Chapter Eight
Trentham gave his card to Peters at the door and waited upon the formalities, unnecessary though they might be. He would always be welcome at Lynch’s. If ever that ceased to be true, it would be a sign he should simply give up. There were worse fates than being a social pariah.
The butler left him in the entryway for only a few minutes before returning to admit him into Miss Delancey’s presence.
To his disappointment, Peters led him toward the library rather than the music room.
He’d hoped to find her enjoying her gift.
And thus, thinking of him. Of course, that was self-centered and utterly without merit. Surely, she had better sense.
Lynch’s library, Trentham knew, would be stuffy.
He didn’t understand the penchant for dark wood and heavy window dressings in rooms that were supposed to encourage reading.
The furnishings were “masculine,” though assigning certain décors to men and others to women made no logical sense.
Neither did the implication that men possessed the ability to read in the dark.
Or preferred lamplight to sunlight as if they were all vampires.
At Wormsley House, he did his reading in the well-windowed drawing room where he could see, even though the “feminine” chairs gave him leg cramps.
Miss Delancey sat enthroned upon a brown, upholstered chair that was bolstered with more pillows than there was human occupant.
She had needlework of some sort in her lap; one leg propped on a footstool, and with a blanket draped over it.
Fortunately for her eyeballs, the whole assemblage was situated beside a lamp.
He hadn’t expected to find her alone. His first thought was that he should leave.
Although modestly dressed, she was not attired to receive callers.
Her blond hair was done in one long braid draped down her right shoulder rather than being pinned up.
She wore a simple flowered dress of light cotton stuff and had a shawl over her shoulders that someone’s grandmother might wear.
He fought a strong urge to curl up beside her and throw off the shawl.
“Good afternoon, Your Grace.” She beckoned him closer and set the embroidery aside.
He took note of a book sticking half out from under the end table as though it had been hastily shoved there.
The title was familiar. A borrowed book?
Lynch had never owned a novel in his life.
The embroidered object was a small cap. There was no floss in the needle poked into it. A sham. He managed not to laugh.
“Good afternoon. I apologize for not calling before this, but Foster is due back at Harrow soon and there is considerable fuss around that.” He dragged a chair close to her footstool, too close, and sat. “I hope you’re feeling better.”
“My ankle is. But now my fingers are throbbing.” She smiled at him and held up her hands, wiggling her fingers. “I was playing all morning. I can’t thank you enough. I hope you got my card yesterday.”
“I did. And I hope you don’t mind that I took it for invitation to come hear you play. Though not today, obviously.”
On impulse, he caught one of her hands in his and ran the pad of his thumb across her palm, as if testing her boundaries. Not as if. He was testing her. This was what a rake did. Where the devil was Dessie? Surely Peters had gone to fetch her.
Her smile looked forced as she pulled her hand away. “I will be happy to play for you some other time.”
“Have you been keeping yourself entertained?” he asked, sitting a little farther back in his chair so he wouldn’t be so enticed by her subtle lavender perfume. And her soft curves. And that ridiculously tantalizing shawl.
“Oh, yes. As best I can. It’s grand to have time with Dessie.”
Who was nowhere to be found. He should not have come. Not if his first impulse was to grab hold of Miss Delancey and unwrap her. He thought he’d disciplined himself out of such sybaritic rashness. For diversion, he leaned over and plucked up the book.
“What is that?” she asked, with wide-eyed innocence. “Honestly, Dessie’s housemaids are…”
“It was Lady Florina Thistlethwaite,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper, tucking the book back under the table.
“It couldn’t be! No. She was tied up in the lake house. Unless…”
He laughed.
She mimed a pout. “My excuse is that I am forced to do nothing all day long. What is yours?”
“I live a life of idle luxury.”
“I doubt that’s entirely true. How did you spend yesterday?”
“Yesterday?” He shifted in his chair. “I spent the morning with the steward from Lannington, my estate. Signing papers.” And going over accounts.
And settling some business about a stud bull.
“I lunched with Eli and my brother Foster. Then I went to Tattersall’s.
Foster has long outgrown the pony he is so fond of, but I haven’t found the right horse for him yet. ”
“That is sweet. I like Foster.”
“So do I. Then I went to my club for the evening.” Pratt’s.
