Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Night
At first, Valentina resisted opening her eyes. She was so very tired, and this bed was so very comfortable.
But music that held a vague familiarity kept wafting through her dreams on light, buoyant notes…
The piano music from yesterday. The music Lord Archer said had come from a neighboring manse.
Her eyes fluttered open, and her ears strained toward the sound.
This music… It was coming from within this manse.
On instinct, she swept the covers aside and hopped to the floor, feet landing on plush Persian wool. She grabbed a night-rail and cinched it tightly about her waist.
Lady Delilah and Miss Windermere had sent her a variety of clothing that was all exactly six inches too long for her, as she’d predicted. Tucker had her work cut out for her. Still, Valentina was appreciative. Their intentions were in the right place, which seemed to be a Windermere family trait.
Night-rail trailing on the floor behind her, Valentina let the music guide her out of her room.
She hadn’t any idea where she was going, but she didn’t need to know.
All she need do was follow the haunting notes through the moonlit mansion.
Across the corridor…down the wide staircase…
across another corridor… The music pulled her along as though she hadn’t a choice but to follow it.
In the still slate gray of night, only she and it existed.
She came to a closed door framed in a rim of soft golden light. She pressed her ear to solid wood and listened, feeling each lush note vibrate through her. She shouldn’t twist the handle and open the door. She understood that. She hadn’t been invited.
But a feeling tugged at her. She needed to open the door, and it had everything to do with the lie Lord Archer had told her yesterday, and the suspicion that pulled at her tonight. The music was here—in this house. So, why hadn’t he told her the truth?
She cracked the door open and poked her head inside.
In the half light of the hearth’s low fire stretched a gentleman’s study, all rich woods and mahogany leather, a vast stretch of floor-to-ceiling bookcases on this wall, a massive map of the world on that one.
But her eyes only caught those characteristics in periphery, for they immediately flew toward the source of the music in the farthest corner.
There, bent over the piano keyboard before a bow window, sat Lord Archer.
Her instinct was confirmed.
His back to her, entirely concentrated on the music pouring from the instrument, he hadn’t heard her enter. He wore nothing but a white linen shirt and trousers, his feet bare, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows.
And his hands… his large, skilled hands commanded the black and white keys—imploring them, enticing them, provoking them—leaving them no choice but to bend to his will.
Valentina kept to the periphery of the room so he wouldn’t notice her. She didn’t want him to stop for anything. The music flowing from his fingertips was weaving a night spell around her.
Yet she kept moving. She needed to see his face.
But it was his chest she first noticed, with his shirt flopped open in a V, offering an unexpected view of muscles and golden hair that led downward…
He was a gorgeous man. It had to be a fact universally acknowledged.
But his utter absorption in his playing…
That was unexpected. He appeared utterly unlike himself.
Or more correctly, utterly unlike the Lord Archer she’d come to know.
Or thought she’d known.
Intense…emotional…wrecked.
His fingers stopped on a wild flourish. The last note echoed through the room before going dead silent. He raked a hand through tousled curls. Frustration radiated off him in all but visible waves.
“That was—”
His head whipped up, and intense blue eyes bored into her.
Who was this man? Surely not Lord Archer.
Could he have a twin?
“What are you doing here?” he snapped.
“I…I…” she stammered. Then she realized she didn’t need to find an excuse to be here. The truth would do. “I followed the music. It’s magical.”
Gaze unflinching, Lord Archer let a snort speak for him.
She noticed a pencil behind his ear and large pieces of composition paper scattered about the fallboard. Another suspicion nipped at her. “Whose composition were you playing?”
“No one worth noting,” he near growled.
There. She had it. Confirmation.
“It’s haunting”—she took a step—“and beautiful”—another step—“and—”
“Hardly,” he muttered.
She reached the piano and tapped a sheet of composition paper. “It’s yours.”
“Does an artist truly ever own one’s work?”
“Lord Archer—”
“Not just a pretty face, are you?”
“I’ve been told I have a pretty voice, too,” she said. It was always best to give as one got with this man.
“That you do.”
