Chapter Fifteen
Despite Ava’s insistence otherwise, she had begun to nod off in the middle of the third song, though her drift toward slumber had no doubt been inspired by the nocturne she’d last selected.
Her head had lolled against Elliot’s shoulder as her tiny hands slid off of his and into her lap, lashes drifting drowsily down over her eyes.
Richard cleared his throat; a subtle sound, meant to catch Elliot’s attention but not to disturb Ava. “You do know you have to give her back?”
“Unfair,” Elliot replied, though his hands still moved fluidly over the keys. “You’ve got two, after all. Haven’t you ever learned to share?”
From her position upon the couch, as she resettled her son in her arms after Kate had had her chance to hold him, Rebecca gave a muffled little laugh. “Get your own,” she advised. “I worked very hard on these two, and I would like to keep them.”
“But you can make more,” Elliot said even as he gently tipped Ava into Richard’s waiting arms. “I’ve got to go to the trouble of convincing a woman to marry me, first. It’s really just more efficient if—”
“Enough,” Richard said, laying one hand over Ava’s head to shield her ear as he wheezed with laughter. “If she wakes, it’ll be impossible to get her down again.”
“Convincing a woman to marry you,” Kate repeated, with an exasperated shake of her head as she gazed down at baby Stephen cradled in Rebecca’s arms. Far too young to be shy of strangers, he’d wrapped one tiny fist around her finger and blinked his enormous blue eyes up at her in open curiosity.
“I have got a notebook full of names, any one of which would leap at the opportunity.”
Yes. But not the only one he wanted. Not yet, at least. “Perhaps I’m finding myself to be somewhat more selective than I had anticipated. After all, we are speaking of the woman who will be the mother of my children. I should like them to be as precious as Ava and Stephen.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t think one can order up a child like you might a new coat,” Kate said lightly…but by the twitch of her lips and the marvel in her eyes as she looked down at the baby, he thought she must not disagree.
He knew it wasn’t the first time she’d seen a baby, or even held one.
Every one of those village children who had been their companions in childhood had grown up, married, and produced children.
She’d celebrated births, attended christenings, watched those very children grow.
And yet, with that soft, dreamy look in her eyes—he thought this might well be the first moment she had truly considered what it might be like to have one of her own.
Baby Stephen held her finger in the clasp of his, and she gazed down at him as if he’d captured her heart as well. If only it were so easy a thing for Elliot to do.
“Kate,” he said softly.
“Hm?” she said, in the faraway, daydreamy cadence of someone who wasn’t truly listening.
“You’ve got to let him go, I’m afraid. I’ve yet to convince them to let me keep one myself, and Stephen’s overdue for his bed.”
“Oh. Oh! I’m so sorry,” Kate blurted out. “Yes, of course he must be.” Carefully, gently, she prized her index free of Stephen’s strong grip.
Rebecca smiled as she climbed to her feet at last, cradling the baby in her arms. “It’s quite all right,” she said, with the satisfied inflection of a proud mother. “They’re so very precious when they’re small.”
“We won’t be a minute,” Richard said as Rebecca joined him in the doorway to take the children upstairs to their beds.
“Lies,” Elliot said to Kate as their footsteps receded into the distance, climbing the stairs. “They’ll be half an hour at least. They always are.”
“They put the children to bed together every night?” Kate asked.
“Every one. The children have got a nanny, of course, and dancing such attendance upon them is not, strictly speaking, the done thing—but they always do it themselves.” Because they wanted to. Because they were particularly doting parents who loved their children dearly.
Kate issued a little sigh. “The children are very sweet,” she said, and there were fragments still of that wistfulness lingering within the even cadence of her voice.
“And it was so kind of you to indulge Ava like that,” she added, with a little wave of her hand to indicate the pianoforte. “I didn’t even know you played.”
“I hated it at first,” he said. “But Mother said I had the hands for it, and she was determined that I should be a competent player. She said it would improve my mind. But I hated the plodding lessons, the practicing of scales and chords over and over again. And then—then there was just a day where it all fell into place at once, like a key had been turned within a lock in my mind. I could see the elements of the music at last, and it was suddenly incredible that I could coax out whole songs with only my fingers.”
