Chapter 5
If the day belonged to polite society, the night belonged to its misfits.
Tonight Louisa sought them out on purpose.
She wandered the estate's corridors in a wrapper, her bare feet silent against the cool marble. The lamps had been extinguished in most rooms, but here and there, a single candle flickered, casting shadows that set her nerves on edge. She had not intended to go anywhere in particular, but the feeling of being trapped by her family’s well-meaning oppression, the watchful eyes of the ton, and her own restless heart, compelled her to move.
The quiet hour was punctuated by the occasional rattle of wind at a window, the distant snap of a settling floorboard, and the chime of a clock marking her insomnia.
Then, from somewhere below stairs, music permeated the stillness—an ill-fated attempt to murder a waltz on the music room’s pianoforte.
The cacophony rose and fell in a pattern that suggested both despair and a stubborn refusal to learn the melody.
Louisa hesitated. She might have turned back, returned to bed, and left the perpetrator to his own misery, but she recognized the tune, and the man butchering it had once played it perfectly to impress a room full of bored aristocrats.
Foxmere, she’d wager her pin money on it.
She followed the sound to its source, tiptoeing down the main staircase and into the marble-floored vestibule.
The music room lay just beyond, its doors open as if inviting rescue.
Inside, the chandeliers were dimmed, the only other illumination a pair of flickering candles on the instrument’s lid.
And at the keyboard, sat Niall Fairmont, Lord Foxmere.
He wore his disarray with a certain flair. His cravat hung loose, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, and dark hair in a state of chaos. His boots—still muddy from the garden—rested on the pedals, scuffing the wood. An open decanter of brandy perched beside him, its contents perilously low.
Louisa crossed her arms and stood just inside the doorway, watching as his fingers stumbled over the same measure again and again.
Eventually, he seemed to sense her presence, or perhaps he merely reached the end of his patience with the tune.
He struck a final, atonal chord, let his hands fall to his lap, and tilted his head back as if to address the ceiling.
“Bravo,” Louisa said, her voice soft but cutting. “I see you’ve improved since last I heard you play.”
He twisted on the bench, caught sight of her, and grinned with reckless delight. “Primrose!” he exclaimed, raising his arms in mock celebration. “Come to file a complaint with the magistrate? Or did you simply wish to witness the death of art firsthand?”
Louisa considered the scene. The ruined waltz, the ruined man, the circle of candlelight that made the whole moment feel staged for her alone. She stepped closer, the parquet icy under her feet.
“It’s past two, Lord Foxmere. Even the ghosts have retired.”
He gestured to the keys with a loose, tipsy flourish. “Ghosts make the best audience. They never interrupt or yawn. Only you could prove a more demanding critic at this hour.”
She ignored the invitation to banter, her gaze traveling over him from the flush in his cheeks, to the glassiness of his eyes. She inhaled the brandy sweetness that wafted even at this distance.
“You’ll ruin the instrument,” she said. “And possibly your health.”
He shrugged, then reached for the decanter and poured a generous measure into his glass. “Both are past saving, I fear. But the music, at least, can be improved by alcohol. Everything is improved by alcohol, except perhaps one’s prospects of heaven.”
She watched him tip the glass back and swallow with the gusto of a man intent on forgetting the day.
For a moment, she was tempted to leave—what could she possibly gain by indulging his theatrics?
But the last hours of the day have a weight all their own, and the sight of him so exposed, so utterly unlike the fox-bright villain she’d sparred with at dinner, pulled her to the edge of the carpet.
He set down the glass, eyes fixed on her. “What brings you here, Louisa? Sleepwalking? Or do you crave another duel of wits?”
She hesitated, then let herself smile—a small, tired thing. “You’ve exhausted my arsenal. I came to see if you’d managed to exhaust yourself.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Not yet. But you could help.”
She did not dignify that with a reply. Instead, she drifted closer, her gaze sweeping the keyboard. “If you must torment the pianoforte, at least do so with a tune you know.”
He snorted. “My mother’s favorite, that one. She used to claim it could soothe even the most rebellious spirits. I suppose I’ve proved her wrong.”
Louisa found herself seated on the bench beside him before she realized she had moved. Their knees nearly touched. He smelled of orange peel, leather, and the faint sharpness of pipe smoke. She regarded his hands—fine-boned, restless, the hands of a man used to both creation and destruction.