She was so close she could smell his scent of cloves, spice, and man. So close she could reach out and touch him. One act involuntary, the other…requiring agency. “Play me the rest of it,” she demanded.
He blew a frustrated raspberry. “There is no rest of it.”
Ah.
“You’re stuck.”
“You needn’t sound so pleased,” he said, pettish.
A laugh escaped her. “It’s simply a relief to know you’re not perfect, Lord Archer.”
His head cocked, and he regarded her with a quizzical expression. “Perfect? Me?” A dry, humorless laugh sounded through his nose. “You clearly have me mistaken for someone else.”
This sudden turn of conversation struck Valentina sideways.
To all outward appearances, the man before her epitomized the world’s opinion on male perfection. Wealth, title, dashing good looks, charming smile, confidence in everything he did.
But looking into his eyes now, it occurred to her that he might not see himself in that light at all. Before her was none of that blithe, devil-may-care confidence—a facade he presented to the world, she was beginning to understand.
Instead, she saw those depths she’d noted yesterday.
She saw an artist tortured by his work.
She saw a Lord Archer who not only intrigued her, but pulled at her.
Shockingly, this Lord Archer was someone she wanted to know better.
For she suspected she hadn’t known him at all until this very moment.
Archie wasn’t certain what irritated him more.
That Miss Hart had invaded his private sanctuary, uninvited—after all, every member of the household from sister to scullery maid knew to stay away when he sat at the piano.
Or that she’d invaded his private sanctuary looking like original sin itself—sable hair sleep-tousled and tumbling to her waist in soft waves; night-rail cinched but not so tightly that a hint of voluptuous cleavage wasn’t offered; her lips, ruby-red and lush and practically begging for a kiss…
That last bit had nothing to do with sleep, but more to do with the original sin part.
The woman was a temptation.
And she seemed to have no idea.
“Will you play the piece from the beginning?” she asked.
“You don’t have to ask.”
“Pardon?”
“To be polite.”
Her lips curled into a smile. “I wouldn’t. There is too much terrible music in the world to willingly subject oneself to it.”
He should tell her to leave. His music was his alone. He was simply a gentleman musician hobbyist.
And that was all he would ever be. Yet…
He wanted to play for her.
She continued. “What you were playing just now…”
“Yes?” Every muscle in his body tensed in anticipation of her answer.
“Your music isn’t that.” Her direct gaze held his, left him no room for charm or glibness.
“Isn’t what?”
“Terrible.”
“Well, that’s something, at least.”
She smoothed her palm across the sheets of music spread across the fallboard. “Shall I turn the pages for you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t need them.”
His fingers hovered above the keyboard. He didn’t have to do this. He was in no way obligated to play for her.
Except he wanted to.
And obligations and desires were two different entities entirely.
With banked intention, softly, his fingers came down on the keys.
One note, then another, followed by a chord, then another, as the notes flowed from him, his fingertips becoming an extension of his soul, as they always did when he sat down to his instrument.
His body swaying with the motion of his hands, he poured his entire being into the piece, fully succumbing to the music—his music—for his audience of one.
Her head tipped slightly to the side and eyes half closed, her entire being appeared concentrated in the act of listening.
His playing slowed. He was nearing the end of the piece. Well, not the end, but all he had.
Her eyes opened and met his. Knowledge shone within. She’d noticed the music losing its momentum, losing what magic it had possessed in the beginning.
She held up a hand, palm extended out. She was asking, nay, telling him to stop. “There,” she said.
“There where?”
“Play it again,” she said. “This time more slowly.”
Annoyed, Archie started from the beginning. Slowly, as commanded. Her gaze drifted away and into the distance, her head canted to the side. Her forefinger shot into the air, and her entire face went bright. “There!”
This again?
“There where?” he demanded.
“Don’t you hear it after the C sharp?”
“Hear what precisely?” In some small way, he wanted to hear her opinion. But in a larger way, he didn’t. They always said artists were ticklish. He was no different.
“You take it into the major scale from there—”
“Yes,” he said slowly.
“And then you give yourself nowhere interesting to go.”
