Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Night
Archie shouldn’t be in this room.
He understood that.
It was the hour of night when all was silent and the air had gone crisp and he should be in his own bedroom.
Sitting before the piano in it.
Except, tonight, when he’d sat to the instrument, the notes had refused to flow. Hands poised above the keyboard, he’d waited and waited for new notes to come. He’d thought there yet remained plenty of momentum from last night to carry him through to the end of the composition.
But one element was missing.
Valentina.
At first, he’d resisted the notion as he banged through the piece several times in the wild hope that the note beyond the last one scribbled onto the music sheet would make itself known.
But it refused.
It wanted Valentina.
So, here he was.
In her bedroom.
In the small hours of morning.
Sprawled in an armchair in the corner.
Waging a war with himself.
Would it be inconceivably rude to wake her?
Yes.
Was he already being inconceivably rude just by being here?
Also, yes.
Was that wrongness enough to make him leave?
No.
She’d become his muse. He needed her.
For his music.
That was what his mind kept repeating.
But his body had a different idea.
It needed her.
End of.
So, here he sat in the corner, hoping against ridiculous hope that she would wake herself.
He cleared his throat.
She didn’t stir.
He shifted noisily in the chair.
She remained obstinately asleep.
He shot to his feet, and before he had a clear idea of what he was doing, he was standing beside the bed.
A hiss sounded from the foot of the bed.
A tiny gray ball of fur had shot to her four paws, ready to pounce.
He’d come prepared for the kitten who Juliet had dubbed Miss Hiss—a name that would likely stick.
He tossed her a link of raw sausage. That should keep the bloodthirsty little creature busy for a while.
He returned his attention to Valentina. The feel of her parted mouth against his…of her waist in his hands…echoed through him. He had to clench his hands at his sides to keep from touching her.
Though only seconds had passed, the longer he stood here, the more wrong it felt. He must wake her.
“Valentina,” he whispered, opting for the non-tactile approach.
Her dark fringe of eyelashes fluttered open, and she blinked. “Are you real?”
“Very much.”
“I was dreaming of you,” she said on a lazy, indulgent stretch.
He liked the sound of that. “And what was I doing in your dream?” He very much wanted to know.
Her eyes widened, and she came fully awake, pulling the covers up to her chin. “What is it that you want, Lord Archer?”
You, he didn’t say.
“Follow me,” he said instead.
“Is that an order?”
“It’s actually a request.” He couldn’t exactly force her to be his muse.
Her gaze, luminous and searching, held his for a silent stretch of time. She saw into him down to his weakness—his need. It would repulse and send her fleeing into the night, surely.
She nodded, and all muscles in his body that had tensed, released. In the place of that tension soared relief. She’d agreed.
“If you’ll fetch my night-rail from the bench at the dressing table…”
He only now noticed that she still held the covers to her chin, concerned for her modesty.
And why shouldn’t she be?
All it would take was the single curl of her pinky, and he’d willingly ravish her.
She likely saw that in his eyes, too.
After retrieving the requested garment, he asked, “May I help you?” He hadn’t intended the offer to sound lecherous, but his voice had gone into a lower register, and he thought he might.
She shook her head—wise woman—and somehow managed to clothe herself beneath the covers.
He knew this, because though he’d stepped discreetly away, he watched from the periphery of his eye.
He couldn’t help himself. There was something about this woman that he wanted to understand, though he wasn’t sure what it was.
She slid off the bed and faced him. “After you, my lord.”
He pivoted and began walking, trusting—hoping—she would follow.
Light footsteps sounded at his back as he led her through the house cast in shadow.
Having her near—having her to himself—settled the tetchy feeling inside him, even as it provoked another feeling to life.
A feeling rooted deep in his body—a feeling he had no business exploring.
No one had ever made him feel so.
Until her.
They entered his bedroom, its interior of white marble floor and light grays illuminated by flickering candle and moon light. It would’ve been more proper to use the piano in his study, but his papers and notes were all here. Besides, he and Valentina, they existed as different selves in the night.
A muted laugh sounded behind him. He tossed a glance over his shoulder. “Have I amused you?”
Night-rail dragging on the floor behind her—he supposed Tucker hadn’t hemmed nightclothes—she shook her head, bemused. “Of course you have a piano in your bedroom.”
It wasn’t the words themselves that sparked a warm feeling inside him. It was the feeling behind them. Valentina understood his passion for music in a way not a single other person in the world did.
With her, he was known.
He wasn’t certain how he felt about that, but he thought he might like it.
He leaned against the piano and watched her take the measure of his bedroom. How lovely…how soft…how appealing she was. She was a strong woman who knew her mind, but she held an openness within her, too. She understood the two weren’t mutually exclusive.
She noticed the wall of bookcases that ran perpendicular to the window. “You have a library in your bedroom, too?”
He shifted on his feet. “Of sorts.”
Her eyebrows crinkled in curiosity as she crossed the distance and slid a folio from a shelf. Thumbing the cover open, her eyes widened. “Oh.”
