Her pulse racing, she scrambled out of bed and darted to the window. Miss Hiss glared grumpily from her place on the bed, promising consequences for disturbing her sleep. Valentina would make it up to her later, but first she parted the curtain a sliver and peeked into the opening. She blinked once, then again.
There, in the middle of the high street, sat a piano.
Archie’s piano.
With him seated on a bench before it, his fingers moving across the keyboard with expert ease, playing his music.
Theirmusic—the music they’d made together.
Her heart forgot to beat for a few seconds.
A horse cart came within a few feet of the instrument. The farmer threw no few grouchy glances toward Archie as he maneuvered horse and cart around the piano and the strange aristocrat seated before it.
How had Archie managed to get the instrument there in the first place?
Valentina gave her head a tiny shake. He was Archie. That was how. Nothing was impossible for him. She loved that about him.
She startled backward, and the breath froze in her chest, her heart now a full gallop.
Loved?
She was afraid so.
A figure appeared in the open doorway. “Colpo di fulmine,” said Mama.
Valentina’s eyebrows crinkled together. “What does that mean?”
“The thunderbolt,” Mama clarified.
“The sky is quite clear this morning.”
Mama laughed. “Not in the sky,mia cara. Inhere.” She reached out and pressed the flat of her hand to the center of Valentina’s chest. “Sometimes, love strikes here, so intense it cannot be denied.” She nodded toward the window. “That is what he feels out there, and what you feel inhere.”
“What do I do, Mama?”
“He’s met you half the distance. Now you must meet him the other half. That is how it’s done in a marriage.”
“Marriage?”
Oh, how to tell Mama it wasn’t marriage that Archiewanted from her?
And that her daughter might just be weak enough to accept less.
Mama nodded, a wise smile in her eyes. “Si, mia cara.”
Valentina found that she was already halfway to the door when Mama said, “But, first, you must put this on.” She was holding out a robe.
Valentina looked down to find she wore naught but her night chemise. Archie playing the piano in the middle of the Hampstead high street was shocking enough. But her joining him in nothing but a wisp of fabric would be one shock too many. The village might never recover.
She hastily donned the robe and all but flew down the corridor and stairs, not pausing to acknowledge the amused and questioning smirks from her brothers, who had gathered in their bedroom doorways. It was only when the front door bell jingled behind her, and her feet hit high street cobblestones, that her pace slowed. Actually, she ground to a complete stop, sudden shyness and uncertainty overcoming her as she watched Archie play, along with the small clusters of villagers who had gathered on their front doorsteps to watch this unexpected spectacle unfold. The passion Archie poured into the instrument beneath his fingertips, he drew out tenfold.
His clear blue gaze lifted and caught hers. Emotion and intensity shone out at her. So, too, did a smile. He was enjoying himself.
And she saw it.
His dark and light fused into a single whole.
He was playing for her, yes, but he was playing for an audience. He was revealing himself to the light.
