed, at the end I would swear there were six of them just on my left hand. It must have borrowed from my right.”

  And he wondered how he could ever have thought she was all cold hauteur. Oh, she could be that and often was, but it was not her to the exclusion of all else. Perhaps these flushed cheeks and bright eyes and gleeful laughter were not her either. But how foolish of him to have assumed that anyone was one or two things and nothing else. He was far more than just a successful businessman and Earl of Lyndale. Far more. Labels helped identify a person, perhaps, but they did not define him. Or her.

  What she had said or tried to say at Richmond suddenly made all the sense in the world.

  “Tell me about Lady Jessica Archer,” he said.

  Her smile faded, but it left her eyes softer than they usually were, and it left the flush of color in her cheeks.

  “That is a request that always has the effect of completely tying my tongue,” she said.

  “Tell me about your childhood, then,” he said. “What about your father?”

  “I was fourteen when he died,” she said, in a quiet voice. “He was very different from Avery. He was the sort of man to whom children are the mother’s domain. I did not see a great deal of him. He was never unkind when I did, but he took no real interest in my upbringing or in me. I have always believed that when he married my mother he hoped for another son. A spare, so to speak. Though he never expressed open disappointment. Not in my hearing, at least. And there were no more children after me.”

  “You did not complain to him about your music teacher?” he asked.

  “Oh good heavens, no,” she said. “I would not even have dreamed of it. I am not complaining about him. It never occurred to me that a father could be affectionate or that he might wish to spend time with his children until I saw Avery with his—the three girls as well as the lone boy. If he feels any disappointment that he has only the one son so far, he has certainly never shown it. And indeed, I do not believe he does. He adores them all. One would not suspect it from looking at him, would one?”

  Gabriel glanced about the room until he spotted Netherby, immaculately elegant despite the rings on almost every finger of both hands and the jewels that winked from the folds of his neckcloth and the handle of the quizzing glass he wore on a black ribbon about his neck. The expression on his face suggested slight boredom, though he was actively involved in a conversation with Dirkson and the Countess of Riverdale. No. One could not quite imagine him adoring his children. Or anyone else for that matter. Yet his duchess seemed a warm, happy woman.

  “I had a contented enough childhood,” Lady Jessica said. “It was rather solitary, but there were children in the neighborhood of Morland Abbey with whom I was allowed to play quite often. And I was always close to my mother. I lived for the times, though, when I could stay with my cousins or they came to stay with me.”

  “Are they here tonight?” he asked her.

  “Boris and Peter are,” she said, “two of my aunt Mildred’s sons. The third, Ivan, is at university. They are all quite a bit younger than I, though. They were fun and full of mischief and I loved them, but I never had a particularly close friendship with them. The other three cousins were Aunt Viola’s. She is here. She is the Marchioness of Dorchester now. Estelle and Bertrand Lamarr are her stepchildren, though they were already very close to adulthood when she married their father. Harry, my cousin, Aunt Viola’s son, was very briefly the Earl of Riverdale after his father, my uncle Humphrey, died. I adore him—Harry, I mean. He was three years older than I and always my hero. It was devastating for him when the discovery was made soon after Uncle Humphrey’s death that his marriage to Aunt Viola had always been a bigamous one. His first wife, whom no one even knew about, was still alive when he married for the second time, and his daughter—his legitimate daughter—was put into an orphanage, where she remained until the truth was discovered when she was already grown up.”

  “What happened to her?” he asked.

  “Oh,” she said. “She is here too. She is Anna. My sister-in-law. Avery’s wife.”

  Gabriel could only imagine the drama this family must have lived through after that discovery was made only to be followed by that marriage.

  “My cousin Camille was older than Harry,” Lady Jessica told him. “Abigail was younger, just a year older than me. We were more like sisters than cousins. We were the very best of friends. We shared dreams for our future. I suppose it would be very wrong of me to claim that I suffered as much as she did when she lost everything, including her very legitimacy, just before she was to make her come-out here in London. But . . . I suffered. I wanted to die. Foolish, was it not? I was seventeen. One’s emotions tend to be very raw at that age.”

  “What happened to her?” he asked. “And to her older sister?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Camille surprised everyone by marrying an artist and schoolmaster who grew up at the same orphanage as Anna. They live in a big house in the hills above Bath, and they have a large family. Some of the children are their own and some are adopted. They use the house as a sort of artists’ school or gathering place. One could never have predicted it of Camille. She was so very . . . correct, so very stiff and humorless. She was betrothed to a man no one liked, including her, I do not doubt. I am not sure many people liked her. Then, at least. But she’s a different person now. She is very happy. No one seeing her could doubt that.”

  It was strange, Gabriel thought, how one could look at an aristocratic family and assume that their lives were lived on an even keel with no significant troubles. With the Westcott and Archer families, it seemed nothing could be further from the truth.

  “And Abigail?” he asked.

  “For several years,” she told him, “she retired within herself. There is no other way of putting it. She was quiet, dignified, withdrawn. She would not allow anyone in the family to help her. She would not allow me to suffer with her. And then two years ago she met and married a
lieutenant colonel who had brought Harry home from an officers’ convalescent home in Paris, where he had been since the Battle of Waterloo. She married him privately, with no one else but Harry present. No one even knew she liked Gil. She certainly did not at first. They live now in Gloucestershire with their two children—Gil already had a daughter by a previous marriage. And she is happy. She did not settle for anything less. She is happy.”

  A possibility struck him. “Is she why you have never married?” he asked her.

  She sat straighter on the bench, though her fingers rested on the keys of the pianoforte. Some of the haughtiness had returned to her manner. “I have not married, Mr. Thorne,” she said, “because I have not chosen to do so.”

  “Did you feel somehow betrayed,” he asked her, “by the sudden marriage of your cousin?”

  She turned her face toward him. “I am happy for her, Mr. Thorne,” she said. “More happy than I can say.”

  Which did not answer his question.

  “I am sure you are,” he said, and he moved his left hand across the keyboard until his little finger overlapped hers. He rubbed the pad of it lightly over the back of her finger.

  He fully expected that she would snatch her hand away. Instead she looked at their hands and he thought he heard her swallow.

  “A single rose,” she said softly. “The touch of a single finger. Is this your idea of romancing me, Mr. Thorne?”

  It would be a bit pathetic if it were true.

  “If you expect grand gestures,” he said, his voice low to match hers, “perhaps it is Rochford whose attentions you ought to encourage.”

  Her eyes came slowly to his and held there for a moment. And Lord, he thought, if he had a knife he would surely be able to cut through the air between them. It seemed like a tangible thing, fairly throbbing with tension. Then she sighed softly.

  “And perhaps, Mr. Thorne,” she said, “it is time we mingled with the other guests. I am going to see if there is anything my grandmother needs. Or my great-aunt.”

  She got to her feet, walked behind the stool, and made her way across the drawing room toward the Dowager Countess of Riverdale. Anthony Rochford met her halfway there, and they approached the dowager together.