“If your cousin is Lady Twitchard, then I am.”
“I believe the others are gathering in the drawing room despite possibly hearing my playing as they passed by. So, no, miss.Anyonewould not simply barge in through a closed door.”
Brilliance sighed.What a crabbed, humdrum fellow!“You are exceedingly pleasant to look at, sir. It’s a shame your nature doesn’t match your appearance.”
His expression came over as shocked, but he said nothing in return.
She took a step back. “I suppose you play only for yourself. A miserly musician who could delight others but prefers to hoard his talent.”
Still, nothing but an arrogantly raised eyebrow on his part.
Should she have such talent, Brilliance vowed she would share it. She was not skilled musically at all, despite her parents offering her lessons. Purity was the only one of her sisters whom one might declare musically gifted and had managed to convince their parents to set aside an ancient square fortepiano that her mother had inherited. A spanking new piano arrived one day for all the sisters to practice upon.
Yet precisely as her mother, Clarity, and Ray had done before her, Brilliance took lessons for two years and had given up.
Nevertheless, she appreciated a good musician, or in this case, a superb one.
“I shall leave you to your solitude, sir, for the price of a question. How did you know I was here?”
She waited. He stared. She waited longer.Was he going to be so rude as not to answer?
Finally, she shrugged and walked toward the door, which she’d left ajar. After all, an earl’s daughter had to protect her reputation.
Yet before she slipped out, he spoke.
“I vow I could feel your impertinent gaze and smell your perfume — like summer roses — wafting toward me.”
“Did it?” Brilliance sniffed. “Sadly, I have been wearing it for a year, and thus cannot really smell the lovely fragrance anymore. Perhaps I should take a break from it.”
She expected no response, but surprisingly, the gentleman said, “The scent suits you.”
Brilliance nodded, happy that he’d changed from surly to friendly.
But then he ruined it by adding, “A showy flower with a heady fragrance, without subtlety or nuance. One might say overpowering.”
Her mouth had dropped open, and she snapped it closed. She wished she hadn’t told him he was handsome. Obviously,he considered himself such a rum duke he thought he could be insufferably rude.
“You forgot to mention the thorns, sir.”
For some reason, this made him smile. Not broadly. Merely a small wry one.
Without another word, she departed.
Vincent waited untilthe door closed before he resumed his seat on the piano stool. His cousin, Alethia, who was closer to the age of his parents than to him, had confessed to a shortage of single men at her house party. Some blasted damber had bowed out at the last minute, and since he was close at hand, living for the summer in his Joyden’s Wood estate, she had begged him to round out her dining table and keep her numbers even.
When he was fresh out of Trinity College, his cousin’s husband, Colonel Twitchard, had gifted Vincent an introduction to his acquaintance, the Hungarian pianist, Franz Liszt. Heading at once to Weimar, Vincent had been accepted as a student of the famed composer. For his cousin and her husband’s kindness, he would always be in their debt. Being a guest at their party full of simpering females and randy bucks had seemed a small price.
Yet he hadn’t expected to be trading barbs with one of Alethia’s other guests within a half hour of his arrival.
Where had he left off?Pushing his spectacles farther up his nose, he considered the piece he’d been playing from memory, seeing the notes in his head right up until the instant he had smelled the lady’s sumptuous floral scent.
Nuisance female!He had another half hour, at least, before all his cousin’s guests arrived and gathered in the drawingroom. Placing his hands upon the keys, he recalled the irritating young lady said she found him handsome. Moreover, she had stated it aloud, as if they were known to one another.How extraordinary!
Maybe she was a bit of a climber or a would-be mushroom. She was certainly pretty enough to catch his attention. In any case, he had plenty of time to speak with her later, yet precious few minutes to replay a piece he wasn’t entirely confident he had perfected. Written years earlier, even then, he had doubted its worthiness of being set to paper. Thus, it remained only in his thoughts.
The thing about playing without the notes in front of him was that even a memory as superb as his own could play tricks once in a while. He had liked the sonata better a month earlier, and now, he wasn’t as taken with this section.
Was that how he’d originally composed it?
