Chapter 31 Rhys
Rhys
Rhys could have stood in the doorway for hours listening to Magellan.
He wanted nothing more than to go to her and kiss her like he’d done that fateful day in the labyrinth.
But the room may well have been an ocean between them, and he didn’t know how to cross it.
She stopped playing when she realized he was there.
“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” He went to the window and looked out, standing stiffly with his hands behind his back.
“You didn’t.”
“You’re playing is unequivocally lovely,” he complimented, knowing he sounded formal. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better.”
“I am. Mrs. Weathers and Jane have been taking good care of me.”
“Good.” His eyes held hers. “I found your friends today and assured them you were fine. I put them up in an inn near the competition. And Oliver has his violin back.” He tried not to grimace.
Oliver was a strapping red-headed buck with the swagger of a young man who thought he was the best at what he did: play music.
Rhys did not want Magellan playing the man’s instrument.
He had found himself irrationally jealous of a boy who called himself a lucky horseshoe.
“I have violins in the house you are welcome to play.”
“Wonderful. I will play your instrument, then.” She gave him an innocent smile.
Was she teasing him?
“Excellent,” he strangled out, running his hand through his hair.
So much needed to be said. Too much. He’d told the household staff they were to be married and he hadn’t even proposed.
He’d also promised his dead father he would not ask for anyone’s hand in marriage until he read the diary in its entirety—and he’d yet to finish translating it.
The truth was he didn’t know what to say to her.
He backed away to the door to make his escape. “I’ll have a dinner tray brought up.”
“Rhys, I don’t need any more trays. I am in desperate need of a hug, though.” She stayed sitting on the piano bench.
He hesitated, unsure what to do. “A hug? As in an embrace?” She simply nodded, her luminous eyes pulling him to her, and without thought, he took three brisk strides as she rose up on the piano bench to her knees.
Their arms wrapped around each other and he held her tightly, their chests pressed against each other like two magnets snapping back into place.
“Magellan.” He breathed into her hair. She smelled like fresh flowers.
Suddenly she was kissing him, her hands weaving into his hair.
His last rational thought was cafune, the Portuguese word for such a gesture.
Then their kiss turned heated, laced with desperation.
Their embrace was madness. The door was open.
Anyone could walk in. Rhys’s heart was thundering as her hands guided his face.
Her fingers moved to his neck and down his back.
Those glorious fingers. He was her instrument now.
He lost all sense of propriety and sat down on the piano bench, pulling her onto his lap.
Her legs wrapped him into the cocoon of her body and he leaned into her, his whole body on fire.
The kiss raged on until his lips moved down to devour her neck.
“You have bewitched me. I don’t care what your circumstances are, Magellan, I don’t care,” he said, his mouth returning to hers again. “I just want you to stay with me.”
She broke off the kiss to search his eyes. They were both breathing heavy, as if they’d just run across a field together, their faces inches apart. “I need you to finish translating the diary, and I need to see Fanny Mendelssohn.”
He nodded, feeling like he was about to fall into an abyss and never return.
He would keep his promise. Felix Mendelssohn’s sister would come, and then they could sift fiction from truth.
He set her gently away from him and stood.
“I will finish translating the diary. You have my word. Miss Mendelssohn will be calling in the early afternoon tomorrow. We can talk more . . . about your circumstance after her visit.”
“Could you please translate it today?”
He hesitated and declined gently. “I prefer to wait until after Fanny Mendelssohn’s visit.” Before she could argue with him, he excused himself with a bow, needing solitude to compose his thoughts, and he escaped to his study.
He wrote to his family again and apprised them of the events.
He did not mention the wedding proposal he had yet to make, nor that the staff thought they were engaged, nor that Magellan was sleeping in the countess’s room as if they were already married, nor that he was most likely creating a scandal of unknown proportion by having a single young lady stay at the house unchaperoned.
He tried to rein in his stress. Fortunately, his staff was discreet.
No one would talk. He had increased their wages just this week to ensure the fact, not above bribing his staff in the delicate matter of safeguarding a woman’s—and his future wife’s—reputation.
He asked his family to delay coming here.
The last thing he needed was everyone descending on them in London.
Magellan needed time to heal, and he needed time to understand what was happening.
Hopefully the meeting with Fanny Mendelssohn would shed light on the situation.
One could only hope! He knew why Magellan wanted to meet with Miss Mendelssohn, but the question that kept circling his mind was, Why did Fanny Mendelssohn want to meet Magellan?
Magellan had asked him twice to finish translating the diary, and in truth, he didn’t want to read one more word of Gwynedd’s story.
Merlin’s sister truly had become a pariah to him.
Now he understood why Thomas Malory had never used a word of it.
Could anyone imagine if Merlin’s sister had been trouncing about in King Arthur’s tale?
In legends, Merlin could walk through time, and here his sister was purporting one could cross time’s thresholds with sound.
Magellan believed she had been sent back into the past to find an ancient song hidden by a guardian from another world.
Well, tomorrow she would meet Fanny Mendelssohn and have to face the truth.