He knew what she was beholding. His work. A past composition. Almost every cell in his body wanted her to close the folio and slide it back into place and forget all about it.
But a few remaining cells wanted her to keep going.
To hear the music in her head.
To appreciate it.
To love it.
No other set of eyes had ever been laid upon it.
When her gaze lifted, he saw a new expression within. She’d judged this work worthy. He attempted—and failed—to tamp down the wave of gratification that crested inside him.
“How many other pieces have you composed?”
He didn’t have to think. “Thirty-two.”
Her brow lifted. “Thirty-two?”
“Well, several of those are from childhood, so they might not count as anything anyone would want to hear.”
Her head canted. “I believe they would.”
Oh, how those four words entered his bloodstream and lit him up.
She held out the composition. “Will you play it for me?”
He should say no.
But he couldn’t resist. It occurred to him he might not be able to resist any request this woman made of him.
He removed the sheets from the book and placed them on the music shelf, though he knew every note by memory. He wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a curse.
He depressed piano keys, and the notes began to coalesce into music.
He’d composed this piece the summer before he’d started at Cambridge, and all the emotions of that time began to sail through him.
Of the particular happiness of youth on the cusp of adulthood. Of fresh beginnings. Of anticipation.
The same feelings he experienced tonight with Valentina alone in this room with him.
She moved closer, as he’d known she would when he began playing. He felt her at his back, following the music. Though they’d never discussed it, he understood she felt music in the way he did.
To the very core of her soul.
A note sounded through the air. Not from the piano, but from behind him.
From Valentina. One note flowed into another, then another, overlaying the composition with a harmony, using that glorious voice of hers.
He wanted to stop playing, so he could listen as she took the composition places he hadn’t dreamed of venturing, but he couldn’t.
In this moment in time, her music and his music were one.
Tonight, he was her muse.
Together, they were creating something worthwhile—something special.
When he neared the end of one sheet, she leaned around him to turn the page. Separated by mere inches, he caught her scent. Lemon and roses and night and woman.
Then she flipped to the last page, and he was playing the final notes.
The music drifted into the night, leaving a deafening silence in its wake.
He shifted around so he straddled the piano bench, facing her.
She stared down at him only a few feet away, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright with the particular joy of creation.
“Why don’t you play in public?” she asked.
Archie felt his most charming smile—the one reserved for the world outside this room—rear its ugly head. He could hate himself for it. To use artifice with Valentina felt wrong. But she was veering too close to truths that felt safer kept hidden away. He laughed, almost a scoff, dismissive.
Her eyebrows drew together. She wasn’t charmed. “You have a gift.”
“I, Miss Hart,” he said, “have a title.”
She needed to understand that.
“And you think that’s all you should be?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “It’s all the world thinks I am.”
“Because that’s all you’ve presented it.”
“Because that’s all they want. They want their sunshine in a smile.”
The question in her eyes released, and in its place entered certainty. He wasn’t sure he liked that.
“Ah,” she said.
He most definitely didn’t like it. “Ah?”
“They like the Lord Archer—”
“Archie,” he corrected.
“They like the Archie who is always up for a lark and a laugh.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
The question was flimsy, at best. He felt its protection giving way.
“And you like being liked.”
“I’m not unique in that.”
“You think the world only wants to see the light.”
“Do you want to see that dark?”
“I’m seeing him now.”
“Do you like him?”
“I believe I do.”
To be seen. To be known. To be liked for the parts of himself he kept carefully hidden from view…
“You are overtired, methinks,” he said, needing a safe distance from the intimacy fast forming between them. “Perhaps this was a mistake.”
He was dismissing her. They both knew it. But her feet remained planted. She wasn’t finished. “You are an artist.”
“I am a viscount, who shall be an earl someday.”
“You cannot simply shut away and deny the largest part of yourself. You cannot be happy unless you’re authentic to who you are in your heart.”
He laughed, again. How he was coming to hate the sound of his charming laugh. “I am almost too authentic for my own good. Ask anyone.”
Valentina remained unmoved. She wasn’t letting him charm his way out of this conversation. “But this is you.” She indicated the piano, the thirty-one composition folios lining his bookcase, the one on the music stand. “He matters. He may matter most.”
Her ideas took instant root inside him, and her words were their nourishment. Of a sudden, he wanted—needed—more of them.
He wanted—needed…craved—this intimacy that existed between them.
He felt he must warn her.
He must give her one last chance to flee.
“You don’t understand the effect of your words on me.”
“Don’t I?” she asked, low and certain and…inviting.
A feeling that he’d kept carefully banked breached his defenses.
Still, he must resist. “You don’t.”
She reached out and picked up his hand where it rested on the keyboard and placed it at the curve of her waist. Where it had rested earlier today. “I understand more than you think, my lord.”
“Valentina,” he rasped. “I’m only a man.”
“And I am only a woman.”
He shook his head. “You are temptation personified.”
“And don’t you want to pluck me?”
Had she truly spoken those words with that meaning running below them?
The intention in her eyes said yes.
Though he shouldn’t…
Though he would surely regret it on the morrow…
He would pluck her since she’d asked.