Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
A fortnight later
“It’s Thursday,” said Rory, clearly itching to remove himself from the tavern Archie had chosen for their night’s carouse. “Don’t you want to see what’s happening at the Five Graces?”
Archie grunted into his beer. The dank and slightly murderous environs of The Toad’s Hole suited his mood perfectly.
He’d only agreed to this night out with Rory because his friend was beginning his journey up to Scotland tomorrow.
His father, the Earl of Carrick, had gifted his son with a Highland estate to run in preparation for his inevitable ascent to the earldom someday, and Rory had suddenly become quite serious about his lairding duties.
Rory consulted his gold pocket watch. “If we leg it right now, we could catch the chap with the monkey who—”
“Not the Five Graces,” Archie all but growled. He hadn’t been able to return to the Five Graces, not since she left.
In fact, he’d been keeping away from everything that reminded him of her. The Five Graces. His piano. Even his bed, choosing to sleep in a guest room. Everything that had once provided happiness, now only brought misery.
“You’re gloomier than a Highland sky in January,” groused Rory.
Again, Archie grunted. Of course, those other miseries were nothing to what he’d learned today. “She has a patron,” he said.
“Who is it?”
It was telling that Rory didn’t need to inquire as to the identity of she.
“Ravensworth.” Archie could hardly get the name out of his mouth.
Rory’s eyebrows drew together. “We’re speaking of Miss Hart, correct?”
Archie gulped half his beer. “Aye,” he said, swiping foam off his upper lip.
“He’s patron to two opera singers now?” Rory shook his head, baffled. “Too much has never been enough for Ravensworth,” he added with no small amount of admiration.
Archie had never before felt the compulsion to plant a facer on his good friend the Viscount Kilmuir, but the urge was itching in his right fist at this very moment. An urge he would resist. “Just the one that I’ve heard,” he said.
Rory cocked his head. “Did Miss Hart change her name?”
“Possibly.”
“To Fr?ulein Elsa Vogel?”
Now it was Archie’s eyebrows drawing together. Valentina could hardly pull off the role of Italian contessa. A German fr?ulein? Doubtful.
Relief washed through him. “She didn’t accept Ravensworth’s patronage,” he said, needing to speak the words aloud—needing them to be true.
Rory narrowed his gaze. People looked at Rory and saw little more than a hulking, handsome Scotsman who skimmed through life on the surfaces. But Rory possessed depths, and at this moment, his friend was peering at him from them. “Can I ask you a question, Archie?”
“Of course.” He wouldn’t like the question. He knew that much.
“What are you doing at The Toad’s Hole with me?”
Archie held up his mug of beer. “Drinking to your safe journey.”
Rory’s eyebrows lifted in disbelief. That made two of them who knew Archie was lying. “Why aren’t you with her?”
And there it was. The question he’d been avoiding asking himself this last fortnight. “I botched it,” he said. It was only the truth.
“Seems to me you did a great service for her and her family.”
“That’s a separate matter.”
Rory shrugged and shook his head. “What do I know about love, anyway? I wrote Miss Dalhousie quite the epic poem and still couldn’t convince her to marry me.” He clapped Archie on the back. “At least you tried.”
In the spirit of honesty, Archie realized he needed to clear up a misconception. “I didn’t ask Valentina to marry me.”
Rory blinked. “You didn’t?”
“I asked her… Well, I asked her…” He couldn’t finish the sentence, aloud or in his mind.
“Ah,” said Rory. “I don’t know Miss Hart all that well, but even I could see she isn’t the sort of lass who would accept an arrangement other than marriage.”
The words slammed into Archie with the force of a typhoon, for they begged a question: How had he not seen it?
Valentina’s words came to him.
Not even for you, Archie.
They’d been haunting him since she’d spoken them. But now, he saw something deeper than rejection nestled within them.
Longing.
It was there in that even.
And another fact hit him.
She would’ve said yes to the question he hadn’t asked.
She wanted him. Him. The light and the dark. All of him.
