Chapter 4
Chapter Four
“An arrangement,” Annabelle said.
He looked back at her. His posture was easy, his glass set down on the side table without ceremony, nothing in his face inviting further discussion.
“Yes.”
“You want me to teach your ward piano. In exchange for your help securing a husband.”
“That is what I said.”
She had spoken to the Duke of Silverford exactly five times before tonight, each occasion brief and conducted at Lucien’s elbow. He stood with his arms at his sides, his expression even in the corridor’s guttering light, and waited.
“You don’t need to offer me anything,” she said. “I’d be happy to teach James regardless.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Then why—”
“Because Lucien is not here.” He said it without edge; a fact, plainly delivered.
“He brought you here under his protection, and he is now at Fairmont on estate business. You are determined to make a match this season. And you have, tonight, spent four minutes in conversation with Lord Fenwick and found nothing amiss.”
Her chin went up. “He seemed civil enough.”
“He has been refused entry to two establishments for conduct I am not going to describe in a corridor at midnight.” He held her gaze. “I know these men. Their habits. The difference between the reputation they maintain in company and the one they keep when company is not watching. You do not.”
She wanted to dispute this. She turned the argument over and found it thinner than she needed.
The evening had been instructive enough on that front: Fenwick with his calculating ease, the men at the Linwood soiree that Dominic had named and been correct about, each of his assessments arriving before she had gathered enough information to form one of her own.
He was not wrong, a conclusion which she found genuinely irritating.
She looked away, exhaled once, and rolled her eyes at the middle distance. Then she looked back.
“Fine,” she said. “We have an arrangement.”
“Good.”
“Though… there is the matter of where the lessons are going to be held.” She tilted her head. “It would be simpler to conduct them here. James already knows this house. Moving him to Fairmont every few days seems unnecessary.”
“Fairmont House has a perfectly serviceable instrument.”
“I know that. I am asking why the house where he’s staying would be a problem.”
He looked, briefly, toward the far end of the corridor. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw, making the hard line of it seem even rougher. His eyes held the locked door for a moment before coming back to her, and when they did, they gave her nothing.
“Pianos give me splitting headaches,” he said. “The sound is—” He stopped. “It is simply easier for everyone if the lessons are conducted in Fairmont House. It’s only next door, and he’s already been there once.”
The answer came out clipped, and Annabelle noticed that he wasn’t precisely looking at her as he delivered it.
Hm. There is considerably more to it than splitting headaches.
She looked at the door. She looked back at him.
She let it stand. Some things arrived in their own time, and it was past midnight, and the man had spent a good part of the evening worrying about his nephew. Whatever his problem with pianos was, it was not a thing he was prepared to offer tonight.
“Fairmont House it is, then,” she said.
He nodded once. “I’ll bring James tomorrow at ten.”
“Ten suits.”
“Good night, Lady Annabelle.”
“Good night, Your Grace.”
With that, she turned and exited Silverford House, wondering far more about the Duke than she’d ever had before.
The Duke arrived at ten with James at his side and Miss Hartley two steps behind. Annabelle had just come downstairs when the door opened, and she noted that James was wearing a freshly pressed coat and a rather severe expression, too old for a child.
Soon after her, Helena’s mother descended the stairs with letters in hand and her reading glasses pushed up her nose, glanced at the entry hall, and stopped. Lady Rosenhall looked at the Duke. She looked at James. She looked at Miss Hartley. She looked at Annabelle.
“Annabelle,” she said. “What is this?”
“Good morning, Lady Rosenhall.” Annabelle stepped forward before the question could gather any further momentum. “You remember the Duke of Silverford.”
“I remember him perfectly.” She came down the remaining steps. “And this young man?”
“Lord James Barrow,” Dominic said. “My nephew. Lady Annabelle has kindly agreed to give him piano lessons. He is a reserved boy, and he settled well with her when they met. Placing him with a new teacher in an unfamiliar house would not have suited him.”
“He is a lovely child,” Annabelle added, which was entirely true regardless. “I was glad to offer. I enjoy teaching.”
Lady Rosenhall studied James, who was studying the floor as though he were conducting a private inspection of the floorboards. She turned her attention to Miss Hartley and considered her with considerably warmer regard.
“The governess will remain throughout the lesson?” she said.
“She will,” Dominic said.
The older lady paused. “It is unusual,” Lady Rosenhall said at last with a measured kind of resignation.
“However, if the boy’s governess is present, it is not beyond the bounds of propriety.
” She looked at Dominic with clear, unhurried regard.
“I trust, Your Grace, that this household’s reputation will be treated accordingly.
The Duke of Fairmont has placed me in his home as Lady Annabelle’s chaperone for the Season, and I take this role very seriously. ”
“I understand, my lady. You have my word,” he said.
She received this with the intent to hold him to it, and withdrew.
Dominic looked down at James. “You’ll be good.” His nephew nodded at his boots.
“James.” He waited, and the boy finally looked up. “You’ll be good.”
“Yes,” James said, but the word was very small.
Dominic glanced at Annabelle and said, “I’ll return at noon.”
“Noon,” she confirmed.
Then he left, and the door closed behind him. James watched the spot where he had been for a moment, then turned to Annabelle.
“I can play the piano now?” he asked.
She smiled. “Oh yes, you most certainly can.” She said, and herded him up the stairs.
