A Song Unheard

by Roseanna M. White

  Was it because of the way he’d run his thumb over her knuckles? Or was that giving himself too much credit?

  “Shall I beg? I can. I perfected the art as a boy.”

  The wisp of laughter that escaped her lips sounded like bugles and cymbals and trilling flutes—victory. “I bet you did.”

  He bent his elbow, raising her hand and drawing it to a halt against his chest again. “Please, mon ange. Grant me an hour or two. Do not decide to dislike me before you even give me a chance.”

  Her eyes skimmed his face and then focused beyond him, across the street. Much as he watched her expression, he saw no shift in it. No softening, but no hardening. No resignation, but no determination.

  Still, at length she nodded. “All right. A picnic, tomorrow. Call after church.” Once again she tugged on her fingers.

  He didn’t relinquish them. “You will not regret it. The Davieses’ church and mine are all but next door to each other. We can meet there and then fetch the food from the hotel kitchen.”

  Now her face went utterly blank. “Directly from church? I can just meet you at the hotel.”

  “Nonsense. We will both be walking back, we may as well walk together.”

  But that blankness on her face was interesting. He had a sneaking suspicion it was what panic looked like on her.

  Yet another tug of her fingers. “Will you please let me go?”

  “Of course I will. After I have determined why you are so afraid of touching me.”

  There, a flash in her eyes. Apparently Miss Willa Forsythe didn’t like her bravery being questioned—and looked to be the type to rise to the challenge. “Just because I don’t like being touched doesn’t mean I’m afraid.”

  A point he would normally grant. But it hardly suited him to do so now. “No? I think if I were to kiss you, you would flee in terror.”

  She had to see through him—she was too smart not to. But apparently whatever ghosts in her past made her sink her teeth into a challenge were stronger than her common sense. He saw it flash through her night-greyed eyes.

  Then the fingers he held to his chest went from resistant to insistent, knotting in his shirt. She jerked him closer and stretched up on her toes to press her lips to his.

  In that moment of racing thoughts, he knew a moment of his own fear—that the self he had so recently set away would come roaring back, dragging him into that thought-world that cared only for his own pleasure. That he would take too much, press too far, without consideration for what this woman in his arms really needed from him.

  But something new happened as he slid his bad arm around her and drew her close, as his lips moved over hers, softening the kiss that had been forceful and hard. Desire still burned, yes, deep in his stomach. But stronger, filling him from top to bottom, was a warmth that was far different. A . . . longing. A yearning. Not to take, but to give. To give something more than an hour of pleasure. To give her a day or week or month or perhaps even a lifetime that would make her realize there was more to the world than what her eyes could ever see. That there was hope and there was laughter and there was love that could swell and sway like a fantasia. That could make them soar like a sonata.

  Her back didn’t jerk away from the hand he spread against it. Her cheek actually leaned into his left hand, which he’d moved to cup it. For a moment, her mouth was pliant and receptive and followed where he led.

  Then something flipped, and she all but jumped away from him, her eyes just a little bit wild. A little bit accusing—as if he’d been the one to start it.

  It probably wouldn’t benefit him to smile. But he wanted to. He’d have to remember the trick of challenging her, assuming it would work for him again. Though he had his doubts.

  The wildness faded behind the clear, hard look he’d come to expect from her eyes. She lifted her chin and took a step to the side, past him, then toward Terrace Street. “Good night, Mr. De Wilde.”

  Somehow, seeing her in the light made him aware of the darkness all around them. He let the flirtation slide from his face and reached out, though he didn’t touch her. “Let me see you home. It is dark and unsafe for a young lady.”

  The curve of her lips mocked his concern. “You needn’t worry for me. I told you I can take care of myself, and I mean it.”

  “I would be less than a gentleman if I did not worry for you in such a situation.”

