Madrigals And Mistletoe

by Hayley A. Solomon

  “Indeed not! Horrors! And to that end I intend to devote today entirely to my studies. If that is all right with you, Captain?” She shot him a sidelong glance of pure mischief.

  He chuckled inwardly at the child’s audacity and made a stiff, servantlike bow. “I am entirely at your service, Miss Camfrey!”

  “Seraphina, shall you not have dozens of morning callers buzzing about you like butterflies?”

  “Doubtless I shall, but you may tell them I am engaged in morning calls of my own!”

  “Very well then.” The resignation in Cordelia’s tone was palpable. She looked up with a slight, exasperated dimple surfacing about her mouth. “I suppose I shall have to entertain them?”

  “You are a dear, Cordelia!”

  Ancilla smiled serenely. “Then that is settled! I am going to pop over to Hookham’s.”

  Seraphina gasped. “I am so sorry, Mama! I quite forgot to get your books!”

  “I noticed. Never mind, Seraphina. I managed to finish that horrid, prosy piece by Sir Francis Bacon. Now I feel quite virtuous and may happily procure a couple of Gothics without feeling the smallest qualm!”

  Seraphina crossed over and gave her startled mother a quick hug. “Excellent. You do deserve them. I am sorry I forgot.”

  “It is a trifle. You work at your accomplishments and I shall be more than mollified.”

  Seraphina nodded. “Shall we remove to the music room, Captain, or is the day too fine?”

  She challenged him laughingly with her clear sky blue eyes.

  “The music room will be an excellent start, Miss Seraphina.” His tone was slightly repressive. He did not want Ancilla to decide a chaperone was suddenly a necessary accoutrement to the lessons. Though he would admit it to no one but himself, he was looking forward to the day with immense anticipation. If the naughty chit did not behave herself, however, the whole day might be spoiled.

  Fortunately, Seraphina nodded demurely and did not press the point about the woods. Ancilla appeared to notice nothing amiss, for she gently opened the Morning Post and waved her youngest daughter away with a graceful little gesture of her hand.

  Cordelia set down the last of her chocolate. It was a grim day ahead of her, for she was to consult with Cook about the meals for the following week and she knew it was going to be a battle since no one but she truly understood the deplorable state of their financial affairs. Between trying to cajole Cook into preparing bream instead of buttered lobster and one side dish instead of the usual three or four, she would have her work cut out for her. Then there were several matters pertaining to the household that she needed to discuss with Mrs. Stevens and Lord Winthrop was due to arrive some time after one to escort her to an edifying lecture on the evils of modern society and man’s propensity to sin.

  If she was not a thoroughly well-bred young lady, she would have stuck her tongue out at the very least. Instead, she sighed quietly to herself and flashed a quick, loving smile at Ancilla. “I almost look forward to the gaiety of Seraphina’s morning callers!”

  “If you were not betrothed yourself I am sure you would have your own fair share of admirers!” Ancilla looked her daughter over critically. She was quietly blossoming into something quite out of the ordinary way. Not a beauty in the conventional sense, but peculiarly striking nonetheless. Such a pity she did not take during her seasons. The young gentlemen must either have been blind or bewildered by her lively intelligence.

  For an instant, she pondered whether Cordelia would be happy as Lady Winthrop. His lordship was such a dead bore. Still, the match was a social coup for Cordelia and certainly preferable to the life of a spinster. She must be happy with the notion. Putting aside her momentary concern—Ancilla loathed dwelling on the unpleasant—she smiled at her firstborn and bade her sternly to have a happy day.

  Cordelia nodded. Impossible, of course, when she could do nothing but dream of . . . of . . . She blushed even to think what she dreamed of and with whom. Silly creature! Impossible dreams always came to naught and made the dreamer miserable. As always, she would make the day as useful and as provident as she could.

  “Do not worry your head about me, Mama! I shall have a well-spent morning, I assure you. You may select a novel for me, too, though if you will! I am in the mood for something frivolous! Perhaps Pride and Prejudice again—it is every bit as excellent as Sense and Sensibility was.”

