Prelude for a Lord

by Elliot, Camille

  Mr. Morrish stood in a state of indecision, unsure if he ought to try to cajole his uncle or give in to the anger simmering behind his pale eyes. Then his gaze fell on Bayard and Clare, and a sneer settled upon his mouth.

  He turned and left, and the butler shut the door with a snap.

  Sir Hermes seemed to deflate. Lady Morrish rushed down the stairs and embraced him, acting as a crutch as she stumbled up the stairs with him. Bayard approached them to help, but Mama waved him away. They continued up the staircase to their bedchamber.

  Clare took Bayard’s hand, just as she used to do when they were children. He drew her to the music room and sat her down in a chair. “How are you feeling?”

  “I am well. He frightened me at first, but he was so shocked when I struck him that I was able to run back into my room.”

  “Where was your maid?” He had hired Lucy specifically to protect his sister.

  “Don’t blame her, Bay. She was in my bedchamber, putting away my clothes. I chose to go downstairs on my own. I did not know Mr. Morrish was in the house or that he would dare venture to the second floor.”

  “He should have been watched more carefully.”

  “You could hardly order a footman to shadow him, Bay. And he would not have heeded a servant. He tried to prevent Lucy from informing Mama, but she evaded him. When Mama ordered him from the house, he said the most horrid things about spreading rumours about me.”

  Bayard paced the floor. Rumours and lies had become the invisible enemy he could not vanquish. He could not shoot a lie or run his sword through an innuendo. And the worst of it was that he could not protect his family from them either.

  He felt so helpless. Of what use was he if not to protect them?

  He had to bring an end to all this, to solve the mystery of the violin. It would accomplish everything—the danger to his family and to Alethea would cease, it would bring him and Clare the éclat of Lady Whittlesby’s concert in the spring, and that would counter any rumours Mr. Morrish might spread so that they wouldn’t impact Clare’s season or hurt his mother.

  Alethea had been right. He would have to be more aggressive.

  He paused, his throat tightening at the memory of this morning, hearing his music played by her violin. He was aware that he had hurt her, although not intentionally. He had been lashing out at Ian and the words came out wrong. He could apologize, but he didn’t know what would make her understand his hurt, his frustration, this feeling that he was raw and bleeding.

  His father would mock him. Men were not to feel hurt. They were to fight through the pain. And Bayard had done so, all through the Peninsula until Corunna, where he had seen the gates of hell.

  Now he was a weak shell of who he had once been, trying to hide the fact that he had returned from war with something broken in his mind.

  “Bay, what should we do?” Clare’s voice brought him back to the music room, to the slight chill in the air not dispelled by the numerous fireplaces.

  “Act on the offensive.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Alethea had opened the front door to head to the park with Margaret when she came face-to-face with the one face she’d seen in her head all night.

  “Dommick.” The name came out strangled.

  He lowered his hand from where he’d been about to raise the door knocker. He looked as if coal had been smudged under his eyes, and his normally immaculate dark hair had been twisted by the breeze, for he had removed his hat. “You are going out?”

  “To the park.”

  “May I . . .” He swallowed. “May I accompany you?”

  She swallowed also. “Yes.” She busied herself in ordering the new footman to return to his duties rather than accompany them. Bill had been turned off by an irate Aunt Ebena after what had happened to Margaret.

  Margaret was studying Dommick with a critical eye. “I do not know that I wish him to come with us.”

  “Margaret,” Alethea said. “Pray do not be rude.”

  “He was rude yesterday.”

  “He was not rude to you.”

  Dommick gave Margaret a formal bow. “I am come to apologize. Will you allow me to do so?”

  Margaret pretended to think about it, then gave a regal nod.

  Alethea wished all would be well with so simple a gesture, but her heart was bruised and her emotions stormy. And the worst of it was that she did not really understand what she was feeling.

  She closed the door and they all headed to the park. “You may apologize to Alethea now,” Margaret said grandly to Dommick.

  “May I apologize to you first for upsetting your household?”

  A gleam appeared in Margaret’s eye. “I will if you will buy me my own violin to practice on.”

  “Margaret!” Alethea was mortified.

  “Alethea is always practicing on hers and I am only allowed to borrow it, and then only when Aunt Ebena is out of the house since she says the sound causes her indigestion. Although I don’t understand how violin music can affect one’s stomach.”

  Perhaps when the “music” sounds like a dozen shrieking fishwives, Alethea reflected.

  “I would be most happy to procure a violin for you,” Dommick said.

  “Dommick, no,” Alethea said. “Margaret, your response to him was highly inappropriate.”

  “My response to you was highly inappropriate.” He turned to her, and the expression in his eyes caused the storm in her stomach to rumble and bluster. “I beg you will allow me this small token.”

  “Oh, please, Alethea.” Margaret tugged at her sleeve.

  Alethea used Margaret as an excuse to break eye contact with Dommick. “I shall consider it if you behave. You were a veritable hoyden all morning. And don’t for a moment think that I have forgotten the vase you broke with the fireplace poker.”

  “I was only trying to act out the lesson to make it more interesting. Reading Shakespeare is quite boring.”

