Chapter 2
Chapter Two
“Come here, James.”
The boy’s hands came off the keys. His shoulders drew up toward his ears, and his chin dropped, and he did not look at the doorway.
Annabelle rose from the bench. “We were only practicing, Your Grace,” she said. “A few notes. He’s been no trouble at all.”
He looked at her for the length of time it took to register her presence, then looked back at James.
She had spoken to the Duke of Silverford four times in total, all of them at Lucien’s elbow, all of them brief and impersonal in the way of people who shared a mutual acquaintance and nothing more. He was Lucien’s best friend. She had formed no strong impression beyond that and had not sought one.
She had heard about the boy from Helena some weeks ago. The Duke’s cousin and his wife, a carriage in bad weather, a six-year-old left with no one. He had gone to Silverford House.
Poor thing.
“James.” The Duke moved further into the room. “Come to my side.”
But James did not move. He pressed C, the first note she had shown him, and let it ring.
“James.” There was a hard-edged warning in the Duke’s voice.
“I want to stay here,” James finally said.
“Your Grace—” Annabelle began.
“Lady Annabelle.” He said her name without looking at her.
She kept on regardless. “He’s behaved perfectly. I could stay with him until he’s ready to come back downstairs. It would be no trouble at all.”
“That will not be necessary.” He addressed James directly, his voice measured and final. “You will come back to the ballroom with me now.”
“No,” James said, pressing the E like a wordless protest.
Then he pressed the G. The chord rang out, thin and bright, in the quiet of the room.
The Duke’s eyes moved to the piano; held there a breath, two, and when they came back to the boy, his jaw had set, and his mouth had gone flat.
“Stop,” he said, but James did not listen, choosing instead to press C.
The Duke started to walk to the bench. And Annabelle immediately stepped forward.
“I’ll keep him company,” she said. “There is no need for you to miss the rest of the evening on his account. He can come back downstairs when he’s—”
“The boy must not be coddled.” He said it without heat, which was somehow worse than heat. “Every time he finds himself in an uncomfortable situation, we cannot simply find him a quieter room and leave him to recover from it.”
“He isn’t recovering from anything. He is sitting at a piano. He was perfectly comfortable until a moment ago.”
“He was comfortable,” the Duke said, “because he walked away from his guardian without a word to anyone, in a house full of strangers.”
“He is six years old.”
“He is old enough to understand that disappearing without a word is not acceptable conduct.”
“He found a quiet room.” She kept her voice level. “He sat down here and didn’t even touch the piano until I came. I would’ve heard him from my room if he had.”
The Duke looked at her then, properly, for the first time since he had come through the door. Then, he turned back to James, who had, during this exchange, returned to the beginning of the sequence and was working through it again with the same grave attention as before.
“James,” he gritted out. “Stop playing.”
James’s hands came off the keys. His mouth pulled down at the corners. He stood and looked at the door, and not at either of them.
That was the moment the door opened, and a woman in a grey dress came in breathless, her hands clasped at her waist.
“Miss Hartley.” The Duke’s voice was entirely without warmth and also, somehow, without fury. “Take James home. We will discuss this tomorrow.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” She came to the boy’s side and touched his elbow lightly. “Come along, my lord.”
James turned, and he looked at her for a moment, then raised his hand and waved.
Annabelle raised hers back, her expression brightening at his shy farewell. “Goodnight, James.”
He went with Miss Hartley without argument, and the door drew closed behind them. The room went quiet, and somewhere at the other end of the house, the orchestra persisted.
Annabelle turned to the Duke, now free to voice her opinion with the subject of it gone. “Pardon me, Your Grace, but I believe you were too harsh with him,” she said.
He had already moved toward the door, but he stopped. He came back around and gave her the full weight of his attention, which was, she found, rather more considerable at close range than his partial attention had been.
“He left his guardian without a word in a house full of strangers, Lady Annabelle. I believe some harshness is warranted here.”
“He is six years old.”
“You keep saying that.”
“You keep behaving as though it were an irrelevant detail.” She crossed her arms. “He was frightened before you arrived. He was more frightened after. I would not call that a record to be proud of.”
He looked at her. He crossed the room toward her, standing mere inches away from her.
“Lady Annabelle.” He said it slowly. “You are Lucien’s sister, not James’s governess. You do not have the full picture.”
“Perhaps I don’t.” She held his gaze without difficulty.
He had very blue eyes, level and direct, in a face that had clearly decided to reveal nothing useful.
“I am not claiming expertise in the whole of his character. I am telling you what I saw. He is not a defiant child. He is not a disobedient child. He is a child who finds the world a great deal louder than most people do, and the way to manage that is not to issue orders and wait for compliance.”
He looked at her for a moment with the air of a man who had not recently been spoken to in this manner and was taking stock of the experience.
“You are very forthright,” he said.
“I’ve been told so before.”
“It was not a compliment.”
“I know.” She tilted her head. “But I notice you still haven’t told me I’m wrong.”
He was close enough now that she could see the full state of his cravat, which had endured a long evening rather badly, and the slight disarrangement of his collar.
Heavens, he was tall. She had registered this in a general way before, at various Lucien-adjacent occasions where he had been present and largely unremarkable. Proximity had a way of making previously abstract details considerably more concrete.
“You know nothing about what James requires,” he said. “Nothing about his habits, what distresses him, what—”
“I know that he smiled while he played. I know that when that door opened, his hands came off the keys, and his shoulders came up to his ears, and he could not look at you. I know the only way he could answer you tonight was by pressing piano keys rather than speaking.”
He said nothing.
“You saw all of that,” she continued, “and ordered him back to the ballroom regardless. You are not a cruel man. I don’t think that is the difficulty.
I think the difficulty is that you don’t know what to do with him, and that is entirely understandable.
But it is not something you can resolve by treating a frightened child like a junior officer who has broken rank. ”
The Duke looked at her across the quiet room, and she watched the line of his jaw hold, and then, fractionally, ease.
“Lady Annabelle.”
“You,” he said, “are far from an expert.”
“Agreed entirely.” She kept her chin up. “But then, you share a similar distance.”
A movement at the corner of his eyes. There and gone. He looked at her as though he had not quite anticipated arriving here and had not decided what to do about it.
“That tongue of yours,” he said, “is going to cause you considerable difficulty one day.”
Annabelle felt her pulse race as his ocean blue eyes swept over her face. Shivers raced down her spine one after another.
What was happening to her? This was her brother’s best friend, for Heaven’s sake!
“I shall cross that bridge when I get to it, then,” she only responded, trying to hide the sensations overtaking her body around him.
The Duke held her gaze another beat. Then he stepped back, and somehow, breathing became easier.
“Good luck with your performance, Lady Annabelle,” he said, then turned and left Annabelle standing alone in the music room.
The piano keys shone brightly behind her, the distant orchestra going about its business at the far end of the house.
With his eyes lingering in the confines of her mind, Annabelle retrieved her folio, tucked it under her arm, and exited the music room.