“You never told me,” she said, and it wasn’t an accusation, exactly—but it held at least a tinge of reproach.
“No, I didn’t. I suppose I was…I don’t know.
A little embarrassed. Men don’t, as a general rule, play the pianoforte.
” And while she and the village children who were their contemporaries had been tussling about in the mud or playing games, he had been ensconced within the music room, marveling at his newfound ability to make an instrument sing.
Of course he had always known that there were myriad differences between them—not the least of which was that he was the son of a duke, and the children with whom he had often played had been the children of his father’s tenants.
But the music had been another stone in that wall of circumstances meant to separate them, and he—he couldn’t have borne it if it had separated him from Kate.
Even in the vicarage she had occupied before her father’s death, they had never had the means to procure a pianoforte.
The living of a country vicar was a comfortable one, but it had not been enough for that sort of indulgence.
“You shouldn’t have been embarrassed.” Kate’s voice was closer now; as if lured by the spell of the nocturne unfurling still beneath his fingers, she had risen from the couch she had occupied, drifting across the empty expanse of the room.
“I wish you had told me. I would have liked to hear you play before now.”
Audible above the music, there was just a touch of melancholy threaded through her voice. As if she mourned the loss of something which had been stolen from her. Some long-gone opportunity which had been deliberately withheld, and had now passed her by altogether.
But it wasn’t. It was only delayed. “I’ll play for you whenever you like,” he said. “In fact…” He continued the accompaniment with his left hand, and let the melody drop from his right to beckon her closer. “I’ll teach you,” he said. “Come sit.”
“What, on your lap like Ava?” she mused as she approached, eyeing the bench—which certainly had not been fashioned for two—askance.
“If you like.” Elliot produced a grin.
“Be serious,” she chided as she lifted a hand to her mouth to smother the smile in danger of creeping over her face. “I’m fairly certain we’re not meant to be alone together, besides.”
“Who is going to know?” His left hand trilled through an arpeggiated chord, and it reeled her in like a fish upon a hook.
“As far as anyone else is concerned, you’ve been properly chaperoned all evening.
Your mother is just in the library. The door is open.
” He coaxed out another few notes as Kate arrived at his side.
“And Richard and Rebecca will be back before too long.”
“Half an hour, you said.” Kate paused there beside him, her gaze flitting toward the door as if expecting to see someone out there, peering back at her in stern judgment. “All right,” she said. “Budge up a little, won’t you?”
Obligingly, Elliot scooted over upon the bench, and Kate smoothed out the blush-pink silk of her skirts as she slid onto it beside him.
So close her hip touched his. He could have nudged her shoulder with his own.
Wrapped his arm about her waist. Stroked his fingers through the perfect ringlets that had been wrought of her silky dark hair.
A little furrow creased her brow as she examined the music set out upon the stand. “You can’t expect me to play that,” she said, trepidation crossing her features as she beheld what must—to her—appear like a very complicated series of notes in the accompaniment.
Elliot chuckled. “No,” he said. “You’ll be playing the melody. Here; give me your hand.”
“Why?”
“Because the pianoforte should never be played with gloves. You must feel the keys to truly feel the music.” He held his hand out to her and, when she placed her right hand in his, pulled the glove gently from her fingers to lay it up the surface of the pianoforte.
“This is a nocturne,” he said as he released her hand once more.
“It’s meant to evoke the stillness and peace of night, almost like a lullaby.
” With his right hand, he picked out the melody, exaggerating the notes for her benefit. “The melody is simple. Soft.”
“I hear it.” Her eyes studied the movements of his hand across the keys, her voice pitched to a murmur, as if to speak any louder would be to shatter the peaceful spell of the music that wafted through the air.
“The accompaniment is the support upon which the melody rests,” Elliot said. “I’ll play that part.”
“Could I just—” Kate lifted her hand, carefully resting her fingers over his atop the keys.
Her hands were smaller than his own, the positioning no doubt less comfortable for her than it was for him, with his longer fingers and years of practice to his credit.
“There,” she said. “That’s better. I can feel it, this way. ”