And he wanted her. He wasn’t sure he could create a life worth living without her, in truth.
So, it all begged yet another question—the most vital one…
If she wanted him, and he wanted her, then why on earth couldn’t they have each other?
He shot to his feet. “Safe travels on your journey north, my friend, but I must go.”
Rory stood and clapped Archie on the back. “I look forward to receiving a note bearing good news upon my arrival at Baile ìm.”
Then Archie was outside, boots clicking across filthy cobblestones at a clip almost as rapid as the race of his mind. He stuck two fingers in his mouth and hailed a hackney cab with a sharp whistle.
As he saw it, he had but one obstacle… How to win her?
But that was easy. He would win her with what had brought them together in the first place.
And he knew exactly how he would do it.
He had some labor ahead of him this night—of the manual variety.
Valentina squinched her eyes shut against the music drifting through her dreams, trying to steal her away from slumber. She rolled onto her side and dragged a pillow over her head.
Through elusive sleep it hit her.
It wasn’t just any music.
It was Archie’s music.
And it wasn’t coming from her dreams.
Her eyes flew open. Her room glowed a soft golden pink as dawn peeked through her curtains. The music was coming from beyond them. From…outside.
How was Archie’s music coming from the high street?
Impossible.
Her pulse racing, she scrambled out of bed and darted to the window.
Miss Hiss glared grumpily from her place on the bed, promising consequences for disturbing her sleep.
Valentina would make it up to her later, but first she parted the curtain a sliver and peeked into the opening. She blinked once, then again.
There, in the middle of the high street, sat a piano.
Archie’s piano.
With him seated on a bench before it, his fingers moving across the keyboard with expert ease, playing his music.
Their music—the music they’d made together.
Her heart forgot to beat for a few seconds.
A horse cart came within a few feet of the instrument. The farmer threw no few grouchy glances toward Archie as he maneuvered horse and cart around the piano and the strange aristocrat seated before it.
How had Archie managed to get the instrument there in the first place?
Valentina gave her head a tiny shake. He was Archie. That was how. Nothing was impossible for him. She loved that about him.
She startled backward, and the breath froze in her chest, her heart now a full gallop.
Loved?
She was afraid so.
A figure appeared in the open doorway. “Colpo di fulmine,” said Mama.
Valentina’s eyebrows crinkled together. “What does that mean?”
“The thunderbolt,” Mama clarified.
“The sky is quite clear this morning.”
Mama laughed. “Not in the sky, mia cara. In here.” She reached out and pressed the flat of her hand to the center of Valentina’s chest. “Sometimes, love strikes here, so intense it cannot be denied.” She nodded toward the window. “That is what he feels out there, and what you feel in here.”
“What do I do, Mama?”
“He’s met you half the distance. Now you must meet him the other half. That is how it’s done in a marriage.”
“Marriage?”
Oh, how to tell Mama it wasn’t marriage that Archie wanted from her?
And that her daughter might just be weak enough to accept less.
Mama nodded, a wise smile in her eyes. “Si, mia cara.”
Valentina found that she was already halfway to the door when Mama said, “But, first, you must put this on.” She was holding out a robe.
Valentina looked down to find she wore naught but her night chemise. Archie playing the piano in the middle of the Hampstead high street was shocking enough. But her joining him in nothing but a wisp of fabric would be one shock too many. The village might never recover.
She hastily donned the robe and all but flew down the corridor and stairs, not pausing to acknowledge the amused and questioning smirks from her brothers, who had gathered in their bedroom doorways.
It was only when the front door bell jingled behind her, and her feet hit high street cobblestones, that her pace slowed.
Actually, she ground to a complete stop, sudden shyness and uncertainty overcoming her as she watched Archie play, along with the small clusters of villagers who had gathered on their front doorsteps to watch this unexpected spectacle unfold.
The passion Archie poured into the instrument beneath his fingertips, he drew out tenfold.
His clear blue gaze lifted and caught hers. Emotion and intensity shone out at her. So, too, did a smile. He was enjoying himself.