  Ancilla sniffed. “Nothing happens in them, Cordelia! It is just about ordinary people like you and me! I warrant Miss Austen has not inserted a single ghost, a single mysterious treasure chest or even a hideous creaking coat of armour! No blood or shrieking banshees in the mists, no evil—”

  “Stop it, Mama! You are making me laugh!”

  “I am serious, Cordelia! But I must say, a little laughter suits you. If you want to read dreary Miss Austen I am sure I shall not stop you.”

  “Thank you. I deem that awfully kind in you I am sure. And now, if you will excuse me.”

  Ancilla nodded and Cordelia crossed the hall and made her brisk way down the cantilevered steps and across the hall to another, narrower flight, which would ultimately lead her down to the kitchens.

  “Miss Seraphina, I take leave to tell you you are a scamp! I have a good mind not to instruct you at all this morning.”

  Seraphina turned an innocent face upon the man she was rapidly coming to esteem very highly indeed. He might have relented a little, but for the naughty pout that just touched her lips and caused him to want to kiss her very thoroughly for the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon. Setting aside the thought firmly, my lord—or the captain, as he was known to the household—reviewed his pupil rather firmly and warned her that he intended to be a hard taskmaster.

  Seraphina blithely nodded and announced she’d expected nothing else from a man with as authoritarian an air as himself.

  “I shall, however, be good,” she promised as she bestowed poor Frederick with the kind of smile that threatened to undo all of his resolutions.

  “Very well, Miss Seraphina. I have an excellent notion of your aptitude on the harpsichord and your ready sensitivity to tempo and themes. You have a gift, for where most people need to be taught, you appear to have an innate sense of rhythm.”

  Seraphina hung on his words, for though she had received fulsome compliments in her life, none meant as much as these careful, unadorned words.

  Frederick continued. “I am actually at a loss to know what went so dismally wrong at your famous soiree! I would have thought you would acquit yourself tolerably well even without practice. Not, ” he uttered in stern accents, “that I am in any way condoning a lack of regular practice.” There was a small pause. “I am merely slightly baffled and, yes, admittedly curious as to the cause of your failure.” He did not mince his words. “What did you sing?”

  Seraphina coloured at the memory. “ ‘Lost is my quiet forever.’ ” His grace the Duke of Doncaster came to my aid towards the end. I was never so mortified.

  “Rhaz?” The name was out before the captain could stop himself. How very unlike the duke! He made a mental note to quiz him on it in the future.

  Fortunately, Seraphina was still so embarrassed by the memory that she did not think it at all peculiar that a nameless music master should be acquainted, on first-name terms, with an illustrious nobleman of Rhaz’s rank. She merely nodded and admitted that the evening had been “quite hellish” until she’d been rescued.

  The captain nodded decisively. “We shall have to remedy that then. I do not think we have the sheet music for the Purcell, but I think I can find something similar.”

  He rummaged among the papers and came up with a sheet. “Excellent! You may sing this—it is in the same scale—and I shall accompany you. Then we shall see what can be done about making you a singer!”

  His smile was so encouraging, Seraphina forgot her nervousness and took up the sheet. She cleared her throat and began. The captain listened with rapt attention as she sang the first few bars
. Since he did not interrupt her, she gathered up her confidence and continued, faltering a little over some of the more testing notes, but nonetheless finishing the piece with relative ease.

  There was a moment’s silence when she had finished. Seraphina looked uncertainly at the captain, wondering what thoughts were flitting through his mind. Whatever she imagined, it was certainly not that he would look at her, tousle her glorious hair with unmannerly intimacy, then throw his head back and laugh.

  Indignation rose stronger and stronger in Seraphina’s breast as Frederick took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his eyes and planted a delightful, earth-shattering kiss upon her nose. The impudence! Seraphina seethed, but her nerves positively jangled from the unexpected caress.

  At length, the twinkle dimmed from her thoroughly unsettling tutor’s eyes. He took her hands in his and rather solemnly announced that he feared her singing skills were sadly beyond redemption.

