Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
The evening drew itself into the customary pattern after dinner, with the gentlemen rejoining the ladies in the drawing room, card tables being set near the windows, and a general atmosphere of expectancy settling over the company.
Someone called for music. Someone else seconded the idea with too much enthusiasm.
Within minutes, Lady Beatrice had announced that no evening at Fairhaven was complete without performances, and that the pianoforte would be quite offended if neglected.
Jillian, who had taken refuge in a chair half-hidden behind a palm and had hoped to remain there, saw Helena’s gaze sweep the room and land on her with unmistakable intent. She had time for one silent, heartfelt curse before her sister crossed to her.
“You have not played in days,” Helena said, entirely ignoring the plea in Jillian’s eyes. “Fairhaven will begin to sulk.”
“Fairhaven is a house, not a person,” Jillian muttered, though she let Helena pull her to her feet. “And if it sulks, it has only itself to blame.”
Helena squeezed her hand. “You will feel better once you are doing something. Besides, you know very well that you sing beautifully and half the people here need reminding that a woman’s talents are not confined solely to embroidery and blushing.”
“That is precisely the sort of declaration which invites trouble,” Jillian said, but the words lacked heat.
There was a part of her that welcomed the excuse to sit with her back to the room, her hands occupied and her mind focused on something other than the memory of yesterday’s forfeit or this morning’s thorny conversation.
The guests made a polite clearing around the pianoforte as she approached.
Mrs. Templeton smiled in benevolent encouragement.
The Harper sisters bounced on their seats like eager sparrows.
Arabella and her mother sat together near the far end of the room, stiff as two icicles.
Jillian resolutely did not look in their direction, though she felt the weight of their disapproval prickle at the back of her neck.
She settled on the bench, smoothing her skirts, and opened the music that had been left ready on the stand. It was a song she knew well, simple enough to play without thought, leaving room for her voice to carry the melody. Her fingers flexed once above the keys.
Before she could begin, a shadow fell across the edge of the instrument.
“Allow me,” Miles said quietly, his hand already reaching to steady the stack of pages.
Her heart gave a foolish leap. He stood so near she could have counted the flecks of darker brown in his eyes if she dared look at him directly.
He had removed his coat and waistcoat, as most of the gentlemen had, and the lines of his shirt and cravat sat with their usual, irritating precision upon shoulders that suddenly seemed much too broad for her peace of mind.
“That is not necessary,” she murmured, keeping her gaze on the music. “I am perfectly capable of turning my own pages.”
“I know,” he replied, taking hold of the first sheet anyway. “But I have been trying to speak to you all day, and this is the only position no one will think to question.”
The murmur of conversation behind them shifted.
Jillian could feel eyes turning, the subtle change in attention when any small novelty presented itself.
A gentleman volunteering to stand at a lady’s shoulder was hardly unprecedented, but in this particular house, involving this particular gentleman and this particular lady, it was bound to cause interest.
She lowered her voice. “You have chosen a very conspicuous way of being unremarkable.”
“You are about to drown me out with music,” he said. “Play.”
She shot him one last reproachful glance, then set her fingers to the keys.
The first chords vibrated pleasantly through her hands, the notes familiar, anchoring.
Her voice followed, steady at first, gaining confidence as the melody carried her along.
For several blessed measures she could pretend there was no one in the room but herself and the instrument.
When the first page came to an end, Miles turned it with careful timing, his fingers moving close enough to brush the back of her hand. He did not, but she felt the awareness all the same.
“I overheard your exchange in the morning room with the Hartingtons. And Beatrice,” he mused.
“It was not meant for your ears,” Jillian said quickly, he face flaming with heated embarrassment.
“I’m aware. Rest assured that my reasons for bringing it up are to both our benefit, I think…
.That remark you made in the morning room,” he said softly during a brief interlude between verses, his eyes on the notes, his mouth close enough for her to feel the words against her ear, “about having no expectations where I am concerned. Was that for their benefit, or mine?”
She nearly struck a wrong chord. “Must we do this now?” she hissed, keeping her expression serenely composed for the benefit of the room.
“I am attempting,” he said, “to warn you that they are not merely offended—Mrs. Hartington and her daughter. They are angry. And they may well be vengeful. I saw them after you left.”
“I gathered as much from their conversation,” she said, her hands moving on their own.
The music rose, filling the space between them for a moment.
When the line ended and she had two beats to breathe, she added in a low, rapid whisper, “They are displeased. They will survive it. They can hardly duel me at dawn.”
“No,” he said, with grim amusement, “but they can make mischief. They will look for ways to put you, and us, in difficult positions. To embarrass you, Lady Jillian, specifically. And whatever our past disagreements, I would not have you publicly humiliated.”
“It will not come to that,” she insisted softly.
His expression remained neutral as he shifted the sheet music before her. “If I can see it, others will as well. I would prefer not to give them material.”
“And yet here you stand,” she said. “At my elbow. In front of everyone.”
