“Like that?”
“Like that,” Emma breathed.
It felt odd, having her fingers rest on pianoforte keys again. Even so, Maggie had always known that she would never forget, and she hadn’t. She played a brief, halting scale, then another, more confidently. The notes were coming, playing out in her head.
Then she began to play. The melody was a simple one, and without a crowd of singers to back it up, sounded almost strange, a little uncertain and sad. Emma sucked in a breath, pressing against Maggie’s shoulder.
Maggie closed her eyes. She had no need to have them open, after all. There was no sheet music to follow. The music was all in her head.
For a moment, she was not Miss Winter, the governess, playing the pianoforte in a forbidden room in a house that was not hers. While the music played, she was Margaret Camden, Thomas Camden’s much-toasted and much-admired daughter, considered likely to make a decent match and often complimented on her music. She imagined candlelight, muffled conversation, and company, with guests gathered in a cosy, dimly lit drawing room, clustering close to the pianoforte. There’d be applause when she was finished.
The verse and chorus were the same, of course, made different by the words, but Maggie played it again and again anyway, the words spooling out in her head.
Had she not been so lost in the tune, she might have heard the faint gasp, the floorboard’s whisper. By the time she sensed another presence behind her, it was too late.
Her eyes flew open. A discord rang.
The Duke of Burenwood stood at her back. Emma had fallen a step away, gazing up at her uncle, untroubled. Maggie’s fingers would not lift from the keys.
He looked down at her, face unreadable. Maggie opened her mouth to explain—to apologise—to say anything at all.
Nothing came but a thin, humiliating squeak.
Silence settled—heavy as a pall. Maggie realised she was holding her breath.
This is the end. He will send me off. Three days’ tenure and not a penny for the road.
“You are rusty,” the duke said—low, almost conversational. She had braced for fury, for a storm; the ordinary tone disarmed her so entirely she missed a beat.
“I have not played in a long while,” she managed. “Shocking in a governess, I know.”
He grunted and tipped his chin at the keys. “You have one verse remaining.”
Maggie was sure she’d misheard. She gulped audibly, running over in her head how much she’d played. There were twelve verses, of course, and to her surprise, he was right.
How long has he stood there?It hardly mattered. She swallowed and set her hands again to the keys, letting the final verse unspool.
I’ll sing you twelve, O
Green grow the rushes, O.
He stepped closer; she felt the warmth of him at her back, heard the faint hitch of his breath. She did not dare look up, but she knew—couldfeel—his gaze upon her hands.
I am not safe. He may dismiss me the instant I stop. I feel like Scheherazade, dragging out my stories to avoid being executed. Except I can’t make up my own stories to stay alive, I have to keep playing.
At first, Maggie thought that the low hum she could hear was the whirring of her own mind, panicked and darting around in her skull like moths about a flame.
Then she realised that it washim. The duke was humming under his breath, a low baritone that reverberated from his chest.
Then, to her amazement, he began to sing.
It was notloud, or indeed anything above a tuneful whisper, but Maggie heard him, his voice following the rhythm of the melody to perfection.
“Nine for the nine bright shiners,
Eight for the April Rainers,
Seven for the seven stars in the sky…”