  “I shall have to reduce my fees, Miss Seraphina! I cannot in all honesty promise to tutor your singing voice, though the rest of your musical skills yield unsuspected promise.”

  He noted with sudden compassion how her beautiful, misty, sky blue eyes were suddenly dewy and he could all but detect a sniff. “Here.” He handed her the handkerchief. “Dry your eyes, my little angel. You may not be a singer, but you are a musician born. Any old person can sing. Few can achieve the heights with harmony as I suspect you can. We will work and you will learn. I shall not reduce my fees, for rather than turning out yet another insipid young miss vaguely accomplished at humming out a tune, I am going to make a musician. There, there! If you cry you shall break my heart.”

  His words were so compassionate, so truthful and so unutterably soothing that Seraphina no longer felt humiliation. He was not mocking her. If she knew no better, she could swear he was doing the reverse.

  She consigned the handkerchief to the occasional table and sat down. For once, her lovely, animated face was solemn.

  “Captain Argyll,” she said, “I really would like to learn. ”

  TWELVE

  Ancilla noted with pleasure that Seraphina no longer demurred about practising her music or closeting herself with her tutor the best part of every morning. Despite the social whirl and long rounds of balls, soirees and theatre outings, Seraphina’s spirits never seemed to flag, and while most of the household was still abed, she would be stolidly practicing and playing and heaven knew what. At least, she no longer had a fit of the sullens at the mere mention of her music master.

  Perhaps she was sobered by the prospect of becoming duchess to the handsome, awe-inspiring Rhaz. She must have decided that accomplishments would be a boon, after all. Whatever the reason, it was not uncommon now to pass the music room and hear strains of Purcell, Bach and Handel waft through the house. Other melodies, too, beautiful and poignant, but to Ancilla’s limited knowledge unidentifiable. These, of course, were Frederick’s own pieces, for he found in Miss Seraphina a soul mate and the pleasure of playing for her was unparalleled even by the pleasure of writing them.

  Mr. Beckett had received his scribblings with gratifying eagerness and the works of Lord Frederick were fast gaining critical acclaim by anyone at all fashionable among the ton. Since Frederick, however, had removed himself from that set, he was not to know the impact he was making. Nor, in fact, did he particularly care, save for the overlarge purse that was posted his way with an entreaty from the normally reserved Mr. Becket for more. So the time passed, with Frederick writing by night and teaching by day. He did not know which aspect of his day he enjoyed more and it was a testament to Miss Seraphina’s bounteous charms that he suspected it was the former.

  Certainly, if Seraphina was not a virtuous young lady and he not an impeccable gentleman in all matters of the heart, he suspected that, had Miss Camfrey elected to distract him from his evening composition, he would not have taken it amiss.

  Still, there were times when he was thoughtful, for Seraphina obviously still regarded him as a superior servant albeit attractive beyond belief. He watched her comings and goings with amusement tinged with resignation, for as society’s latest success, she was inundated with morning callers, invitations to picnics (when it was fine), the opera, Drury Lane and the inevitable Almack’s.

  These outings she quite obviously relished, being in the throes of the first-season syndrome and not yet sophisticated enough to assume the mantle of boredom and languid ennui that was generally fashionably adopted by more seasoned members of the ton. Frederick could afford to be indulgent, for he was not mean-spirited enough to deny her her first pangs and pleasures of growing up. Understanding her soul, he felt certain that in the end she would be drawn to him like a moth to the flame, recognising in their mutual tranquillity a serenity that could not be gleaned from the dizzying heights and aspirations of the social whirl. He was prepared to wait for Seraphina to come to this self-knowledge herself, for forcing an issue of such magnitude could serve no good and was likely to drive a wedge between their ever growing joy in each other’s company.

  A week before the proposed trip to Huntingdon, Frederick gently instructed Seraphina on the best manner in which to manipulate the seven pedals at her feet. He watched as she concentrated fiercely and thought that he had never seen a lovelier sight than the faint lines that creased her brow as she practiced and the magnificent tendril that hung down her face like burnished gold reddened from a rosy sun. He longed to reach out and touch them, but instead contented himself with the surprise he had in store.

