“Can I not?” He leaned closer, close enough that his warm breath caressed her cheek in the cool evening. “You—your face, your voice, your eyes—God, your eyes. The music that surrounds you. These things have haunted me these five long years. The hope that I would someday find you again, that I would hear the music of you again—these hopes have enabled me to get through my days, one by one.”
“Me?” Grace shook her head, stunned. “Why me? What music?”
He pulled back a bit and did not answer. The sounds of traffic passing in the noisy street beyond echoed through the alley as they stared at one another in silence. Grace waited, not daring to move, not knowing quite what he would do if she did. The spring wind brushed past them, lifting a tendril of her long blond hair across her face.
That caught his attention. He lifted his hand to pull the strands away before she could do so, and something changed in him. His body relaxed, and his expression softened to a tenderness she had not seen in his face before. “You are as lovely as I remember,” he murmured as his knuckles brushed her cheek. “So lovely.”
The way he spoke flustered her, and she felt the spark of something completely unexpected, something she had thought long dead inside of her. Physical desire. It came to life again in an instant, evoked by the caress of Moore’s hand on her cheek.
Grace drew in a sharp breath, trying to shove that feeling away, but she could not. It felt like warm sunshine spreading through her body after the cold darkness of winter. She had forgotten this—she had forgotten what a man’s touch felt like. When his fingertips moved along the side of her face and he tucked the tendril of her hair back behind her ear, she almost turned her face into his palm to kiss it. Almost.
“What do you want of me?” she asked, trying to maintain some sort of rational thought, but the heat of his body so close and the powerful rush of her own feelings were making it hard to think straight. “Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Seduce you?” he repeated thoughtfully, running the tip of his finger back and forth along the curve of her ear. “I can think of nothing that would bring me more pleasure. You intoxicate me.”
“You are a torrid man, aren’t you?” Grace started to look away, but he slid his hand into her hair to keep her gaze on his face. She stared at him, at his dark, passionate eyes and his sensuous mouth. It was ridiculous, she knew, that a virtual stranger could make her feel this way, as soft and warm as caramel in the sun. His caress was melting her on the spot. She should duck under his arm and run away, yet she could not seem to move. “This is absurd,” she scoffed, but her voice came out low and thick, the voice of a woman being seduced and enjoying it. “You do not even know me.”
“I feel as if I know you.” The pad of his thumb caressed her temple. “I hear music when I look at you.”
Grace gave a half-laugh at that cliché. Surely this man could do better than that. “Of course you do.”
Those mocking words seemed to ignite something inside him. He moved again, tilting her head back as he leaned into her, pressing her against the wall with the sheer weight of his body. Her heartbeat quickened, and she felt her insides begin to tremble at his aggressive move. Not with fear, she realized to her chagrin, but anticipation. No wonder Dylan Moore had bedded so many women. He had such a talent for getting them there.
He bent his head, and before she could think, she was parting her lips to take his kiss. A lush, open-mouthed kiss it was, one that sent shimmers of pleasure through her entire body, pleasure so startling she cried out against his mouth.
He caressed her tongue with his own, deepening the kiss. As if her body had a will of its own, Grace gripped the edges of his cloak in her fists, rose on her toes, and met his kiss with the shameful eagerness of a strumpet. So long since she had felt this way. So long since she’d felt this craving for a man’s kiss, his touch, his body. She felt so keenly alive at this moment. She let go of his cloak and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing closer to the hard wall of his body.
He made a rough, ardent sound against her mouth. His hand left her hair to move in an inexorable slide down the side of her throat, over her collarbone, to her breast. He paused there for only a second, just long enough to feel the thudding of her heart against his fingertips through her linen shirt before moving further down to stop at her waist. He pulled her away from the wall and wrapped his arm around her, then yanked her upward off the ground until her hips were pressed to his.
This was madness.
Grace turned her face away to break the kiss, panting. She slid her arms down from around his neck, but he did not let her go. He continued to hold her tight against him, his lips against her hair, her feet dangling a few inches off the ground. It was impossible to ignore the hard and intimate feel of his arousal, and she was mortified that she had let a man she barely knew put her in this position, a man who by his own admission had once hated her. She returned her gaze to his, trying to gain control of her turbulent emotions. “Let me go.”
