Brilliance (Diamonds of the First Water #5)

Chapter One

Bexley, England, 1854

B rilliance knew she was going somewhere she ought not go. And it wouldn’t be the first time she had simply followed an inclination without giving it much thought. However, the compelling music of a piano being beautifully played drew her from her intended destination.

After arriving at Lady Twitchard’s country house party a mere two hours earlier, Brilliance had taken tea in her assigned room, rested as one did after travel, then washed off the dust off the journey before changing for dinner into a lightweight, pink, silk gown with white flowers around the neckline and the hem. Belinda, her personal maid, had expertly combed and styled her dark hair, sweeping it into coils on either side of her head while leaving down and loose as many curls as a single lady dare get away with.

Having yet to see her best friend, Martine, also a guest for the week, Brilliance was hurrying toward the noisy drawing room, its double doors standing open and welcoming. However, her footsteps slowed at the closed conservatory door, and she found it impossible to continue along the passageway.

Pushing open the door in so deliberate and quiet a manner as to have her bursting with the effort to rein in her curiosity, she discovered a man seated at a highly polished grand piano with his back to her.

Brilliance wasn’t so silly as to believe in love at first sight. After all, she had seen plenty of handsome men at numerous assemblies, and she hadn’t loved a single one of them. However, she well knew her parents’ own romantic story. Lord Geoffrey Diamond and Lady Caroline Chimes hadn’t instantly fallen head over heels in love. Rather, Brilliance’s father had nearly knocked her mother on her bottom. Falling rear end over heels was another matter entirely in the arena of love. Regardless, they’d felt an immediate attraction upon that initial meeting.

Thus, an unexpectedly strong attraction at first sight was something Brilliance understood and believed in ... yet she’d never thought it could be fashioned by music. In this case, whatever the gentleman was playing, something she’d never heard before, was drawing her forward. Moreover, she could not take her eyes off the pianist.

There might not be anything spectacular about him. At least, not that she could see. He had light brown hair that came over the collar of his worsted wool, charcoal-gray evening coat. His broad shoulders sat atop a long torso that indicated he was tall.

He seemed to be staring straight ahead out the conservatory window to the twilight gardens beyond, looking neither at his hands nor at any sheet music while he played.

Both his bearing and the beauty of the music quelled her normal exuberance. Brilliance walked softly and stayed silent, even keeping her lips tightly closed, rather than rushing forward and exclaiming how the music touched her deeply. Moreover, she fisted her hands against the front of her bodice to stop herself from clapping.

Eschewing the plush chairs lined up along one wall, she remained standing, inching a little closer, then closer, without realizing it until she was directly behind him.

After another few moments, the stranger froze, his hands resting lightly upon the keys.

Despite her cream-colored, kid-skin slippers making no sound on the woolen rug, which covered all but the outer two feet of the polished wooden floor, he seemed to know he was no longer alone.

Stiffly, he turned and fixed her with a sage-eyed stare through metal-rimmed spectacles that caught the lamplight. His visage was comely, indeed, but with a most severe expression for someone producing such lovely sounds.

Quite certain she had been quiet, nonetheless, Brilliance circled around to stand at his side.

“I am terribly sorry to have stopped your playing, sir. It was truly delightful.” If he promised to continue, she would take a seat. Before she could encourage him to do so, he spoke.

“Was not the door shut?”

Brilliance nodded. “It was. But I could still hear you.”

“If you could hear the music from the other side of the door, then why did you feel it necessary to enter?”

Brilliance considered it a very good question, one deserving an answer. But it also struck her funny, as many things did. Her sisters and brother thought her a little flighty or giddy, but their opinion didn’t change the fact that people were often amusing.

She shrugged and gave in to the urge to laugh.

Unexpectedly, this made him rise to his feet. She’d been correct in imagining him to be tall.

“Are you laughing at me?” He looked down his nose to where she came only to his necktie. In size, she was between her sisters, Clarity and Purity, who were diminutive, and Radiance, who was a wee bit taller.

“No, sir. Not at all.” Brilliance hoped he would introduce himself, despite the inappropriateness of their being alone. The late-July house party had only recently begun. Guests were still arriving, and as yet, they’d had no gathering, neither formal nor informal, during which introductions could be made.

“I assure you I laugh only because I am happy. We are at the start of a week full of merriment. And in answer to your question, I can only think that I came in rather than remaining in the hallway because I was curious. I wanted to see the source of the music. Wouldn’t anyone?”

“No,” he shot back. “Music is for your ears. What is there to see?”

Another good question. She nearly told him what she saw was a handsome, albeit inexplicably irritated man.

“I think when listening to music,” Brilliance explained, “looking upon the musician is particularly satisfying. It enhances the deep emotion imparted by the notes.”