  Yet she lifted her brows and took another step away. “Good. I’ve no patience with gentlemen. I think many men would benefit by being less of one.” As if hearing how that could well sound, her eyes went wide. “Not that I mean in all respects, mind you. That wasn’t some kind of invitation to be a rake. I just mean in matters of acknowledging a female’s independence.”

  He could hardly resist grinning again. And could hardly insist on seeing her home now, when it would likely undo what progress he had made tonight. So he settled for a compromise as he picked up his instrument case again. “I will hail you a cab, at least. Will you argue with that too?”

  She sighed and walked with him back toward the promenade, where a cab waited, as usual, in front of the hotel. “I can hail my own.”

  The grin simply wouldn’t be tamped down. Margot would love her and her every insistence that she was the equal of any man. Mère, on the other hand, wouldn’t know quite what to think. There was, she would say, a beauty to the order that had been in place for centuries. There was a reason for it.

  She admired strength though. Softness, she’d always claimed, should have a spine of steel hidden inside it.

  Willa had the steel—it just wasn’t much hidden.

  Who would have guessed he’d find that so appealing? He took her hand and walked with her toward the cab, largely to be sure she didn’t just pivot and stride away from all thoughts of safety. And she only tried once to tug her fingers free.

  He chuckled and got a better grip on his violin case’s handle. “When we are married, will you still insist on walking home alone?”

  “You’re an idiot, Lukas De Wilde.”

  “You and your sweet talk. Is it any wonder I am smitten?” He lifted her hand to his lips even as the cabbie came to attention and opened the door for her. “I will see you in the morning, mon amour.”

  She freed her hand and turned to the taxi. He thought she intended to get in and go without another word, but she paused with one foot inside the car and looked back at him. “Lukas . . . be careful. With Cor and . . .”

  Her words trailed off into the night, urging his brows to lift. “And?”

  Her gaze flicked to his violin case. “You left that sitting on the sidewalk for a full two minutes. Which is utter idiocy.”

  She had a point. “It was all but leaning against my legs. And I am certain if someone tried to steal it, you would intervene. Surely a girl who can take care of herself so well can help protect a violin too, oui?”

  Margot would have narrowed her eyes at him and declared him mocking. Willa simply gave him a cool little smile. “Your violin, yes. Though if some thug had thought to bash you about the head first, I’d have let him while I grabbed the Strad.”

  It probably shouldn’t make him laugh. “So long as you would play it for me while I convalesced.”

  Her gaze flicked to the violin with far more affection than he’d yet to see her direct at a person. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Lukas.”

  His name was music on her tongue, with its clipped London accent. He savored its cadence long after the cab’s engine roared to life and drove her away from him.

  Yet he couldn’t shake the thought that it wasn’t his careless ignoring of the Strad that she had really wanted to warn him about. She had some other concern for him but hadn’t wanted to admit it.

  A chill danced up his spine as he turned into the hotel lobby. He had concerns too—but he’d do his best to keep her well out of those.

  Twelve

  I kissed Lukas De Wilde last night.

  Willa tapped her pen against the paper, absent any c
lue of how to follow up that statement. And not entirely certain she meant to send it to her sister anyway. Rosemary had thoughts enough filling her head right now—all the little ones with her in Cornwall, the new home, the new husband. She no doubt had her fill of kisses and bubbling emotions and all those things Willa had sworn never to fall prey to.

  And she wasn’t prey. She had kissed him. It was different.

  A fun tale to tell her family, nothing more. She’d let Barclay growl about it, and she’d claim it was nothing more than being able to say she had done so. Lukas De Wilde, world-famous violinist and equally famous playboy, at her mercy. Her own claim to fame. On her terms.

  She balled up the letter and tossed it into the wastebasket beside her small desk. She could fill her words with all the bravado in the world, but Rosemary would see through it. She would know that it had left her shaken. And she wasn’t about to admit that weakness to anyone, even those she loved best. Especially those she loved best.

  She’d write a new letter to Rosemary and the little ones later. After the picnic. After church.