  “What were you reading?” Dommick asked Margaret.

  For the rest of the walk, he managed to draw out all the most bloodthirsty portions of Henry IV, which delighted Margaret to no end. Alethea huddled in her pelisse and muff and tried to decide if she wanted to listen to his apology or simply deliver a stunning set down and walk away from him. Except, of course, that she couldn’t think of a suitably stunning set down, and she couldn’t abandon Margaret into his care either.

  At the park, Margaret wandered off to annoy any wildlife to be found, and Dommick turned to Alethea. “Let me explain—”

  “No, I should like to speak first.” Her hands were shaking where they pressed into her churning belly. “Your behaviour was shocking yesterday. You embarrassed me in front of my aunt and your friends, and your reaction was inappropriate.”

  “All true.” His face was grave.

  “Stop being agreeable. I am not finished.” She huffed in a breath. “I asked Lord Ian for a copy of your violin music since I had had difficulty procuring it, and I certainly did not realize he would copy an unpublished piece. I am quite offended at your disapproval of the fact that I was playing it. Why should not a woman play your music? Your objection is preposterous—”

  He stopped her speech by reaching out to grab hold of her shoulders. He leaned his head closer to hers, his eyes intense. She realized, in astonishment, that behind his embarrassment and contrition, he was in great pain.

  “I did not object to your playing my music because you are a woman.” His voice was low with a slight tremor. “I started writing that piece the day after I met you again in Bath.”

  She inhaled . . . and could not exhale. She suddenly saw his anger in a completely different light.

  “I was embarrassed that you heard the piece, much less played it,” he continued. “When I was writing it, it was a very . . . consuming composition.”

  She had known this, even as she practiced it, even in only hearing her own instrument and not the full effect of both violins. There had been something aching in the music. She h
ad been anticipating practicing with Lord Ian so that she could hear and feel it fully. And now she knew why it had called to her.

  Dommick’s hands dropped from her shoulders, and he took a half step back. “It does not excuse my behaviour. I deeply apologize for what I said. I was upset and disconcerted because, in many ways . . . the piece was for you.”

  She stood there, unable to speak, unable to move. Something about this man made her want to cry, made her want to throw herself into his arms. She simply stared at his downturned profile, the hawklike nose, the dark winging brows, the firm jawline.

  He straightened, seemed to collect himself. He was the old Dommick, slightly more handsome and slightly more aloof than she liked. “I have no right to ask this of you, but would you consider entering into your original plan with me?”

  “Using me and the violin as bait in your concert? Will you be quite resigned to playing in a public concert with a woman on a violin?” She lifted her eyebrows in challenge to him.

  “My objections were for the sake of my sister. I could not allow any slur to my reputation to reflect poorly upon her, and unconventionality is one thing polite society does not make light of.”

  “I had not thought of the impact upon your sister.” She had been only too ready to battle him for her right to play. “This concert will do exactly what you fear.”

  “I no longer fear it, for the outcome will outweigh any momentary discomfort. You were right. We have been reacting to this man’s schemes. We need to act on one of our own.”

  She watched Margaret chasing ducks and tried to sort through what she was feeling, but it was no use. She was feeling a multitude of things at once. “What do you wish me to do?”

  “The concert has been set for tomorrow, fortnight. There is not much time to prepare. Can you come to Raven’s house this afternoon to practice?”

  “With my violin? Will that be quite safe?”

  “I shall call with my carriage, but you would need to conceal it as you left the house.”

  “I could hide it under my cloak.”

  “Shall I call for you at three o’clock?”

  She pursed her lips as she regarded him. “I have not yet said that I forgive you.”

  Then he rattled her with that devastating smile that brought out the laugh lines radiating from the corners of his eyes and deepening the creases alongside his mouth. “Perhaps you will consider it when I tell you that I have a new composition.”

  “What sort of composition?”

  “For two violins, a violoncello, and pianoforte.” He bowed to her. “I am asking you to make up the fourth of the Quartet.”

  Alethea scurried into Dommick’s carriage rather awkwardly since she had the violin in a case hidden under her cloak and it banged against her knees. Once she was inside, she set it on the seat next to her. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it might be seen against her dress bodice.

  Across from her, Clare grinned. “How exciting this all is!”

  Dommick scowled at her. “I would not have included you, brat, if propriety had not necessitated it.”

  “No one knows Alethea is transporting her violin, so why should there be any danger?”

  “No one in your household saw you with the violin?”

  Alethea shook her head. “I keep it in my bedchamber, and I hid it under my cloak while inside.”

  She did not like exposing the violin in this way. But her aunt’s drawing room, filled with tables and chairs, did not have the spaciousness of Lord Ravenhurst’s music room, which was necessary to accommodate both violinists and a violoncello player.

  At the marquess’s house, she thought she would need to keep her cloak until she reached the music room, which would look exceedingly odd, but as the carriage pulled up, Lord Ian met them outside. He opened the carriage door, smoothly took her violin case, and carried it into the house under his greatcoat. As the butler and maids removed their outer garments, Lord Ian casually handled the violin case as though it were his own.