Archie blinked. No one wanted to hear their artistic endeavor almost called…boring. But he half suspected she might be saying exactly that. It was quite possibly the first time in his life anyone had almost called him boring.
She spread her hands wide and apologetic. “You’ve written yourself into a corner.”
As she began humming, his fingers intuitively began playing, in perfect synch with the road she was leading him down. “So you’re suggesting I take it…” He let his fingers do the rest of his talking.
She nodded. “Into the minor scale.”
And like that, the piece opened up, and fresh vistas spread before him, even as the emotion of the music deepened and took on an unexpected complexity.
A feeling took wing inside him and soared. This specific feeling—of creation, of freedom—the promise of it was what pushed him out of bed in the mornings. It was what he lived for. If happiness had a purified form, it lay here. If he could bottle it, he could sell it for the price of diamonds.
He lifted his hands off the keys and shot to his feet, reaching for the pencil behind his ear. Line by line, the notes flew from his mind and onto paper. He saw the piece clearly to the end now, and understood it was his best work yet.
And it was thanks to the woman standing by his side—his muse—watching quietly and nodding every so often while he transcribed her suggestions.
The dark mood that had hung over his work these last several months lifted, and light entered his soul.
The transformation was no more or less dramatic than that.
Some five minutes—or fifty minutes—later, he straightened. It was done. What relief lay within that simple sentence. He met Miss Hart’s gaze with a smile. He might never stop smiling. “I could kiss you,” he said, without thinking.
Miss Hart blushed, and her gaze skittered away. “I’m sure there’s no need for that.”
Archie’s brow gathered. Of a sudden, he wanted to kiss her. A simple kiss of gratitude, really.
He leaned over and bussed a quick peck on her cheek.
She laughed. He did, too.
“And if we do it like the Italians…” He leaned in and kissed her other cheek.
But he made a mistake with the second kiss.
He inhaled.
And allowed his senses to fill with her. Lemon…roses…Valentina…
And when she laughed this time, knowledge entered her eyes.
And when he leaned in again, she didn’t shy away. She let him press his mouth against her lush, ruby-red, made-for-sin lips. In fact, she might have leaned in a little herself. Then she exhaled a light sigh into his mouth.
Her arms reached around his neck, her fingernails lightly grazing along the nape, sending shivers up his spine, at the same moment his hand cupped the back of her head and the other found the small of her back.
Shorter than him by a good ten inches, her body strained up the length of his, and the kiss deepened as he turned her around so her back pressed against the piano.
His cock, hard and ready, pushed against her belly, and guided by instinct rather than experience, her hips gave a swivel.
Oh, Lord.
He could have her here…now…against the piano. That was what the swivel of her hips and urgent whimpers of desire were telling him.
In truth, it had always been a fantasy of his—to tup a woman silly against a piano.
But with Valentina… It would be no mere tupping.
On a wave of noble determination and self-denial, he removed his hands from her body and stepped away. Separated by mere inches, they stared at each other, gasping for air. She was deliciously tousled, her lips puffy and kiss-crushed—a fantasy come to life.
He took another step back.
For her.
For himself.
“I, um…” She touched fingertips to those lips in need of more thorough kissing. “I need to go to bed.”
“Alone?” he asked.
Oh, what wasn’t wrong about that question? Yet…
He waited with held breath for her answer.
She nodded, once. “Alone.”
Of course, alone.
He could be a dolt. It was a fact.
She clasped her night-rail tightly to her neck—he could tell her it was too late for such modesty, but decided to leave it unsaid—and whirled around, exiting the room in short fashion, leaving Archie, indeed, alone.
With his thoughts and misdeeds.
For that kiss had, indeed, been a misdeed.
He must rein himself in. That was clear.
He was to help Miss Hart—not help himself to her. He must keep reminding himself.
Not so fine a distinction as the language would suggest.
Yet the kiss confirmed what he’d already suspected. Something beyond the musical pulsed between them.
Attraction…desire…
It wasn’t so much that it had been awakened just now, as expressed.
He didn’t have much practice curbing his desires.
Yet for the sake of his music and his muse he must try.