Chapter 7
IT WAS PETER HOUGHTON WHO INFORMED FLEUR of the new arrangement later that same morning while she waited in the schoolroom for a pupil who would not come because her nurse insisted that she was ill with exhaustion from her exertions of the day before.
Fleur was a little afraid of Peter Houghton because he undoubtedly knew who she was and what she was.
And yet he had treated her with unfailing courtesy in the two days since his return to Willoughby—they both ate with the upper servants at Mrs. Laycock’s table.
Not by word or gesture had he shown that he felt any distaste at having to consort with her on terms of near-equality.
There had been not a whisper or a hint of what she was to any of the other servants.
She was relieved by the new arrangement, not because she wished to have power over Lady Pamela’s nurse, but because she wished to feel that she was doing something to earn her salary and keep. She had had the uneasy feeling for the previous weeks that she was there on false pretenses.
The duke himself brought his daughter to the schoolroom that afternoon. Fleur curtsied and did not look directly at him. But, she realized before many minutes had passed, he had no intention of leaving immediately. He settled himself quietly on a chair in one corner of the room and watched.
They worked with the alphabet book for a short while, making a game out of memorizing the letters, each of them thinking of some absurd word that began with the letter in question and then trying to remember each word and its letter in sequence.
“Faradiddle,” the duke said when Lady Pamela had puzzled over F for several seconds.
She exploded with sudden laughter.
It was his only contribution to that particular lesson.
They counted up to fifty and back to one again and did some simple sums on paper.
They examined a tablecloth that Fleur had found folded in a drawer in her room, and she named each embroidered stitch for Lady Pamela and promised that she could start a handkerchief of her own the next day and learn one of the stitches.
“Can I choose whatever colors I want?” she asked Fleur.
“Any colors you wish,” Fleur promised with a smile.
“Red daisies and blue stems?”
“Purple daisies and canary stems if you wish,” Fleur said.
“But everyone will laugh.”
“Then you must choose whether to pick your own colors and be laughed at or pick the expected colors and not be laughed at,” Fleur said. “It is quite simple. The choice will be entirely yours.”
Lady Pamela frowned and looked suspiciously at her governess.
They talked about the picture of the pavilion, which had still not been painted, and Fleur lifted down a rather large landscape painting that was on the wall so that her pupil could see how many different colors and shades had been used to create the total effect of sky and grass and trees.
“But the choice is yours, you see,” she said. “Your job as an artist is to help the viewer see what you see. And no one can tell you quite what you see. We all see things differently.”
“I want you to play the harpsichord for me,” Lady Pamela said when the topic was exhausted.
Fleur was very aware of her employer sitting silently in his corner.
“Perhaps you would like to sit on the stool and I shall give you a lesson,” she suggested.
But Lady Pamela had already tried to play for herself and had discovered that she could not produce music as Fleur could. She had also learned that even after a lesson or two she had not acquired the magic formula for producing a fluent melody.
“Sit down,” she said, “and play for me.”
“Please,” Fleur said quietly.
But even as she prayed silently for cooperation, she knew that she would not get it.
“Play for me,” the child ordered petulantly.
“Please,” Fleur said.
“That is silly,” Lady Pamela said. “What difference does ‘please’ make?”
“It makes me feel that I am being asked, not ordered,” Fleur said. “It makes me feel good about myself.”
“That is silly,” the child said.
“Please will you play the harpsichord, Miss Hamilton, while Pamela goes to lie down on her bed?”
Fleur’s back stiffened. She had not heard him get up and cross the room.
His daughter threw him an exasperated look. “Please, Miss Hamilton,” she said.
Fleur closed her eyes briefly. She would have done anything rather than play. Her hands were clammy. But she sat on the stool without looking around and played Bach, compensating as well as she could for the key that stuck.
“It is your turn now, Lady Pamela,” she said when she was finished.
“You are good,” his grace said. “Have you seen the instruments in the drawing room and music room?”
Fleur had seen them during the tour with Mrs. Laycock, though she had not had the temerity to touch either one.
The pianoforte in the drawing room was better than the one at Heron House, she suspected, lovely as that one had been—Mama’s precious treasure.
The massive grand pianoforte in the music room she had been able to look at only in awe.
