On instinct, she swept the covers aside and hopped to the floor, feet landing on plush Persian wool. She grabbed a night-rail and cinched it tightly about her waist.
Lady Delilah and Miss Windermere had sent her a variety of clothing that was all exactly six inches too long for her, as she’d predicted. Tucker had her work cut out for her. Still, Valentina was appreciative. Their intentions were in the right place, which seemed to be a Windermere family trait.
Night-rail trailing on the floor behind her, Valentina let the music guide her out of her room. She hadn’t any idea where she was going, but she didn’t need to know. All she need do was follow the haunting notes through the moonlit mansion. Across the corridor…down the wide staircase…across another corridor… The music pulled her along as though she hadn’t a choice but to follow it. In the still slate gray of night,only she and it existed.
She came to a closed door framed in a rim of soft golden light. She pressed her ear to solid wood and listened, feeling each lush note vibrate through her. She shouldn’t twist the handle and open the door. She understood that. She hadn’t been invited.
But a feeling tugged at her. Sheneededto open the door, and it had everything to do with the lie Lord Archer had told her yesterday, and the suspicion that pulled at her tonight. The music washere—in this house. So, why hadn’t he told her the truth?
She cracked the door open and poked her head inside. In the half light of the hearth’s low fire stretched a gentleman’s study, all rich woods and mahogany leather, a vast stretch of floor-to-ceiling bookcases on this wall, a massive map of the world on that one. But her eyes only caught those characteristics in periphery, for they immediately flew toward the source of the music in the farthest corner.
There, bent over the piano keyboard before a bow window, sat Lord Archer.
Her instinct was confirmed.
His back to her, entirely concentrated on the music pouring from the instrument, he hadn’t heard her enter. He wore nothing but a white linen shirt and trousers, his feet bare, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows.
And his hands… his large, skilled hands commanded the black and white keys—imploring them, enticing them, provoking them—leaving them no choice but to bend to his will.
Valentina kept to the periphery of the room so he wouldn’t notice her. She didn’t want him to stop for anything. The music flowing from his fingertips was weaving a night spell around her.
Yet she kept moving. She needed to see his face.
But it was his chest she first noticed, with his shirt flopped open in a V, offering an unexpected view of muscles and goldenhair that led downward… He was a gorgeous man. It had to be a fact universally acknowledged. But his utter absorption in his playing… That was unexpected. He appeared utterly unlike himself.
Or more correctly, utterly unlike the Lord Archer she’d come to know.
Or thought she’d known.
Intense…emotional…wrecked.
His fingers stopped on a wild flourish. The last note echoed through the room before going dead silent. He raked a hand through tousled curls. Frustration radiated off him in all but visible waves.
“That was?—”
His head whipped up, and intense blue eyes bored into her.
Who was this man? Surely not Lord Archer.
Could he have a twin?
“What are you doing here?” he snapped.
“I…I…” she stammered. Then she realized she didn’t need to find an excuse to be here. The truth would do. “I followed the music. It’s magical.”
Gaze unflinching, Lord Archer let a snort speak for him.
She noticed a pencil behind his ear and large pieces of composition paper scattered about the fallboard. Another suspicion nipped at her. “Whose composition were you playing?”
“No one worth noting,” he near growled.
There.She had it.Confirmation.
“It’s haunting”—she took a step—“and beautiful”—another step—“and?—”
“Hardly,” he muttered.
She reached the piano and tapped a sheet of composition paper. “It’syours.”