  “Miss Seraphina, I took the liberty of inquiring of Pendleton what engagements you were likely to attend this evening.”

  She allowed her fingers to arpeggio gracefully across the strings, delighting in the newfound skill that sent silvery notes humming through the room. Frederick nodded approvingly and waited for her response.

  “Captain Argyll, tonight is the one night I have free! Cordelia is to attend a soiree with Lord Winthrop, but since I do not know his relations, I have not received an invitation. Cordelia said she could procure one for me, but I suspect it will be stuffy and deadly dull—you know what Winthrop is like, so one can only speculate on his relations!—so I beseeched her—indeed I entreated her—not to!” She ended her sentence on a slightly mischievous giggle. “I suspect poor Cordelia envied me, for she did not press the point as I had feared, but rather murmured that an evening at home would be charming.”

  “I hope you do not share her sentiments?”

  “That an evening at home would be charming?” She sparkled at him and he was hard-pressed not to kiss the living daylights out of her. “I think it will be splendid!”

  “I am sorry to hear that, Miss Camfrey, for now I shall have to dispense with these. ”He pulled from his unfashionably capacious pocket tickets to the little frequented Sandown Concert House, just short of Pall Mall.

  Seraphina looked at them suspiciously. “What are those, Captain?”

  “These are tickets to see a performance of Gluck’s Orpheus. It was written principally for the harp, so I thought you might find it edifying. There is also to be a short performance of Johann Baptist Krumpholzt’s harp concerto—number one, I think, though I am not perfectly certain on that score.”

  “I don’t believe I have heard either.”

  “Possibly not, for they are relatively modern. Still, I believe you will find them intriguing.”

  Seraphina’s eyes shone. “I am certain I shall! Thank you, thank you, Captain!”

  Frederick longed to hear his own name upon her lips. It was on the tip of his tongue to beg her to desist from all formality when he thought better of it. It would not do to be on first-name terms with a music master, and until he had established himself, he had no desire for his identity as an eligible peer to be revealed. So he smiled in a heart-stopping fashion and contented himself instead with the immeasurable joy of lifting Seraphina off her feet, swirling her high in the air and setting her down upon the Kidderminster with unbridled aplomb.r />
  “You could break your back!”

  “I have carried much heavier, I assure you.”

  Seraphina cast a quick look at his iron-hard muscles and believed him. Her slight flush pleased Frederick, who believed that she was not entirely unreceptive to his charms. He waited for her breathing to subside a little before settling down in the padded mahogany armchair with its scrolled arms and twisted back rail. In truth, the comforts offered by its elegant red velvet upholstery were wasted on him, for his thoughts were firmly situated with the young lady who was taking the opposite seat.

  “When do we leave?”

  “We? Miss Seraphina, for shame! You cannot think I would invite you to a concert unchaperoned? The tickets, since Miss Cordelia is otherwise engaged, are for yourself and Mrs. Camfrey.”

  Seraphina’s face fell so endearingly that Frederick was caught between a chuckle and exultation, for the chit surely could not be indifferent to him if such was her reaction on the minor disappointment.

  “Mama will not care for such an entertainment! She has told me heaps of times that concerts are deadly dull!”

  “What a singularly uninformed parent! Perhaps I should educate her, too.”

  “Oh, Captain, stop funning! Please escort me! It won’t be half so”—she was going to say thrilling but wisely found another word—“educational.”

  He shook his head and was so implacable on the matter that Seraphina grabbed a candlestick and was about to throw it wildly in his direction when Ancilla appeared.

  “Seraphina! Set that down at once!” Her tone was uncharacteristically peremptory and her bright-eyed fledgling, so surprised, obeyed almost immediately.

  “I am so sorry, Captain. I had forgotten, when I employed you, what a sore trial Seraphina can be. Don’t scowl, child. If you wish to go on in society, you must learn to control your temper.”

  Seraphina, her moods as changeable as the wind, drew her mother impulsively into the room and very prettily begged Frederick’s pardon before explaining what utter “fustian and tommy rot” he’d been talking.