“Yes, your grace,” she said. “I saw them on my first day here.”
“Come along, Pamela,” he said, reaching for his daughter’s hand. “We will hear Miss Hamilton in the music room. And we will remember to say ‘please.’ Won’t we?”
“Yes, Papa,” she said.
Fleur followed them numbly from the room and along the upper corridor to the far staircase. And yet there was a feeling of excitement too. She was to be allowed to play that pianoforte!
If only she could be alone, she thought as they entered the room next to the library and she approached the instrument and touched its keys reverently. If only he were not there.
“If you please, Miss Hamilton,” he said quietly, and he disappeared somewhere behind her back with his daughter.
She played Beethoven. It had been so long. Beethoven was not suited to a harpsichord. She played hesitantly at first, until her fingers accustomed themselves to the smooth ivory of the keys and the flow of the music and until her soul was carried beyond itself and she forgot where she was.
Music had always been her great love, her great escape. Cousin Caroline’s barbed tongue, Amelia’s caustic comments, the knowledge that she would never see her parents again, the strict discipline and drab routine of her school years—all had ceased to exist when she touched a keyboard.
She bowed her head over her still hands when she was finished.
“May I go and see Tiny now, Papa?” a voice said from behind her, bringing her soul back inside her body again.
“Yes,” he said. “Ask a footman to go with you. You might remember to say ‘please.’ ”
“That’s silly, Papa,” the child said.
Fleur heard the door open and close again.
“You have great talent,” the Duke of Ridgeway said. “But you are out of practice.”
“Yes, your grace.”
“If you are to teach my daughter,” he said, “you must play faultlessly yourself. Half an hour a day for her lesson, an hour a day for your practice.”
“Where, your grace?” She still had not turned.
“Here, of course,” he said.
She rubbed at a key with one finger. “I am not allowed on this floor, your grace,” she said.
“Are you not?” he said. “By Nanny’s orders?”
“By her grace’s,” she said.
“Given in person?”
“Yes, your grace.”
“You will spend an hour and a half each day in here,” he said, “by my express order. I shall explain to her grace.”
She could not continue to sit there all day with him standing behind her. She drew a steadying breath, got to her feet, and turned to face him. He was standing quite close, so that for a moment she felt again that terror at his largeness.
“You have had access to a pianoforte for most of your life,” he said. It was not a question.
She said nothing.
“You told Houghton that your father died recently in debt,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Did he?”
She looked up into his eyes.
“Did he die in debt?”
“Yes.” She was not sure that any volume had come out with the word.
“And your mother?” he asked.
“She died,” she said, “a long time ago.”
“And you have no other family?”
She had never been good at lying, though she had done enough of it in the past few months, heaven knew. She thought of Cousin Caroline and Amelia and Matthew and shook her head quickly.
“What are you frightened of?” he asked. “Just of me?”
“I should be with Lady Pamela,” she said, raising her chin, firming her voice.
“No, you should not,” he said. “My orders take precedence over yours, Miss Hamilton. Pamela is a difficult pupil?”
“She is not used to doing what she does not wish to do, your grace,” she said.
“You have my permission to insist,” he said. “Provided you do not make of her life a dreary business.”
“She is a child,” she said. “My greatest delight is in seeing her smile and hearing her laugh.”
“Are those skills you can teach, Miss Hamilton?” he asked. “I have never seen or heard you do either.”
“I can give her my full attention,” she said, “and praise where it is due and encouragement when praise would be inappropriate. And I can give her enough freedom so that she will feel like a child.”
He searched her eyes with his so that she felt breathless, and resisted the temptation to panic.
She wished she had taken a step back from him when she had first risen from the stool and it would have seemed more natural to do so than to do it now.
She felt strangely that she could be scorched by the heat from his body, even though he stood several feet away.
His face was too close, as close as it was in all her nightmares, bent over her naked body.
“Your working day is at an end, ma’am,” he said. His voice had changed in tone. It was cold, cynical. “You are dismissed. I shall go and join my daughter in the stables.”
“Yes, your grace.” She turned to leave.
“Miss Hamilton?”
She half-turned her head.
“I am pleased with what I have seen of your work this afternoon,” he said.