“Well,” she declared, voice rising with righteous fury, “then those people have bad eyes.”
Madeline laughed again, the sound warm and trembling. Her eyes stung with something dangerously close to tears. Tessa smiled back up at her, wide and proud, as if she had single-handedly defended Madeline’s honor against the whole world.
For a moment, in the golden hush of the music room, Madeline held the little girl’s gaze, recognizing something familiar in the child, something bruised and brave and longing to be seen.
Madeline reached for the next key and guided Tessa’s hand. “Music now,” she whispered. “No more sadness.”
Tessa nodded firmly, pressing the notes again. Her small fingers trembled less this time. She glanced up at Madeline between notes, the trust in her eyes profound enough to make tears threaten the backs of Madeline’s eyes.
“Again,” Madeline encouraged, her voice soft.
They played until the room filled with hesitant little melodies, awkward but sincere, like tiny footsteps learning how to walk.
Tessa swung her feet happily beneath the bench. “You make everything seem nice,” she declared. “Papa should have hired you before all the boring ones.”
Madeline laughed. “Well, boring or not, they were still your teachers.”
“They were afraid of me,” Tessa said simply. “I could see it. They would stare at the scars and then pretend they weren’t staring, which is worse.”
Madeline’s hand paused over the keys, her chest tightening painfully. “I am not afraid of you.”
Tessa grinned. “I know.”
“Why do you say that?” Madeline whispered.
“Because when you look at me, your eyes don’t change.”
Madeline blinked. “Change?”
“Yes. They stay warm. They don’t get tight at the corners, or cold, or sad. They just… stay the same.”
Madeline felt the breath leave her. She looked away for a moment, collecting herself. “I am glad,” she murmured.
As the girl began playing again, Madeline watched her small hands dance tentatively across the keys.
For a brief, fragile moment, she allowed herself to imagine staying here longer than a handful of months, longer than fear allowed. She imagined teaching Tessa her first full song. She imagined laughter echoing through the music room, cozy and belonging. She imagined a life where she was not running.
The thought warmed her so deeply she barely felt the chill that ran down her spine when footsteps approached the open doorway.
A voice carried through the corridor. “Are we interrupting?”
Tessa turned in delight. “Uncle Henry!”
Madeline straightened instinctively, smoothing her skirts, her heart thudding far too loudly as she turned toward the doorway.
A gentleman stood there, broad-shouldered and relaxed in his bearing, his expression open and curious. There was an ease to him that contrasted sharply with the formality of the house, as though he were accustomed to being welcome wherever he went.
The Duke stepped inside beside the newcomer.
The moment the Duke crossed the threshold, Madeline felt the shift in the room as surely as she felt the floor beneath her feet. His presence rearranged the air, pulled it taut, as though the room itself inhaled with him. His gaze skimmed over the pianoforte, Tessa’s music sheets, and the shape of the quiet little world she and Tessa had built in his absence.
Then his eyes found her.
Her pulse jolted so violently she nearly reached for the edge of the instrument. He looked at her with that same unreadable intensity she had come to both dread and crave, a gaze that stripped her down to some vulnerable truth she had not intended to reveal. His expression remained composed… but beneath it, something flickered. Something tender that made her breath catch.
Madeline stood slowly, her fingers tightening at the folds of her skirt to keep them steady. The Duke’s gaze traveled down the length of her, lingering just long enough to heat her skin before returning to her face.
Her throat tightened and her heart beat far too fast. She hated that he could do this: disrupt her entire body with one look.
