Gwen’s shoulders relaxed despite herself. She moved closer, almost against her will, and rested her fingertips on the cool wood of the instrument.
“You never said you played,” she murmured.
“You did not ask,” he pointed out. “Because you prefer to accuse first and then discover.”
“I do not accuse,” she protested. “Iobserve.”
“Then observe my left hand,” he said, adding a darker thread beneath the melody. “This is what one learns when one’s father insists that idle children are dangerous and sets a master on them whenever they linger by a window.”
That startled her into a small laugh. “Then I am grateful for his tyranny. It has bored me less than I expected.”
“High praise, indeed.”
The music shifted, taking on the shape of something she half remembered, a country air dressed up in finer clothes.
He glanced up at her. “You may sit, you know. My pianoforte does not bite. Though I cannot say the same for myself.”
“I am not afraid of your pianoforte,” she declared. “Or you,” she added, slightly weaker.
“That is the first honest admission this evening,” he drawled. “Sit.”
The corner of her mouth quirked up in reluctant amusement, but she rounded the instrument and sat beside him on the narrow bench, careful not to brush his arm.
His nearness made her acutely aware of her own body. The faint starch of his shirt, the warm scent of soap and something like cedar, the slow rise and fall of his chest, all stirred her senses as thoroughly as the music did.
He played another phrase, then lifted his hands. “Your turn.”
“I did not agree to a performance,” she protested.
“I did not say anything about a performance,” he reminded her. “Play whatever suits you. Even a scale. I promise not to cry out in pain.”
She gave him a look. “You mock me. It is unkind.”
“I do not mock,” he said softly. “I coax. The two are easily confused in poor light.”
She sighed, placed her hands on the keys, and settled on a simple piece she had learned as a girl, something cheerful and foolish, meant for young ladies to show nimble fingers at private musicales. Her touch felt clumsy at first, every mistake weighing more than it deserved. She could feel him listening. She could almost feel his eyes on her hands.
“Do not think,” he urged after a moment. “You are hammering the poor thing. Let it breathe.”
“I am not hammering it,” she huffed, indignant.
“You are treating it as if it has offended you,” he replied. “Keep going.”
She did.
The second attempt came easier. He joined her, adding a quiet harmony above her melody that made it sound less like a girl’s exercise and more like something that belonged in a proper room.
“That is unfair,” she complained. “You make me sound better than I am.”
“Perhaps you are better than you think you are,” he answered. “You are in the habit of judging too harshly. Yourself more so than any other.”
“I am in the habit of being judged,” she countered. “I have merely learned to start the task before others.”
His hands moved deftly, weaving around hers. It began to feel almost like a conversation. She tried a small embellishment, and he followed it, turned it, answered it with one of his own. The tight band in her chest loosened a fraction more.
“It works, you know,” he said at length.
“What does?”