  Grimacing at that thought, she reached for her hat and moved to the mirror to pin it into place. She’d declined the invitation to join the Misses Davies at services thus far, but De Wilde had boxed her in. She couldn’t very well admit to him that she’d never darkened the door of a church in her life. It wouldn’t fit with the cover story she was to live while here.

  Well, she could suffer it for one morning. How bad could it really be?

  She had her answer half an hour later, when she was sitting shoulder to shoulder with Gwen on one side and Daisy on the other. Listening to the reverend drone on and on about what a loving father God was.

  It took every ounce of control she possessed to keep her fingers from biting into her legs. A father, was He? Yes, perhaps so. Absent. Invisible. Someone who set a life in motion and then disappeared, leaving his family to fend for themselves and spend their every second longing for him. To be with him again, in her mother’s case. To know who he blasted was, in hers.

  Yes, God was just like a father. Never there, except when it was to rob her of what little she had. To stack the deck against her from the moment she was conceived until she learned how to wrestle control out of His hands.

  If either of them ever stood before her—her earthly father or this so-called heavenly one—she’d tell him exactly what she thought of his love. And perhaps deliver a kick in the shins for good measure.

  But she never would. Because neither was ever there. Neither, for all intents and purposes, was real. Not to her. Not anymore.

  Those thoughts were a hot, boiling mess inside her by the time everyone stood to sing some song she’d never heard and could only pretend she knew because she had a book in her hand with the notes blessedly written out for her. They threatened to seethe over as she followed the smiling Daisy and Gwen out into the aisle. To leak right through the corners of her fake smile and spew onto a few unsuspecting Methodists.

  It clouded her vision so much, she scarcely even noticed when Lukas eased up to her side in the church foyer—she might not have seen him at all had he not made his presence known with a light touch on her elbow.

  Instinct made her want to jerk away. But he anticipated that and took her arm gently, tugging her toward the door. “Come, mon ange. Outside.”

  She may have argued, if she dared to open her mouth just now. But who knew what might come out? And much as she would enjoy letting all these thoughts cudgel the religious fuddy-duddies about the ears, she owed some respect to Gwen and Daisy.

  They may be rich—and religious—but they had opened their home to her and treated her like a friend, no matter that she’d never proven herself such. So she’d have to prove it now. She wouldn’t make a scene in their church.

  Lukas tugged her out into the cool breeze of early October and the clouded-over sunlight. It wasn’t raining, which was about all she could say for the day.

  As for the man who led her down Queen’s Road . . . he had no business knowing that she was upset. None. No one but her family could ever tell when she was angry, and he was most assuredly not family. She didn’t even like him. And if she’d lain awake last night remembering the feel of his arm around her and his lips on hers, it was just because she was frustrated with herself for doing something so stupid. Her own terms or not.

  He’d manipulated her, and she’d been fool enough to let him. To rise to a challenge she’d known very well was meant to benefit him, not her.

  “We shall walk it off, oui? Head back to my hotel for the picnic basket and the car I hired for the day.”

  Her jaw still wouldn’t unclench, though she sent a look over her shoulder. Gwen and Daisy must still be inside the church. She couldn’t just walk out without telling them.

  “I told them I was stealing you away now. They will not worry.” He slid his fingers down her arm, lifted her hand, and wove it around his elbow to rest on his forearm.

  When had he told them that? The steam escaping from her ears must have deafened her to those whispers. Which wouldn’t do. Anger was all well and good until it dampened one’s senses. Then it could make one stupid.

  And Willa Forsythe would not be stupid.

  She faced forward again. And caught, again, a flash of brown out of the corner of her eye. Here, even here outside the walls of the church, someone was watching. Following. Whose steps was he tracking today though? Willa’s or Lukas’s?

