Lady Pamela frowned and looked suspiciously at her governess.
They talked about the picture of the pavilion, which had still not been painted, and Fleur lifted down a rather large landscape painting that was on the wall so that her pupil could see how many different colors and shades had been used to create the total effect of sky and grass and trees.
“But the choice is yours, you see,” she said. “Your job as an artist is to help the viewer see what you see. And no one can tell you quite what you see. We all see things differently.”
“I want you to play the harpsichord for me,” Lady Pamela said when the topic was exhausted.
Fleur was very aware of her employer sitting silently in his corner.
“Perhaps you would like to sit on the stool and I shall give you a lesson,” she suggested.
But Lady Pamela had already tried to play for herself and had discovered that she could not produce music as Fleur could. She had also learned that even after a lesson or two she had not acquired the magic formula for producing a fluent melody.
“Sit down,” she said, “and play for me.”
“Please,” Fleur said quietly.
But even as she prayed silently for cooperation, she knew that she would not get it.
“Play for me,” the child ordered petulantly.
“Please,” Fleur said.
“That is silly,” Lady Pamela said. “What difference does ‘please’ make?”
“It makes me feel that I am being asked, not ordered,” Fleur said. “It makes me feel good about myself.”
“That is silly,” the child said.
“Please will you play the harpsichord, Miss Hamilton, while Pamela goes to lie down on her bed?”
Fleur’s back stiffened. She had not heard him get up and cross the room.
His daughter threw him an exasperated look. “Please, Miss Hamilton,” she said.
Fleur closed her eyes briefly. She would have done anything rather than play. Her hands were clammy. But she sat on the stool without looking around and played Bach, compensating as well as she could for the key that stuck.
“It is your turn now, Lady Pamela,” she said when she was finished.
“You are good,” his grace said. “Have you seen the instruments in the drawing room and music room?”
Fleur had seen them during the tour with Mrs. Laycock, though she had not had the temerity to touch either one. The pianoforte in the drawing room was better than the one at Heron House, she suspected, lovely as that one had been—Mama’s precious treasure. The massive grand pianoforte in the music room she had been able to look at only in awe.
“Yes, your grace,” she said. “I saw them on my first day here.”
“Come along, Pamela,” he said, reaching for his daughter’s hand. “We will hear Miss Hamilton in the music room. And we will remember to say ‘please.’ Won’t we?”
“Yes, Papa,” she said.
Fleur followed them numbly from the room and along the upper corridor to the far staircase. And yet there was a feeling of excitement too. She was to be allowed to play that pianoforte!
If only she could be alone, she thought as they entered the room next to the library and she approached the instrument and touched its keys reverently. If only he were not there.
“If you please, Miss Hamilton,” he said quietly, and he disappeared somewhere behind her back with his daughter.
She played Beethoven. It had been so long. Beethoven was not suited to a harpsichord. She played hesitantly at first, until her fingers accustomed themselves to the smooth ivory of the keys and the flow of the music and until her soul was carried beyond itself and she forgot where she was.
Music had always been her great love, her great escape. Cousin Caroline’s barbed tongue, Amelia’s caustic comments, the knowledge that she would never see her parents again, the strict discipline and drab routine of her school years—all had ceased to exist when she touched a keyboard.