The music room occupied the first floor: small and south-facing, its walnut-cased piano set against the wall, a chair by the window where Miss Hartley settled with her needlework, and the manner of a woman fully prepared to be both present and unobtrusive.
James came in behind Annabelle and stopped just inside the doorway.
He looked at the piano. Then at the window. Then at the piano again.
His shoulders settled.
He went to the bench without being asked and placed his right hand on the keys.
“Do you remember where we stopped?” Annabelle asked, sitting beside him.
He nodded and pressed C. Let it ring. Then E.
“And G,” she said.
The chord came out clean, the three notes fitting together with a neatness that had not been there at Lucien’s ball. He turned to look at her.
“That’s considerably better than the first time,” she said.
“I practiced.” He pressed C again. “Silverford House has a piano.”
“So I’ve heard.” She kept her expression level. “I suspect your uncle would rather you hadn’t mentioned that.”
James considered this with no particular evidence of remorse. “He says it isn’t for playing.”
“He did say that.”
“But it’s a piano.” He pressed E, measuring the note. “That doesn’t make sense.”
It didn’t, Annabelle agreed privately. But she said only, “Are you ready for a new note?”
He returned his attention to the keys.
She introduced D. Then a five-note run: C, D, E, G, E. She played it through once and lifted her hand. He placed his own fingers in position and worked through it slowly, one note at a time, the gap between each one long enough to tell her he was listening before he committed to the next.
He pressed G and reached the final E. It came out flat. He stopped. Tried again. Flat again.
“A little higher,” she said.
He adjusted. The note rang out right, and the small breath he let out through his nose told her more than he would have said with words.
He ran through the sequence three more times. By the third pass, the gaps had narrowed, and his hand had eased from something braced and watchful into something more trusting of itself.
“Is it a real song?” he asked.
“The beginning of one,” she said. “Each lesson, we build on it.”
He pressed C, then D. “Like a story.”
“Rather like a story.”
He was quiet for a moment, his fingers moving through the run again, unhurried. “Stories have problems in the middle,” he said.
“The best ones do.”
“And then they get better at the end.”
“Usually,” she agreed. “What sort of stories do you like best?”
He thought about this with the same gravity he gave to each new note. “Ones about animals.” He pressed E and held it. “Miss Hartley reads me one about a fox. He’s clever. He tricks everyone.” He moved to G. “I like that.”
“Do you consider yourself clever?”
He sat with the question for a moment. “Sometimes,” he said.
Annabelle found this a more honest answer than most adults managed. She was about to introduce F sharp when the door, which she had not latched, pushed open slowly.
Newton, Elinor’s cat, came in at a stroll.
“Oh, there you are,” Annabelle smiled at the animal.
Newton crossed the floor without haste, conducting his inspection of the room with the unhurried authority of an animal who had never once been unwelcome anywhere, and arrived at the piano bench. He looked up at James.
James looked down at Newton. The cat put both front paws on the edge of the bench and stepped, without invitation, into James’s lap. The purring began almost at once: low and sustained, the sound of an animal entirely satisfied with its own decision.
James went very still. His hands came to Newton’s sides with care, as though he were handling something fragile he didn’t think he had permission to hold. Newton pushed his head into James’s chest and increased the volume of his purring.
“That,” Annabelle said, “is Newton.”
James looked at her. “Why is he called Newton?”
Annabelle grinned, leaning back as she thought about it. “My sister-in-law named him. She has a fondness for sciences,” she explained with a fond gleam in her eye.
James looked back down at the cat. Newton settled deeper into his lap and closed his eyes.
“He’s very loud,” James said.
“That means he’s happy. Do you want to pet him?”
James nodded, then stroked him once, from the crown of his head to the base of his back, and Newton’s purring increased by several degrees. James looked at Annabelle with bright eyes.
“Annabelle,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I think Newton is the best cat.”
“I will tell Elinor you said so,” she said. “She will be extremely pleased.”
He looked back down at Newton with the settled satisfaction of someone who had formed a correct opinion and was at peace with it. Then, without moving the cat, he reached for the keys with his right hand and played the five-note run: C, D, E, G, E.
Newton did not move.
James played it again.
They continued the lesson, adding F sharp and beginning a longer sequence that James approached with steady, unhurried patience.
He made errors and corrected them on his own before she could indicate anything.
Newton slept in his lap throughout, rising and falling with each breath, his purring a low and constant thread beneath the notes.
At twelve, Annabelle said, “We’ll stop there.”
James looked at her. “Thursday?”
“Thursday. Same time.”
He nodded and sat for a moment with his hands loose in his lap, Newton still warm and settled against him. He stroked the cat once more, then looked at the keys.
“Can I learn a real song?” he asked. “Not just notes.”
“The notes are the beginning of the real song,” she said. “When you can play the run cleanly five times without stopping, we’ll build it into one.”
He weighed this. “How many times can you do it without stopping?”
“As many as it takes,” she said.
He looked back down at Newton. Then, in the same easy, matter-of-fact tone he had used to ask about the cat, he said, “I want to play something for Uncle Dominic. When I’m good enough. Maybe he’ll like pianos more if I show him.”
Annabelle found that goal rather admirable, so much so that she nearly smothered him with a hug, but she barely held herself back and simply said, “I’m sure he’d like that very much.”