Chapter 11 #2
She just allowed herself to enjoy the music, because the truth was that she had played since she was quite small, even before her Austrian instructor.
Her mother adored music, and they had hired a tutor to come.
It was one of the rare expenses that they allowed themselves.
Because once her tutor had headed back to Austria to reclaim his place as a musician, they had asked for his advice, and he’d sent a young fellow from Vienna, who had arrived on their doorstep, eager to earn money and enjoy England.
That rare expense had been a daily gift. And she’d played and played; it was one of the things that got her through English winters and long dark nights.
She wondered if Lady Hortense felt the same about music.
Now, when the music was done, she sat up and without any sort of hesitation began to applaud quite vigorously. “How marvelous, Lady Hortense! You are quite good.”
Hortense smiled slightly and said, “Thank you. I work very hard at it.”
“No, you don’t, my darling,” protested Lady Larkin. “It comes so naturally to you.”
“Never say that.” The Duke of Westfort rushed forward, his hands behind his back, which caused his gold cravat pin to wink in the light. “It is good to praise hard work,” he said. “We don’t want things to come too easily to us, do we?”
Lady Larkin gave him a tight smile. “No, of course we don’t, Your Grace. Is that how you feel? That people should work for things?”
Suddenly, the Duke of Westfort looked slightly uncomfortable. “Well, some things, yes, of course,” he said. “But not all things.”
“I see,” Lady Larkin said, clearly referring to winning him over to her daughter to become his wife.
Lady Allen put her plate down and turned to Agatha. “Now you, my dear. Now you.”
She cleared her throat. “Mama, I don’t think it’s necessary.”
“Do you play?” Westfort asked.
“Not the harp,” Agatha said. “I’d make a total mangle of it, and we wouldn’t sound at all as if we were in heaven. We’d sound as if we were in place somewhere else entirely.”
The entire room stilled and Agatha winced. She had definitely insinuated that they would be in a place of a southerly direction with a much higher temperature than England.
“She plays the violin, apparently,” the Duchess of Westfort said.
The duke’s face tensed with apprehension. “Do you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, and she understood that look very, very well. The violin was an instrument that was difficult to make sound beautiful. And if one was not proficient, it sounded like cats being strangled in an alleyway, and to have to endure a long sitting of such a performance was quite hard.
“We insist,” the Duchess of Westfort said, a triumphant gleam in her eyes.
Clearly, his mother understood the dangers of the violin too, because frankly, how could the Duke of Westfort have any sort of feelings for her if she made the sounds of a strangled cat whilst playing?
She stood. “All right then. Whatever you have, I shall do my best with it.”
The duchess stood then, her sapphire skirts swaying about her lithe physique, and went to the back of the room. And much to Agatha’s surprise, she realized that there were instruments inside of a tall elaborately painted cabinet.
The duchess carefully took down one of the most beautiful violins she had ever seen.
“It is from Italy,” she said. “Made by Stradivari. It is rather old, and I have someone come and tend to it weekly. Here you go, my dear.”
A Stradivari?
The duchess thrust it at her.
She gasped.
It was heaven, bliss, better than anything she’d ever touched before. They simply didn’t have the money for this kind of thing. Her family was well-to-do, but not like this.
Her mother’s breath caught in her throat. “How wonderful for you, my darling.”
Agatha handled the violin very carefully, put it into position, and thought about what she should play. Not too deeply, because the violin would tell her what to play.
Then she closed her eyes, and it was as if the violin whispered its secrets to her.
As soon as the first note soared from the strings as the bow stroked over them, her heart disappeared into the song written by Mozart. She played without thinking about any of them, because how could one think about other humans when one was in communion with such a perfect instrument?
She played and she played and she played, not caring a wit for the fact that she was in one of the greatest houses in the land, standing near some of the most powerful people.
No, she was holding an instrument that had been made by the greatest violin maker ever, years ago, and it had no doubt been played by geniuses since then.
The violin and she danced a dance so exquisite that she longed to cry with its perfection.
How long had the poor thing been in a cupboard waiting for someone to come and play it? Well, she played it with everything she had.
And when at last, she rang the last note out of it, she opened her eyes slowly and looked about her. There was no applause. They were all staring at her quite stunned.
The Duke of Westfort’s mouth had dropped open as had his mother’s, and then suddenly the duchess snapped her mouth shut and began to applaud. “Bravo, my dear. Bravo. You should be on a stage somewhere performing. Not limited to some country backwater.”
“Thank you,” she said simply, lowering the violin, exhausted by the emotion that had poured out of her. “I like a country back water, and I don’t want to go touring about and traveling. I quite like my home, you see. But I do love to play the violin.”
The Duke of Westfort murmured, “That is very obvious. You looked completely transported.”
“Yes,” the Duchess of Westfort said, her lips tightening, “you did.”
And Lady Larkin looked positively furious, as if she didn’t wish to eat the cake, but rather the plate that it was on, and that would not be enough for her.
“Perhaps we should go,” Lady Larkin managed.
“Oh, not yet,” the duchess protested.
As Agatha carefully surrendered the violin, she found herself overwhelmed. “I need a moment to myself, a breath of fresh air. Please. I shall return. The song has taxed me.”
Without thinking or looking back, she headed out into the hall, not quite certain what to think or what she should do. She had not meant to be so utterly vulnerable before them all, to open her soul, and to have such an experience.
She did need to recover, for she had felt transported. And now she was back on earth, considering such silly things as powerful people’s hurt feelings and their machinations, when there was such bliss as Mozart in the world.
Yes, she needed a breath of fresh air and so, she found a door that led out into the lush garden. Quickly, she wound her way through hedges until she found herself surrounded by lilacs. They were all but trees, those lilac bushes, and she drank in the scent as soft drops of rain fell down.
She knew she was behaving inappropriately and suddenly she was really rather glad, because if she was terribly inappropriate, there was not a chance that she’d marry the Duke of Westfort.
Even if her heart called for him. Because the way Lady Larkin and the Duchess of Westfort behaved? She did not want that life.
This all felt so jarring, so strange, and she didn’t like being judged by his mother or put into a position where she was going to make a fool of herself. She knew, in the end, that she’d made a fool of the Duchess of Westfort by showing her she was no country mouse.
She didn’t like that either. She sucked in a shuddering breath and closed her eyes.
This was all a terrible, terrible mistake. As much as she longed for the Duke of Westfort and how she had felt when they’d first met, she wasn’t meant for this.