“Balderdash,” he muttered. “I assume you are a guest of my cousin.”

“If your cousin is Lady Twitchard, then I am.”

“I believe the others are gathering in the drawing room despite possibly hearing my playing as they passed by. So, no, miss. Anyone would not simply barge in through a closed door.”

Brilliance sighed. What a crabbed, humdrum fellow! “You are exceedingly pleasant to look at, sir. It’s a shame your nature doesn’t match your appearance.”

His expression came over as shocked, but he said nothing in return.

She took a step back. “I suppose you play only for yourself. A miserly musician who could delight others but prefers to hoard his talent.”

Still, nothing but an arrogantly raised eyebrow on his part.

Should she have such talent, Brilliance vowed she would share it. She was not skilled musically at all, despite her parents offering her lessons. Purity was the only one of her sisters whom one might declare musically gifted and had managed to convince their parents to set aside an ancient square fortepiano that her mother had inherited. A spanking new piano arrived one day for all the sisters to practice upon.

Yet precisely as her mother, Clarity, and Ray had done before her, Brilliance took lessons for two years and had given up.

Nevertheless, she appreciated a good musician, or in this case, a superb one.

“I shall leave you to your solitude, sir, for the price of a question. How did you know I was here?”

She waited. He stared. She waited longer. Was he going to be so rude as not to answer?

Finally, she shrugged and walked toward the door, which she’d left ajar. After all, an earl’s daughter had to protect her reputation.

Yet before she slipped out, he spoke.

“I vow I could feel your impertinent gaze and smell your perfume — like summer roses — wafting toward me.”

“Did it?” Brilliance sniffed. “Sadly, I have been wearing it for a year, and thus cannot really smell the lovely fragrance anymore. Perhaps I should take a break from it.”

She expected no response, but surprisingly, the gentleman said, “The scent suits you.”

Brilliance nodded, happy that he’d changed from surly to friendly.

But then he ruined it by adding, “A showy flower with a heady fragrance, without subtlety or nuance. One might say overpowering.”

Her mouth had dropped open, and she snapped it closed. She wished she hadn’t told him he was handsome. Obviously, he considered himself such a rum duke he thought he could be insufferably rude.

“You forgot to mention the thorns, sir.”

For some reason, this made him smile. Not broadly. Merely a small wry one.

Without another word, she departed.

Vincent waited until the door closed before he resumed his seat on the piano stool. His cousin, Alethia, who was closer to the age of his parents than to him, had confessed to a shortage of single men at her house party. Some blasted damber had bowed out at the last minute, and since he was close at hand, living for the summer in his Joyden’s Wood estate, she had begged him to round out her dining table and keep her numbers even.

When he was fresh out of Trinity College, his cousin’s husband, Colonel Twitchard, had gifted Vincent an introduction to his acquaintance, the Hungarian pianist, Franz Liszt. Heading at once to Weimar, Vincent had been accepted as a student of the famed composer. For his cousin and her husband’s kindness, he would always be in their debt. Being a guest at their party full of simpering females and randy bucks had seemed a small price.

Yet he hadn’t expected to be trading barbs with one of Alethia’s other guests within a half hour of his arrival.

Where had he left off? Pushing his spectacles farther up his nose, he considered the piece he’d been playing from memory, seeing the notes in his head right up until the instant he had smelled the lady’s sumptuous floral scent.

Nuisance female! He had another half hour, at least, before all his cousin’s guests arrived and gathered in the drawing room. Placing his hands upon the keys, he recalled the irritating young lady said she found him handsome. Moreover, she had stated it aloud, as if they were known to one another. How extraordinary!

Maybe she was a bit of a climber or a would-be mushroom. She was certainly pretty enough to catch his attention. In any case, he had plenty of time to speak with her later, yet precious few minutes to replay a piece he wasn’t entirely confident he had perfected. Written years earlier, even then, he had doubted its worthiness of being set to paper. Thus, it remained only in his thoughts.

The thing about playing without the notes in front of him was that even a memory as superb as his own could play tricks once in a while. He had liked the sonata better a month earlier, and now, he wasn’t as taken with this section.

Was that how he’d originally composed it?

Not for the first time, he considered overcoming his reluctance and writing down the sonata. Perhaps he finally would when he reached his country estate a mere two miles away. He had another week to think about it.

For even if overnight, he decided he wished to transcribe every note in his head, he could do nothing about it. Alethia would tan his hide if he left, even for half a day. Once committed to a house party, one was truly committed — or be labeled an arse as the missing male guest would be. Why, the man would probably never receive another social invitation. And when it was a case of family acting as the hosts, the consequences for neglecting social obligations in favor of personal desires would be even worse.