Then murmurs.
Then frantic shushing.
Then silence.
Then the soft, groaning sigh of a bow drawn across cello strings. Beneath it rose the siren sob of a violin. The very sounds of lovemaking.
They heralded what was about to happen to the audience.
With her voice, for the next forty minutes, Mariana made playthings of their hearts. Shredded them and tossed them aloft like confetti. Put them back together, then filled them like sails with joy. She did to their hearts all that had been done to her own in the past month by the Duke of Valkirk, and in every word, profound and mundane, she sang of him.
And in the end, she owned every heart in the room.
Handkerchiefs were soaked. Applause was thunderous. Helga’s cakes were devoured, and the punch disappeared.
At intermission, every member of the audience obediently queued for an opportunity to bow over her kid-gloved hand. All the guests, unbeknownst to them, were watched like a hawk by Captain Hardy and Sergeant Massey.
“Miss Wylde, it was a privilege to meet you. A privilege, I say!” This was Viscount Dalrymple. A lowered voice. “If there’s anything we can ever do to help...”
She made a note for the next time she might appear in the gossip columns and need a reputation burnishing.
“Miss Wylde,whata remarkable evening. I am Mrs. Franklin. I will of a certainty write aglowingnotice for the newspaper,” said a woman resplendent in mauve silk and pearls. A purple plume arched over her head like an alert familiar.
Not one person in the crowd said the duke’s name. Oh, but she knew that this was his doing. She knew by how everyone looked at her, by that rank curiosity tinged with respect and envy—perhaps even a little awe.
And of course a certain prurient curiosity, which they would never dare to fully show to her.
Who else had the power to command recalcitrant aristocrats to attend an event at the docks en masse?
What it meant, she could not say. If it meant anything at all.
Was it a parting gift? An apology? She refused to entertain theories.
Even if she never saw him again, he’d made certain she knew she was loved.
Even if he wasn’t here, she was glad she could, in this way, share her triumph with him.
Because that’s precisely what it was. He had given her the audience, but the triumph was all her own.
Today a triumph.
Tomorrow a lobster.
Such was the rhythm of life.
Chapter Nineteen
It had been too long since James had been to this farm where he’d grown up. It looked much the same, which was precisely what he’d always loved about it. It didn’t change.
A few things needed tending. The low stone walls along the walk leading to the house had been battered a bit by the weather; wildflowers were peeping through.
“You’re done for, walls,” he thought, amused and sympathetic. “The wildflowers will win.”
They could be built up again.
But his own walls were rubble. Absolute smithereens, like the vase he’d hurled. They could not be rebuilt. Which was all to the good: he didn’t want them.
He stood naked and surrendered and free.