  “Such subterfuge,” Clare said to Alethea as they headed toward the music room.

  “I would prefer it were not necessary,” she said.

  “But think, we should not have met had you not needed Bayard’s expertise.”

  “How do you know that Lady Alethea’s existence has been enriched by your acquaintance and not the opposite?” Lord Ian asked Clare.

  Clare glared at him.

  “I assure you, your acquaintance has been a delight to me,” Alethea said while shooting Lord Ian an exasperated look. He grinned at her.

  At the music room door, Clare said, “I must attend to Mama, so Lucy will sit with you. I shall return later to hear you play.” She headed toward the drawing room.

  As she entered the music room, Alethea saw Lucy, for propriety’s sake, seated in a corner with some mending. Her sister gave her a quick smile, then returned to her work.

  The music room had been set up with three chairs and three music stands ranged around the magnificent Broadwood pianoforte. Lord Ian handed her violin to her, and it was both strange and exhilarating when he held out her chair for her, which was not at the pianoforte.

  He procured that seat for himself with a sigh. “I miss David exceedingly. Pianoforte is not my forte.”

  Lord Ravenhurst grunted as he took up his violoncello, a beautiful instrument with a deep golden glow in the wood. “If David were here, you would not be playing at all. I much prefer Lady Alethea to your ugly mug.”

  “Alethea, please take second violin.” There was a speculative gleam in Dommick’s eyes as he handed her the music manuscript, and her stomach tensed. In the concert, they would play the pieces she had already been practicing with Ian, but today they would play something new that he had just finished composing. She opened the manuscript.

  The breath eased out of her chest as she looked it over. It was beautiful and challenging, but not extraordinarily difficult, even with her two injured fingers, which she had stretched earlier. She massaged them to warm them.

  “Are you injured?” Dommick’s brows lowered.

  “An old injury. It is nothing.” She was almost grateful to her cousin for forcing her to Bath, for only here could she have found a physician to help her regain the use of her left fingers.

  She began her normal warm-up on her violin, exercises to stretch the stiff tendons in the last two fingers of her left hand, build finger speed, and increase the flexibility of her bow hand. She ran through some intonation and vibrato exercises, then skimmed through Dommick’s music to finger passages that might be tricky.

  She finished as the other men completed their own warm-ups. She flipped to the first page.

  “We shall take the first page at a decreased tempo,” Bayard said.

  Lord Ian interrupted him. “Let us do a straight run-through instead.”

  Dommick frowned, and Alethea thought he might have glanced quickly to her.

  “Try it and see,” Lord Ian said cryptically.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Dommick nodded. “Then, from the beginning.” He set the time with his bow, and with a firm nod, indicated for them to begin.

  The music blasted into existence like a choir of angels, grabbing her heart and squeezing tightly. She had never before played with more than one other musician. The sound roared through her in powerful waves, chords and runs in unison that echoed from the high ceiling of the room.

  The piece diverged as each instrument carried the primary melodic line in turn, weaving from one to the other in a tapestry more colourful than any hangings on the walls of Trittonstone Park. The complexity fascinated and excited her, and she eagerly played, barely aware of herself as she gloried in the rich sounds produced.

  Then the music softened like the stillness of early morning on the downs, and each instrument became a bird welcoming the day, a rabbit rising up to sniff new scents on the air, the hawk soaring on the high winds above the world.

  The music built like a storm, first with the pitter
of raindrops, then the blustering wind, then the crashing thunder and blistering sheets of water flattening the grass. The instruments again wove into each other, one at the forefront and then the other, each carrying a storyline of the music until they all converged into a climax of nature’s fury. The piece ended as if on a sigh.

  Alethea was breathing heavily as she lowered her bow. Her heart felt filled with simmering emotions that spilled over—awe, sadness, tenderness, ecstasy. She closed her eyes, trying to recapture the rush of euphoria of those last measures.

  “I told you,” Lord Ian said in a smug voice.

  She opened her eyes to find Dommick staring at her in complete astonishment. “Good Lord,” he said.

  She didn’t know what he was referring to. The potency of his gaze made her anxiety begin to rise. “What is it?” Her voice was weaker than normal, and she cleared her throat. “What is wrong?” she demanded in a stronger tone.

  “You are . . . magnificent.” Dommick’s voice was filled with wonder, and the yearning in his eyes was suddenly all she could see. And she knew he could see the fullness of her heart, the fragility exposed whenever she played because she played with all her being.

  Dommick had heard brief strains from her violin, but unlike Lord Ian and Lord Ravenhurst, he had not seen her perform before now.

  “Lady Alethea, you see Bayard flabbergasted,” Lord Ian said. “I do believe you are even better than I on the violin.”

  “I never doubted your ability, but I had never seen you challenged.” Dommick broke eye contact and looked at his music, but Alethea saw the faint flush of colour at his jawline. It was endearing to see him embarrassed.

  Alethea glanced at Lucy. Her sister gave her a wink and a smile as if to say, “Well done, you have bested them.” It buoyed her spirits as she returned her attention to the men.

  “Now that we are aware that Lady Alethea can outplay all of us, shall we continue?” Lord Ravenhurst said.