Could not.
She did not turn around. “Good night, Your Grace,” she said, and went through the door.
Chapter Fifteen
“Lady Annabelle,” Dominic greeted as Annabelle stood for him and James at the entrance hall a few days later.
Annabelle had told herself, during the walk from her bedchamber to the front door, that there was nothing unusual about any of this. She had the lesson to prepare, she had her morning, and everything was the same as it had always been.
Now, the Duke released James’s shoulder.
“Your Grace.” She stepped back to let James through. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” He was already turning. He put his hat on as he went back down the steps, without looking back, and the footman closed the door before he reached the pavement.
James stood in the entrance hall with his case in both hands and watched the door close.
Then he looked at Annabelle, his expression serious but curious in a manner she did not want to encourage.
So, she smiled at him and volunteered a light-hearted question: “Shall we begin?”
He didn’t answer, merely turning and going toward the music room. Annabelle followed silently behind him, resolving to take her mind off thinking about the man who brought him here in the first instance.
She had made the decision two days ago, and she intended to hold to it. She would find her own husband this season, without Dominic Barrow’s help, without his interference.
And without the compounded confusion that seemed to follow wherever he went.
The lesson went poorly from the first quarter-hour, and not in any way that Annabelle could easily name. James sat, opened his case, set out his music, and placed his hands on the keys. He played the opening scales. He played them again. He played the passage from the Haydn she had given him the previous session.
But he was watching her, at intervals. He would look at the keys, play, then look at her. She would glance up from the music and find his eyes already there, tracking.
“James. Third measure, F sharp.”
He looked at the keys. He hit the F sharp.
“Good.”
She turned the page. He played the next passage. Two bars in, she looked up, and he was watching her again, hands moving on the keys, but his attention was not on them.
“What is it?” she said.
“Uncle is upset,” he said, then looked down at the score.
Annabelle paused, looking from the boy’s face to his fingers on the keys. The boy’s three simple words made her heart clench a fraction.
She shook her head. She would not think of him; she had better things to worry about, so she let it go and kept the lesson moving. At least, James had gotten it off his chest and ceased watching her. That was encouraging. At least, for a while. Because at the end of the Haydn passage, he stopped, placing his hands flat on his thighs and looking at the piano.
Annabelle waited.
“When Uncle left,” James said, “I saw that he didn’t look at you.”
Annabelle’s heart stuttered in her chest, and she cleared her throat subtly, even as she kept her hands steady on the music stand. “He left you here for your lesson. That was the purpose.”
James’s brow folded briefly. “He looks at you,” he said. “When he brings me. He always looks at you when he says good morning.”
On the settee behind them, Helena’s needle stopped moving through the embroidery frame.
“Today he didn’t.” James turned and looked at her directly. “And you didn’t look at him either. You looked at me instead.”