  She swallowed back the question and matched her stride to her companion’s. If God were real, were such a protective father, one would think He’d at least keep His own churches safe from spies or thieves or worse. In which case, He should have kept her from walking through the doors, she supposed.

  Lukas made no attempt at conversation, not at first. Just held her hand against his arm and led her at a moderate pace along Queen’s Road—which was most assuredly not the fastest route back to the Belle Vue. They ought to have turned down Bath, which intersected Terrace Road. But she wouldn’t complain. She wasn’t ready to be there yet. This tangle of thoughts had to seethe a little first—and she wanted the chance to see if that flash of brown followed them all the way.

  Queen’s Road eventually terminated at Marine Terrace, at which point Lukas turned her back toward the correct direction. The wind whipped at them, and at the water of the bay, and at the hats of the pedestrians littering the promenade.

  Lukas pulled her a little closer to his side. “So is it God with whom you are angry or your father?”

  Her nostrils flared, though it was the only tell that slipped out before she caught herself. She kept her gaze where it had been, straight ahead toward the curve of the bay and the distant pier, even though she’d rather have looked away. “What makes you ask such a question?”

  “I heard the others say what the sermon had been about. What makes you dodge the question?”

  Blast him. Dratted man. She glanced up at him. If he were grinning at her . . . But he wasn’t. His eyes were dark and serious and endless, and his lips held a straight line. He looked concerned. And something more—something that went beyond mere concern. She had no word for it.

  But it made her stomach seize and her throat go tight. Just like last night when that brown-coated stranger had been at the very door. Danger! screamed her every nerve.

  She wasn’t one to run from it. But she didn’t toy with it either. “I’m not dodging your question. I just don’t know why you’d assume I’m angry with God or my father.” The absent snake. The invisible tyrant.

  A little hum of disbelief came from his throat. “I grant you have a very good . . . what do they call it? A poker face, I think that is the term. Perhaps the best I have seen. But I have a sister who once tried to find the mathematical formula behind a convincing lie—rate of blinks, angle of gaze, in proportion to speed of breathing. Everyone in my family had to get very skilled, very quickly, at reading impassable faces.”

  His sister sounded like a girl she cou
ld like. “Is she near your age? Your sister?”

  He angled her a look that said he knew well she was trying to change the subject. “Fourteen years my junior.”

  “So much?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “There were others that did not make it past infancy. A couple that never drew a breath. We were all very relieved when Margot thrived. Thrilled. I admit that I thought at first she would not seem much like a typical sister to me, our ages being so different. But . . .” Now he grinned. And she didn’t mind it at all. “She was every bit as pesky as she would have been had she been born a decade sooner.”

  Willa’s lips tugged up too. For a second.

  “Have you any siblings?”

  Back down they came. Rosemary had talked with no trouble of the family when she was working the job in Cornwall over the summer. But look how that turned out. She’d ended up too close to her mark to finish the job.

  A mistake Willa wouldn’t have duplicated, even if the story Mr. V had provided for her hadn’t already answered this question.

  She shook her head. “I’m an only child.” And she needn’t any formula for lying to deliver the statement. It was, if one discounted the family she had chosen and gathered to herself, the truth. So far as she knew. Though chances were good her no-good father had sired a few other children on naïve young girls struck dumb by his charms.

  The snake.

  “And there is that anger again. Why?”

  Her gaze snapped to his. “How . . . ?” But she didn’t even know how to finish the question without verifying his assumption. And if there was one thing Lukas De Wilde needed no more of, it was confidence.

  Yet he didn’t look arrogant just now. He still looked more-than-concerned. “I keep telling you we were made for each other. It should come as no surprise that we should understand each other well, then, non?”

  She gritted her teeth. “If you must know . . .” Just enough to appease him, to quiet him. That was all she would say. It wouldn’t agree with the story Mr. V had given her, but so long as she kept her own consistent, it would do. “My father walked out before I ever even knew him. It was just my mother and me and his hulking memory.” Until Mum had followed him.