“I told you,” he murmured. “This was the only moment I could find to war you that would provide witness enough to satisfy others of its innocence and privacy enough for speech.”
His tone carried a strained honesty that prickled at her defenses. He had not come to bask in attention, or to create a tableau for the gossips. He had come because he was worried. About her.
The realization unsettled her in ways the song’s high notes never could.
She reached the final verse. Her voice softened, the melody dropping to something quieter, more intimate.
The room hushed, as rooms do when they realize they are being offered something genuine rather than merely competent.
Jillian felt the words pass through her, out into the expectant air, and she knew without looking that Miles was watching her hands, the curve of her shoulders, the way she leaned into the instrument.
He turned the last page just as she needed it, and for an instant their fingers did touch.
It was nothing. It was everything. It was a whisper of what she had felt in York when his hands had been everywhere and nowhere all at once, reverent and sure. Her heart gave a painful lurch at the memory, and the final chord rang out a fraction warmer than she had intended.
Silence held for a breath.
Then the room erupted in polite applause.
Jillian lifted her hands from the keys, her composure intact by the thinnest of threads.
She stood and curtsied, feeling color rise in her cheeks as several guests voiced flattering comments and requests for more.
As she stepped away from the bench, she heard the whispers ride in on the wake of the applause.
“Did you see who turned the pages?”
“Quite attentive, do you not think?”
“Most husbands do not bother.”
“They are not wed. Not yet. Not yet engaged,” someone corrected, delighted. “That is what makes it so interesting. Attentive as he is now, what sort of grand romance might this all bloom into?”
Arabella sat rigidly in her chair, her gaze fixed upon them with a look that had shed all traces of injured innocence.
There was unvarnished fury there now, and something more calculating beneath it.
Mrs. Hartington leaned toward a neighbor and said something too low to catch, but the neighbor’s eyes flew at once to Jillian and Miles and widened with avid interest.
Jillian’s stomach dropped.
Miles must have seen it too, because the faint satisfaction that had touched his features when the guests applauded faded into something tighter.
He inclined his head to her, very correctly, then moved away to speak to Henry, forcing a measure of distance between them.
It did nothing to lessen the impression already formed in the room.
She endured a few more minutes of conversation—Mrs. Templeton’s kindness, the Harper sisters’ effusions—then seized the first respectable excuse to cross to the sideboard where the refreshments stood momentarily unattended.
She had just taken up a glass of wine when a familiar presence appeared at her side.
“This was,” she said, without preamble, “a spectacularly ill-conceived idea.”
Miles’s mouth quirked humorlessly. “I am aware.”
“They will talk about it for days,” she went on, keeping her eyes on the ruby liquid in her glass rather than his face. “Weeks, if they are especially bored.”
“They would have talked if I had gone after you in the corridor as I wished,” he said quietly. “I chose the lesser foolishness. It appears I miscalculated.”
She stirred the wine, watching the surface catch the light. “You wished to go after me?”
“Yes,” he answered simply. “I thought better of it when half the house appeared. But I still wished it.”
The honesty of it made her fingers tighten around the stem. She drew in a breath, then let it out slowly. “Your warning is appreciated,” she said at last. “I confess I did not take their resentment as seriously as I should have.”
“You ought not have to,” he said. “Yet here we are.”
She lifted her gaze to his. “Then we must give them nothing further to work with. No more public gestures, no more conspicuous conversations. The truce was meant to ease matters, not make them worse.”
His eyes held hers, something dark and unreadable moving there. “You wish to avoid me.”
“I wish,” she said carefully, “to avoid giving this household any more spectacles at our expense. Whatever is… between us is our concern. I would rather not have it dissected in every sitting room from here to London.”
He hesitated, then nodded once. “Very well. In public, we keep our distance.”
“In public,” she repeated. The words tasted dismal, which annoyed her, since she had been the one to say them.
A burst of laughter rose from the far side of the room as someone proposed a country dance.
Beatrice was already clapping her hands, calling for everyone to assemble.
The company shifted, chairs scraping, skirts rustling.
In the confusion of movement, Jillian and Miles stepped instinctively in opposite directions, like pieces on a board being reset.
He paused long enough to add, under his breath, “If you should find yourself cornered again, by anyone, you will tell me.”
The impulse to refuse out of habit flared and faded in the space of a heartbeat. She met his gaze, saw the sincerity there, the unwillingness to stand by while others attempted to make sport of her.
“Yes,” she said. “I will.”
He inclined his head, then turned away to join a group of gentlemen being dragged unwillingly toward the set. She watched him for a moment, then forced herself to move in the opposite direction, toward Helena and Aunt Gertrude.
Behind her, the whispers had already begun anew.
They could agree to avoid one another as best they liked, Jillian thought, schooling her features into pleasant unconcern as she reached her sister’s side. Fairhaven would see to it that even their absence from one another’s company made a story.
But for now, at least, they would not be the ones adding kindling to the fire.