His grace jumped to his feet even as his brother got to his, and crossed the room to her.
“Miss Hamilton,” he said, “my guests have requested that you play the pianoforte for us for perhaps half an hour.”
Her face was shuttered, her eyes calm. She looked very much as she had looked in that bedchamber at the Bull and Horn, except that now she was healthy and beautiful. He had not realized then, as he realized now, that she often wore a mask to hide the real and vivid Fleur Hamilton.
And it struck him suddenly that she must think that he had betrayed her, that he had given her access to the instrument in the music room and listened to her each morning just so that he might use her talents for such an occasion as this.
“Will you, please?” he asked her.
“We have been told that you play like an angel,” Sir Philip Shaw said.
But they were not my words, his grace told her with eyes that hardened against the cool expression in hers. It was just such an expression that had angered him on that first occasion and had changed the course of his encounter with her.
“She is shy,” Lord Thomas said, bowing to her. “Miss Hamilton, would you please do us the honor?”
His grace held out a hand for hers, but her eyes had shifted to his brother, and she stepped past him and across the room to the pianoforte without looking back to him.
She seated herself on the stool, very straight-backed, and looked coolly at Lord Thomas.
“Is there any music in particular that you wish for, my lord?” she asked.
He continued to smile at her. “Something quiet and soothing, Miss Hamilton, if you please,” he said.
“A lullaby, no less,” Sir Philip said. “Something that will put us in the mood for, ah, sleep, Miss Hamilton.”
The duke stood where he was, just inside the doorway, and watched her. She sat looking down at her hands clasped in herlap for a few moments, perfectly calm, perfectly self-possessed. And then she began to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. She had no music.
She played faultlessly, very well even. If something of the magic of her morning performances was missing, probably only he would know it.
And if he continued to stand where he was, he thought as a buzz of quiet conversation spread around him again, then he was going to draw attention to himself. He moved to sit beside one of the ladies who was listening to the music and watched Brocklehurst move around to stand behind the music stool.
Did she play like an angel? If she did not, she certainly looked like one. The unadorned simplicity of her pale blue dress, the same one she had worn to the ball, the plain smoothness of her red-gold hair, the calm beauty of her face—all set her apart from any of the other ladies present. Yes, she looked like an angel.
Who was she? Isabella? Last name unknown? “Her—,” she had begun to call her former home. Brocklehurst lived at Heron House in Wiltshire.
He would get to his feet when the music had ended and escort her to the door. She could return to her bed and to sleep.
But his brother spoke before he could do so.
“Bravo, Miss Hamilton,” he said. “You have a superior touch, indeed. You have some acquaintance with Lord Brocklehurst? I am sure I speak for the whole gathering when I say that you may be excused now with our thanks. Indeed, both of you are excused. Bradshaw?”
Lord Brocklehurst bowed as she half-turned on the stool.
“I had hoped that I might take a stroll with Miss Hamilton in the long gallery,” he said. “With your permission, your grace?” He turned his bow on the duchess.
“You have my permission, Miss Hamilton,” her grace said with a smile, “and you may for the present forget about the task I set you for tomorrow morning.”
His grace resumed his seat and watched her leave as calmly as she had entered, Lord Brocklehurst a few paces behind her. She afforded him only a brief expressionless glance as she passed him.
“Well, I am for bed,” Sir Philip said with a yawn. “May I escort you to your door, Victoria?”
“I think everyone is ready for bed,” the duchess said. “I never felt more tired in my life.”
The duke rose to offer her his arm. And he wondered if it had been a trick as deliberate on her part as on his brother’s, to bring Fleur to the drawing room at a shamefully late hour and then to snare her into a tête-à-tête meeting with Brocklehurst.
“You are feverish again,” he said to his wife, a hand over one of hers when they paused a few minutes later outside her dressing room. “You need rest, Sybil. Why don’t you stay in bed until noon tomorrow? I will see to the entertainment of our guests.”
“I will be better by morning,” she said. “I am just tired. And how can I miss a single hour with my guests? Life is so dull when they are not here. You are either away altogether or about your own business somewhere all day.”