He’d been blackballed from White’s. Another humiliation.
“A full day in the life of the Duke of Trentham.” He pretended to frown.
“That was an odd question. I can’t think of the last time I was called upon to account for how I spent my day.
” And he was particularly glad that yesterday was one devoid of any untoward activity—that he had, in fact, given up all activities that were untoward.
No gambling, no mistress: he was a remarkably staid old bore.
“It doesn’t sound idle.” Her brow furrowed. “Just not as productive as Lynch.”
“Hmph. No. We can’t all aspire to that.” Lynch was a conscientious manager of his holdings.
God knew he had to be, given the state of them.
At the same time, he was obsessed with his political crusade for women’s rights.
Was Miss Delancey bothered by how many hours he spent working?
Was Dessie? He wondered if Lynch’s new wife was feeling neglected. “And where is your sister?”
“Having a rest.” Her gaze drifted downward and spots of pink appeared on her cheeks. “I should really send someone to bring her down, or she’ll think she was terribly rude for not receiving you.”
“I doubt that’s what she will think.” She would think he was up to no good. “I don’t want to disturb her.”
“No. No, neither do I,” she murmured.
He wished he could interpret that as a confession. His wayward brain was mapping out the steps that would lead to their kissing, and a breathy admission that she preferred to be alone with him brought them halfway there. But her worried expression stopped those thoughts as effectively as a slap.
“Is Dessie all right?”
“She’s fine.” Miss Delancey’s entire face flushed pink. “Just tired.”
“She seems overly tired.”
She pursed her lips, clearly weighing her words, and said, “That’s why she needs to rest.”
Lynch was neglecting her. It wasn’t Trentham’s place to say so, but… “I hope she isn’t un…well.” He had nearly said unhappy.
“Of course not.” Miss Delancey fiddled with the edges of her shawl. Then she changed the subject abruptly. “I am glad you stopped by. I’m desperate to hear the story behind ‘the flowery thing’. Is it really the only piece you’ve composed?”
“Yes.”
She lifted her eyebrows, waiting. When he said nothing more, she said, “Well, then, tell me how you came to compose it.”
He had known he would eventually be asked to explain this to her, so he had come prepared.
After clearing his throat, he began. “I’m not a composer.
I am hardly even a competent musician. The harp was my mother’s.
She was very talented and, as a young boy, I naturally wanted to be with her every moment and share in whatever she loved.
I mimicked her on the harp, which displeased my father so much that he bought me a piano.
She taught me to play a little of both.”
He paused, but Miss Delancey asked no questions, so he forged ahead.
“When I went off to school at Harrow’s, my father hoped I would lose any musical inclination, but I did not.
I was allowed a music tutor, who taught me the rudiments of theory and composition.
I met Eli there, by the by. We had the same tutor.
It didn’t take long for me to realize, comparing myself to Eli, that I was wasting my time.
But I would not admit it to my father, so I kept up with the lessons, though I didn’t apply myself much. ”
“You didn’t resent El—Mr. Cameron?”
He nearly laughed. How frank she was. “No. That would not have been possible.”
“Why not?”
He hesitated to explain. There was something a bit awful about the truth. “Remember, I was just a schoolboy.” She cocked an eyebrow, so he continued, “But I was also a duke’s son. Eli was on scholarship. He was too far beneath my touch to resent.”
“Oh.”
This had nothing to do with anything, but he went on. “He was also pasty-skinned, underfed, and singularly focused. His grades were poor. The teachers did not like him. He avoided sports. He was bullied unmercifully.”
“By you?”
“No. Though not because of any moral superiority. It was solely the result of having had the same music tutor. I’d heard him play.
I admired him. At any rate, what started as nasty words grew into nastier pranks.
I told Eli one day”—he shook his head at the memory—“to bloody a few noses and they would leave him alone. He stared at me, horrified, and said, ‘But my hands!’ And then I realized he would take any abuse, escalating abuse, so long as he might spare his hands.”
“That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. What did you do?”
“I bloodied a few noses and they left him alone.”
“Oh!” She sounded indignant. “I shouldn’t be glad of it, but I am.” Unexpectedly, she added, “And you’re still looking out for him, aren’t you?”
Even more unexpectedly, it embarrassed him that she saw it.
“He doesn’t hang on my sleeve. But everyone needs a home to come back to now and again.”
