Now...?
Tessa sighed. Each time she survived one moment of shame—the misery against the tree, that first missed monthly cycle, the confession to Joseph, her parents’ rejection—she turned around to face yet another.
When she had been newly pregnant, she had distracted herself with hope in Joseph. After he sailed away, her solace was the baby. Today, however, staring down at the shiny pianoforte, she wondered if she could endure another rejection. Joseph’s friends would surely discreetly, if not politely, turn her out when they knew.
Suddenly, Tessa wanted nothing more than to slide onto the piano seat and lose herself. Only at the piano could she forget, even for ten minutes, what she’d done and how she and the baby would survive. She couldn’t control what Joseph discussed nor what the earl and countess would think of her. But just for a moment, Tessa might play.
“It’s wasteful to have a proper music room when no one plays,” Lady Piety was telling her. “I had high hopes that one of my boys might take up music as a hobby. But we’ve devoted so much of our lives to travel, it’s not convenient to lug musical instruments on a ship.” She laughed. “Trevor already believes me to be a champion over-packer.”
“It is a beautiful instrument, a showpiece, even if no one plays,” Tessa lied. Her fingers twitched to scramble over the keys. She heard music in her head. Her eyes returned again and again to the instrument, even while she trailed the countess around the room.
“Would you like to play, Tessa?” Lady Piety finally asked.
“Oh, I couldn’t impose.”
“Stop. I should love to hear it put to use. I adore music, but Trevor must be bribed to attend concerts.”
Tessa chuckled at this, studying her hostess more closely. She was so endearingly... irreverent. Perhaps, Tessa thought, perhaps she and the earl would not lose faith in Joseph for marrying a desperate woman. Perhaps they would see his predicament in sympathetic shades of grey, rather than black and white.
Tessa drifted to the pianoforte, knowing she could not decline a second offer. She settled on the bench.
“There are sheets of music somewhere in this room, now let me think where I...”
Tessa barely heard. She dove softly into Mozart’s “Piano Sonata No. 11,” thrilling to the sensitive response of the keys. The brilliant simplicity of the notes dropped from each key and then swelled to fill the room. Her body responded immediately, eyes closing, heart steadying, shoulders rising and falling as she conjured magic from the keys.
Distantly, she was aware of Lady Piety sucking in a startled breath, of her settling into an adjacent chair. Between songs, the countess applauded. Did she speak? Tessa could not say, she allowed herself to be wholly taken in by the music, to sink beneath the surface of sound. She lost herself, trilling and pounding through her entire repertoire of favorites—popular jigs, classic sonatas, refrains from operas.
At last, when her neck ached and her fingers cramped, she took a deep, satisfied breath and sat up. She stretched her shoulders. The room had shrunk to the keys before her, and she blinked at the bright sunlight streaming through the windows.
Behind her came a slow, steady clap. She spun on the bench.
Joseph. He stood not far behind, his eyebrows and head cocked.Look what you’ve found.
Look, indeed,Tessa thought.
The countess had gone. Joseph stood alone in the room, so very tall and broad and handsome. Her stomach swooped at the sight of him. She’d thought he would never look more beautiful than he had with the milky cloth draped over his shoulder and Christian balanced on top of it. But now?
She felt tears well up in her eyes and she turned back to the keys.
He was never meant to be so handsome and measured and thoughtful. From the beginning, when Willow had placed the advertisement, he was only meant to besome man, someanonymousman.He was only meant to marry her, give her son a name, abscond with her dowry, and disappear. She was not to think of him again.
But he had never, not for a moment, beensome man.
And when he had disappeared, Tessa had awakened every day wondering if today would be the day he might come back. And if there was some chance to salvage the unlikely strains of love they’d kindled in those weeks at Berymede.
Looking back, their early love seemed almost too easy, the expected combustion of young attractive people falling into lust. The feelings she held now for Joseph were combustible, yes, but they were a slow burn, built hour by hour, gesture by gesture, as each new intimacy was added to the fire.
The Old Tessa would not hesitate to say that she wasin lovewith Joseph Chance. She’d loved him at Berymede, and she certainly loved him now. The New Tessa would concur, but she must force herself to proceed with thoughtful caution. Her regard for him now was part attraction, part kinship, part gratefulness, and part... something else. A magical, intangible wholeness that made her heart surge. Taken as a whole, her love for him now, the truest, purest love, had far more potential to crush her than the dazzling, playful love of before.
Although Tessa could admit that seeing him here now, with the music still echoing in her ears and the captivated look on his face, she felt the old stirrings of playfulness as she had not known since Berymede. She wanted to entertain him. She wanted him to sit beside her and gaze sideways at her bent profile, inching his hand closer and closer to her leg.
Joseph said, “It occurs to me that there’s no pianoforte at the Boyds’.”
She shook her head. “They are artists, not musicians, I’m afraid.”
“You should have one. Actually, I am in possession of one. A pianoforte. It’s at my home. If the Boyds will allow it, I shall have it sent over.”
“You have a house?” she asked. Of course, the politer question would have been,You have a pianoforte?But good lord.He has a house?