“Do you ever tire of pretending?” she asked, her voice low.
He blinked, as if surprised by the question. “Pretending what, exactly?”
“That you care for nothing. That nothing can touch you.”
He glanced away, ran a hand through his hair, and missed on the first try. “You wound me, Lady Louisa. But if I am to be honest, and I warn you, it is against my nature, there are a few things that can touch me.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Brandy, for one.”
He laughed, and the sound was real, unguarded. “True. And the sight of you at two in the morning, barefoot and dressed for bed, is a close second.”
The words—plainly spoken, without flourish—should have embarrassed her. Instead, they set her nerves humming. She was not the sort of woman to blush, but the air between them felt charged.
“Perhaps you should marry me, then,” he said suddenly, as if the idea had just occurred to him. “We’d be the terror of three counties. Your acid tongue, my spectacular lack of scruple. Our children would be monsters.”
Louisa stilled, caught between laughter and the urge to slap him. “Is that a proposal, Lord Foxmere? Because I warn you, I’m in no mood for jests.”
He swayed a little on the bench, eyes suddenly very blue, very bright. “I’ll marry you if you dare me to,” he said, words grand and ridiculous.
She narrowed her eyes, chin lifted. “Very well. Propose. I dare you.”
He rose from the bench, almost too fast, and wobbled before regaining his balance. He knelt, not gracefully, but with a defiant thud of boots on the rug, and took her hand. His palm was warm, his fingers trembling.
“Lady Louisa Pembroke,” he intoned, voice pitched to carry across a crowded ballroom or a church nave, “will you do me the honor of joining your glorious bitterness to my incorrigible devilry, that together we may disappoint all our ancestors and, perhaps, shock the world?”
She snorted. “You are foxed.”
He grinned, teeth bared. “Never more sincere.”
She should have pulled her hand away, but she did not. The sensation was strange. Almost frightening. A surge of something she could not quite name, except to say it was the opposite of loneliness shot through her.
He seemed to sense the shift in her. His expression softened, and for a moment, he looked less like a scoundrel and more like a boy on the edge of discovery.
“Louisa,” he whispered, as if the name itself were fragile. “Say yes. Or say no. But don’t leave me in the middle.”
She considered this, the weight of it, the risk. Then, with a dry laugh, she said, “I would sooner take holy orders.”
He released her hand with a mock gasp, then attempted to stand. The effort proved too much, and he toppled backward, landing with an undignified thud against the side of the piano. Louisa slapped a hand to her mouth, half-horrified, half-entertained.
He righted himself, rubbing his elbow and looking sheepish for perhaps the first time in living memory. “I regret to inform you,” he said, “that this is the most mortifying thing to ever happen to me.”
She extended a hand to help him, her fingers steady even as her heart thumped. He took it, and for a moment they were connected. Her, upright and composed. Him, battered but oddly sincere.
He looked up at her, eyes searching. “For the record,” he said, “I meant it.”
She wanted to reply—something flippant, something scathing—but the words would not come. Instead, she helped him to his feet, letting her hand linger on his arm longer than she ought.
They stood there, side by side, two outcasts in the dying light.
“You should go to bed,” she said at last.
He nodded, solemn as a schoolboy, and released her hand.
“Only if you promise to haunt my dreams,” he said, a playful grin lighting his face.
She smiled back at him.
“Go, Lord Foxmere,” she said. “Or I’ll play the rest of the waltz myself, and you’ll never recover.”
He bowed, crooked and theatrical, and retreated down the corridor, his cravat trailing behind him.
Louisa watched him go, then turned to the pianoforte. She touched the keys—softly, so as not to wake the house. For a moment, she sat there, listening to the echo of the dare, the crash of his fall, and the hush that followed.
She sat at the pianoforte for quite sometime before returning to her room. Unable to sleep she paced, replaying his proposal in her mind. She could not help but wonder what marriage to Foxmere might bring.
She must have dozed near dawn—somewhere between the echo of a half-played waltz and the quiet shock of a dare—because it was a persistent knocking that roused Louisa from her slumber.
She opened one eye to find the curtains aglow with post-dawn sunlight and realized the hour was either too early or far too late.
“Come in,” she croaked, her voice gravelly from a night filled with unsaid things.
The door swung open to admit her lady’s maid. The expression on her maid’s face was a mix of terror, excitement, and the thrill of impending disaster.