We both went quiet along with everyone else when Zia stood and thanked the audience. “Now I shall play an original composition,” she said shyly, her gaze flying to Rafi, who gave her an encouraging nod. They were so in love it was nauseating, but I couldn’t help feeling happy for my friend that she had found her perfect person.
My gaze darted to Tarik, and I felt my lungs squeeze with a painful yearning. The hope fluttering in my chest was impossible to extinguish, despite the odds stacked against us.
“What is she doing?” Tarik whispered as Zia proceeded to place a bolt, a piece of rubber, and a sheet of parchment on the inside of the piano on the bare strings.
“She’s preparing the piano for her piece,” I explained softly. “It takes some getting used to, because the altered notes are so discordant, but the overall effect is transformative.”
Instead of watching Zia, I watched him, and I could have sworn that his jaw fell open when she began to play again. It was a far cry from the beautifully harmonious melodies of Beethoven and Mozart, but it was mesmerizing in its own way. The sounds were percussive, ethereal, and otherworldly. Zia had been making a name for herself in smaller London theaters with her special style of playing, and I loved that for her. It took great courage to put oneself out there, and she was doing it without apology.
I wished I had half her bravery. Instead, I was hiding my true self at every turn.
This deception felt…cowardly.
I shouldn’t have to conceal that I was an intelligent scholarand pretend to be my cousin just so I could experience what being valued for my mind felt like. The whole notion upset me so much that when Zia’s last original piece was finished, I leaped to my feet and escaped onto the balcony, tears burning my eyes. I hauled deep breaths into my lungs, trying to escape the cloying sensation across my ribs that everything was going to go south…and that I would soon be found out and exposed.
“Are you well, Lady Rosalin?” a quiet voice asked.
“I’m fine, Mr. St. Clair. Perhaps simply overcome by all the emotion. Powerful music can do that, you know?”
“I understand. The performance was very moving.”
Tarik came up to stand beside me at the balustrade above the gardens, the moonlight shining down from a cloudless sky and outlining his features in silver. He looked like a serene, self-assured prince, surveying his domain, while I felt…small and invisible.Unseen.I couldn’t breathe! Couldn’t be myself or who I wanted to be.
“Do you ever feel trapped, Mr. St. Clair?”
“Tarik,” he corrected softly.
It still wasn’t proper, but we were alone so I let his name tumble over my tongue in the soft tenor of my true voice, the sound like the best kind of sugared treat. I savored it. “Tarik.”
“I do,” he said. “Trapped by circumstance. By wealth. By station. By birth. It’s unfair to want things that aren’t accessible to us simply by nature of who we are. A commoner cannot access the same things that a peer might.”
“Like what?” I whispered, meeting those blue eyes.
He opened his mouth and closed it, looking impossibly pained for a second, as if he wanted to get something off his chest but couldn’t bring himself to do it. He exhaled heavily. “Sometimes I wish I had been born under different stars. That I’d been born to privilege and could reach for anything I wanted.”
“It’s not always so easy under these stars,” I whispered. “We don’t geteverythingwe want. We still must follow the absurd rules of society that the powers of fate could give two flailing shits about.”
Tarik released a bark of laughter at my unexpected swearing. Face alight, he stared at me, so many unsaid things flying between us in that endless moment. Two star-crossed souls destined to pass each other like ships in the night because of class boundaries that held more weight than the possibility of true happiness.
“Do you want to leave?” he asked me impulsively. “Go someplace where there are no rules? Where it’s just the two of us in our imperfect skins with no stations, no expectations, and no differences?”
What he was suggesting sounded impossible, but I could not help nodding, desperate to escape the shrinking walls of my prison, which were slowly suffocating me. I’d broken so many rules already. What was one more?
“Yes, I do.”
With an irrepressible grin, his eyes sparking with excitement and something else I couldn’t quite read, Tarik grabbed my hand. “Tell the duchess that you don’t feel well and will be retiring to your residence. And then meet me down in the courtyard as soon as you can.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, stopping at the balcony doors.
He winked. “Get us transportation, of course!”
Tarik’stransportationturned out to be a hackney at the end of the street that was heading to London’s West End. When I had claimed that I had a headache and needed to leave, Mama had frowned, but I assured her that I would be fine at home with Anna. We lived only a few blocks away, after all. Our coachman would drive me to our residence and then return for the duchess.
Luckily, I had avoided both Zia and Ela, who would have undoubtedly seen right through my story. I couldn’t fib to save my life with the two of them. I’d also felt slightly guilty about involving poor Anna, who would be none the wiser as to my whereabouts, but a chaperone was the last thing I needed. That was the problem with having a taste of freedom as my Ansel alter ego…I wanted that as Rosalin.
“Where are we going?” I asked Tarik as the hackney made turn after turn, my heart pounding a fast cadence the farther we went from Mayfair.
“Somewhere fun in Covent Garden. You’re safe with me, Lady Rosalin,” Tarik said, his face earnest. “Do you trust me?”
