She sat down on the piano bench and lovingly stroked her fingers over the ivory keys. She would start this morning with Chopin’s preludes. Cordelia began playing slowly, softly, with the gentle melancholy required of the piece. Her fingers began to speed up, louder, faster, harder, flying over the keys. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the music—her only escape. She played the notes into a crescendo, then lifted her fingers just above the keys, breathing in and out.
She placed her fingers back on the keys and played another melancholy prelude, moving from heart-wrenching despair to wistful nostalgia. It wasn’t until she was at the end of the third piece that she realized that Penelope was in the room watching her.
Cordelia’s hands fell from the piano. “I am sorry. I didn’t realize you were here.”
Penelope nodded. She still wore a ghastly black dress, but her face was beautiful enough that it didn’t matter. A brief and surprising pang of jealousy pressed against Cordelia’s heart. Thomas loved the beautiful Penelope and not her. She shook her head for that thought to go away. She didn’t want or need Thomas’s love. Theirs was a marriage of convenience. A partnership. And it wouldn’t ever be anything more. Her heart was already given.
“You play very well.”
“Thank you,” Cordelia said, and attempted a sort of smile. “My piano master, Mr. Phelps, insisted I practice for four to five hours every day. I used to begrudge the time, but now I find it is my favorite part of the morning.”
A little color stole into Penelope’s cheeks. “My governess taught me how to play, but not like this. Not like you play.”
“I am sure you used your hours on important things.”
“Not really,” Penelope said. “I learned to read and write, but not much else.”
“Didn’t you read the classics?”
“A little Horace.”
“That’s all?” Cordelia said, trying not to show the surprise on her face. Her mother had insisted on scores of governesses. She’d learn to speak, read, and write fluently in English, French, and German.
Penelope shook her head. “An English girl’s education is not very extensive. We are not considered as important as sons, for they are the ones who inherit the estates and serve in parliament.”
“I planned to go to Oxford University,” Cordelia burst out. “I’d already passed the entrance exams.”
“Really?” Penelope said, stepping closer to her.
“But my mother had different plans for me.”
Penelope reddened, and Cordelia felt herself blush.
“You didn’t want to be a countess?”
Cordelia shook her head. “No, I am an American. Titles do not matter to me. I do not think that some people are better simply because of their last name. Nor that aristocrats deserve any special privileges because of their birth.”
“America must be a strange place.”
“England is a strange place to me,” Cordelia said. “Your ways are strange to me. I feel like I am constantly out of tune with how I am supposed to behave, but I was not raised for this life. I do not know what is expected of me.”
“Not to play cricket with village children or teach them a music class.”
Cordelia laughed. “Is that so very bad of me?”
“Shocking—beyond the pale,” Penelope said with a shy smile.
“English ladies are hedged around with what seem to me boring restrictions,” Cordelia said. “Why can’t I play cricket if I wish to? And I thought that women were supposed to be charitable. What is more charitable than giving one’s time to teach children music?”
“Our country is older than yours. We are less prone to change. A countess does not interact with grubby school children of a lower class.”
“Change is the only constant in life,” Cordelia countered. Her time volunteering at the local school was her only joy the last few weeks.
“If you wish to be successful here, you will need to change.”
“How so?”
Penelope swallowed. “You are the lady of the house. You set the example for everyone around you.”
