“What is all this about?” Lady Winthrop asked.
“Were you aware that another composer has been passing off your son’s music as his own?”
Lady Winthrop paled. “I was not. But if I had to hazard a guess, I would say it must be Ambrose Castern.”
“Indeed, yes,” said Brilliance. “I take it you have never been to one of his concerts, or you would have recognized your son’s music.”
“No, I have never heard Mr. Castern in concert, and I never will. I treated him like a son whenever he came home from school with Vincent. But then that awful mess with him stealing my son’s betrothed, a terribly disloyal girl. No, I could never lay eyes on either of them again.”
She straightened her shoulders. “But now I will have you as a daughter, for which I am exceedingly glad.” Vincent’s mother looked at Lady Diamond. “As long as you don’t mind sharing her.”
“My Brilliance is one of a kind, but I will share her with you.”
Lady Winthrop patted her chest in the region of her heart. “Thank you.” Then she got back to the matter at hand. “Vincentnever told me that Ambrose had taken his music. I knew only that my son stopped composing for a while. And of course, he had to let his heart heal so he could fall in love with you.”
She rose to her feet. “If you wait a moment, I will get his music. I keep it all in two satchels. They are bulging.”
When she reached the drawing-room door, however, she paused. “And if I understand the importance of this sheet music in proving the pieces were, in fact, composed by my son, then you will be glad to know that I personally wrote the year on the back of the first page of every gift he gave me or gave either of my husbands, at each party’s end.”
And then Vincent’s mother hurried out.
“This will prove everything,” Brilliance said.
“It certainly shall. We could go directly to the solicitor.”
Brilliance considered that. “The last time I took Lord Hewitt’s music, he became terribly angry. I learned my lesson. I think I will simply give it to him when he comes to our home tomorrow.”
Her mother leaned back in the wing chair in which she sat.
“Why is he coming tomorrow?”
“To speak with you, of course,” Brilliance told her. “He spoke with Father last night before the ball.”
“I know,” her mother said. “Your father tells me everything.”
Brilliance hadn’t known that. “Do you tellhimeverything?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
Brilliance laughed. “Lord Hewitt wanted to give you the same honor that he gave to Father.”
Her mother tilted her chin. “He is going to fit into our family nicely,” Lady Diamond said.
“I must tell you that Mr. Castern has made some dreadful threats about telling the editor ofThe Timesthat I have been in Lord Hewitt’s company without a chaperone. And whether he knows it or not, it is true.”
She hoped her mother wasn’t too disappointed in her or irritated by the prospect of the family name being tarnished.
“That little worm of a man cannot cloud a clear Diamond. When you were born ... well, not precisely then because your eyes were scrunched tightly closed, but when I first looked into your blue eyes, I said to your father, ‘This baby’s eyes are shining like brilliant-cut sapphires.’ It is one of my favorite gemstone cuts. If you ask Radiance why, she’ll tell you all the whys and wherefores. All I know is that particular cut allows the most light to shine through from all angles.” Her mother placed a hand over hers.
“My special girl, you are Brilliance personified, and nothing can change that. Besides, as that wonderful character Jane Eyre said, ‘Reader, I married him.’ That wipes away nearly every perceived sin, as your father and I found out when we eloped. You will become Lady Hewitt, and no more shall be said of your reputation except as an excellent wife.”
Brilliance rose from her seat and threw her arms around her mother just as Lady Winthrop returned, weighed down by two thick leather cases. As Brilliance straightened, Vincent’s mother placed these on the table in front of the sofa.
“I certainly hope my son will take all his music to the publisher as soon as he has sorted out this mess with Mr. Castern,” she said. “But I want these originals back.”
“As one mother to another,” Lady Diamond said, “I will personally make sure they are returned to you.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