The soft look she gave him made putting up with all Eli’s annoying habits worthwhile. But then, she smacked her hands together. “Very well. You’ve buttered me up, but I have not forgotten. Your duet, sir.”
He had detoured from the way he’d intended to tell the story. It took a moment for him to remember what he’d planned to say.
“Ah, yes. The duet. We move on now to Oxford. I had, by then, given up on music tutors. I read law and modern history. But I wasn’t there for a full term before my mother passed.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Her face fell. He recalled that she and Dessie had also lost their mother early.
“I was…angry.” This was the part he needed to touch lightly upon, without appearing unfeeling. “I did not go back for the next term. She’d left her harp to me, and I started to play it again.”
“She left it to you? Not to your sister?”
He heard the implied men do not play harps.
“No. You see, Felicity was born to my father’s first wife. Felicity and my mother were cordial, but not particularly fond of one another. And Felicity married very young, so they hadn’t time to become close.”
“I’m sorry. Go on.”
“Rather than returning to Oxford, I went to Canada and took the Queen’s shilling—joined the army—which truly horrified my father.”
“Were you estranged?”
“Not estranged. I—I was angry, still.” And his father, angrier. Estranged was the right word.
“You were grieving.”
“And he remarried rather more quickly than I thought he should. Which was terribly unsporting of me. I thought he just wanted his ‘spare,’ you see. And Foster’s birth, after what seemed to me an indecently short period of time, proved it.
So I continued on with my tantrum until Foster’s mother died, too.
Then I grew a bit remorseful. Then my father sickened. ”
“Oh, how awful.”
She pressed his arm so tenderly he felt guilty, as though he was manipulating her emotions for his nefarious purposes.
“I am getting to the music,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.
“I hope so.” She gave him a wan, understanding smile.
“He arranged for me to come home. I scrambled to remember what he had taught me about ducal affairs, my responsibilities, my duties. I had to prepare to take guardianship of Foster. It was a busy few months. I was trying hard to make amends, to reassure him that he was leaving it all in competent hands. But the last fortnight, the only thing he asked of me was that I play the harp for him.”
She made a small, sad noise, deep in her throat.
Good Lord. He’d made her tear up.
“For God’s sake, don’t cry. Here is the end of it.
I played my rather limited repertoire over and over, but I kept hearing, in the back of my mind, that tune, that phrase.
I don’t know if it was something my mother used to play, or sing to me at night.
I tried to find the piece elsewhere but never did.
So I marked it down. Eli helped me smooth out some of the rougher spots.
But I couldn’t quite find what was missing until I heard you play it the other night.
There. Finis. The story of the flowery thing. And of me, I suppose.”
She wiped her teary eyes with the back of her hand.
“Is she supposed to kiss you now?” Dessie called out.
His heart skipped a beat. He scraped his chair away from Miss Delancey so quickly it could be taken as an admission of guilt.
“Well, not now.” He said it grumbling enough that he hoped Dessie would laugh. She did not. But Miss Delancey did. Shakily.
“No,” she said. “Now I find a window to throw myself through.”
“Did you catch the whole story, Dessie?” Was his voice unnaturally loud? “Or should I start over?”
“I heard enough. Ophelia looked ready to start bawling, so I thought you were confessing to something awful.”
“Ah.” He stood. Dessie’s perceptiveness, and her timing, were impeccable. “And now, fair ladies, having entertained you with my tale, I must away.”
They exchanged the necessary pleasantries. He said he would see himself out and pulled the library door almost closed behind him. But there, he paused. Waiting. Listening.
“What?” Miss Delancey demanded.
“You said you would be careful.”
Careful? That implied he was dangerous. Which stung.
“I am!”
“Another minute and you would have leaped into his lap.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
There was a long silence. Then a murmur. He leaned his head closer to the door.
“Am I not to believe him then? Is that what you are saying?”
“That is not what I’m saying at all,” Dessie answered. “I’m sure every word was the truth. ‘The story of me.’” She scoffed. “All I’m saying is, it sounded to me as if he were leaving quite a bit out.”
Silence fell. He could see movement down the hall, probably Peters. He couldn’t continue to stand there. Eavesdropping. It didn’t matter. He would go. Dessie had said all that needed to be said.