And she saw it.
His dark and light fused into a single whole.
He was playing for her, yes, but he was playing for an audience. He was revealing himself to the light.
For himself.
For her.
For them.
He was making an effort to be the man she’d always known he was.
He was meeting her more than halfway.
And now she must do the same.
She pushed off the door at her back and began to move toward him, unable not to for an instant longer, the magnetism between them too powerful to resist. She came to a stop in the bentside of the piano and rested her elbow on the fallboard, her gaze never once releasing his, as the vibrations of the music shook every cell in her body.
The final notes sounded and floated away on air bright with morning and the promise of a new day.
Not only that.
The promise of a new future.
But she didn’t know how to make that first step forward. What to say to a man who made a gesture as grand as this? “Do you need something?” she asked.
A half smile curled along one side of his mouth, but his eyes remained serious. “Yes.”
“What is that?” she asked, her mouth gone dry.
“You.”
“I thought we settled that.” It had to be said.
He shook his head and stood. “A fortnight ago…”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t ask you the correct question.”
“Oh?” she asked on a rasped whisper—all the sound she was capable of making.
He rounded the piano and reached out, taking her hands in his. Warmth stole through her at the feel of his long, masculine fingers wrapped around hers.
“And what is the correct question?”
The other side of his mouth tipped into that irresistible smile of his. Whatever he was about to ask, she would say yes to. She wouldn’t lose this man a second time. “Will you marry me?”
A collective gasp echoed around her. Valentina glanced around and noticed that more than half the village was watching the proceedings with bated breath.
For her part, Valentina hadn’t gasped; her breath was caught somewhere in her throat.
Archie continued. “Because I’m a complete and utter dolt, it only occurred to me last night that you and I can have it all.”
“And what is that?”
“Each other.”
Valentina couldn’t be certain, but she might’ve seen the grocer’s wife swipe a tear away. Valentina felt more than a few of those welling in her eyes.
“All I want is you, Valentina. Your mind, your body”—the village gasped again—“your soul, if possible. I choose light. I choose you before this village, before all of England. Let’s lead a life of our own creation, together.”
Though his words were everything her heart wanted to hear, her pragmatic side reared its logical head. “You see my town. You’ve met my family. I wasn’t raised to be the wife of a viscount.”
“Oh, you’ll be more than that someday. You’ll be the wife of an earl.”
“And what do I know about that?”
Why was she doing this? Why was she attempting to talk him out of his love for her?
His smile fell, and he became utterly serious. “Our life—the one we create, the one we live day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute—will have naught to do with a title. You keep my feet on the ground, Valentina. You let me fly.”
And Valentina, at last, saw how it could work between them. “And you let me fly wild and free though my feet remain on the ground.”
“You see? We are perfect for each other.”
And she saw with perfect clarity that he was right.
“I’m utterly struck with love for you, Valentina.”
“Colpo di fulmine,” she whispered.
“My Italian is a little rusty.”
“The thunderstrike. Here.” She touched her chest. “And here.” She touched the place directly above his heart.
Archie shook his head. “A thunderstrike is temporary. What exists between us is forever.”
“Say yes, already,” shouted a voice.
She smiled and no few tears broke and streamed down her cheeks. “Yes,” she said. “Forever?” She had to hear it one more time.
He tucked his thumb beneath her chin and gently tugged her forward. “Forever,” he whispered into the scant space between their mouths, so only he and she could hear.
She trusted this man with her life, her body, her soul…her future. They completed each other in ways that only they knew.
“Kiss her already,” came another shout. The voice sounded suspiciously like her little brother Luca.
“We can’t keep our audience waiting,” said Archie just before his mouth claimed hers.
Cheers and clapping sailed up to the sky. But Valentina had no care for them or the spectacle she and Archie were creating.
She would need to accustom herself to it, for life with this man who lit her soul—and thighs—on fire would never be boring or small or bound by society’s rules.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, and she surrendered to his kiss, and to the life they would create together.