He relaxed his hold, but only enough to let her body slide down until her boots hit solid ground. “I heard music in my head the first time I saw you. When I saw you again in that ballroom, the music is how I recognized you. Despite that silly mask and hat, despite Weber’s waltz and all the talking voices, I knew it was you by the music I heard in my head.”
“You are a composer,” she said in a breathless rush. “You hear music all the time, I daresay. How significant is that?” She flattened her palms against his chest, feeling hard muscle beneath her hands as she tried to push him away.
It was like pushing a wall, and he did not move. “More important than you can imagine.”
His arm began to ease its hold on her even as another voice, an outraged male voice, entered the conversation. “Get away from her!”
Grace looked past Moore to see Teddy striding around the corner of the stables in their direction. He was still wearing his costume, but under his arm was a burlap bundle of food. In his hands, he carried his cello case and music stand. He dropped them as he approached, his stride quickening.
Moore turned to glance at Teddy over his shoulder, but he did not seem at all perturbed by the angry young man. “I would not dream of fighting your gallant,” he said, that sardonic amusement back in his voice as he returned his gaze to her. “Especially when he is wearing a toga.”
Moore pressed another kiss to her mouth, a quick one, then he let her go, moving a good distance away and allowing Teddy plenty of room to come between them.
The younger man clenched his fists as he stood in front of her, facing Moore. “Are you all right, Grace?” he asked over his shoulder without turning to look at her.
Teddy was barely eighteen, but he was prepared to defend her against a man who topped his height by a good six inches and outweighed him by at least four stone. Grace laid a hand on his arm. “I am perfectly well, Teddy,” she answered and looked at Moore over the younger man’s shoulder. “He was just leaving.”
Moore bowed to her. “I bid you good night,” he said, still ignoring the young man who had come to her rescue. He turned away and started back toward the public assembly rooms, but then he paused and looked back at her over one shoulder. “You spoke of responsibility earlier,” he said. “The Chinese say that if you save a man from death you are responsible for his life. We shall see each other again, Grace. I swear it.”
She watched as he turned and strode away, the edge of his cloak flaring and twisting behind him in the breeze, its gold satin lining glimmering in the streetlight.
How appropriate that such a man should choose to be Mephistopheles at a Fancy Dress ball, she thought. She had saved his life with the best of intentions, but as Dylan Moore blended into the night shadows and disappeared, she wondered with foreboding if good intentions did indeed pave the road to hell.
Chapter 2
She was real. Dylan leaned back against the seat of his carriage and closed his eyes. During these past five years, he had almost come to believe
that he had imagined her that night at the Palladium, that he had somehow conjured her out of the desperation in his soul, a muse to sit on his shoulder like a bewitching pixy, taunting him with nothing but a series of notes and the sweet promise of a symphony. She was real after all.
The moment he had seen her again, he had heard that same bit of music. If only he could remember those notes, hear them clearly enough to write them down, but though he tried, he could not bring them back. They were drowned out by the noise in his mind that made his head ache and the sound of traffic as his carriage made the slow crawl around Piccadilly Circus.
The music would not be lost, however, not this time. He had found his muse, and with her, the music. Now he knew enough about her that it would be easy to locate her, and that was the only reason he had let her get away. He knew just how to find her again.
Grace, with those light green eyes and that tawny blond hair. A woman of extraordinary beauty and surprising passion. When he had pinned her against that wall and kissed her, she had recognized what was in his body, known what it meant, enjoyed it. So had he. No timid virgin, this muse of his. No, she was a woman who had known a lover’s touch and savored it. If he made love to her, he could only imagine what music the sweet heat of her body would inspire. He intended to find a way to make that happen.
The carriage came to a halt in front of a gaming hell in Soho. It was one Dylan particularly favored, because, with its tinny pianoforte, pretty bawds, and crowds of men, it was noisy enough to drown out every other sound in his brain. It was also ethical enough not to weight the dice, mark the cards, or water the liquor. Most important of all, it was always open for business. At half past two in the morning, Dylan’s evening had barely begun.
Luck favored him on this occasion, and he walked away from the baccarat tables six hours and two bottles of brandy later, richer by three hundred and seventeen pounds. Not that it would last, of course. Next time, he would lose it all and then some, but it never really mattered to him if he won or lost. Gambling was a distraction, and that was the important thing. These days, he lived for diversions and distractions, anything that would keep him from letting the whine in his head drive him mad.
It was just past nine o’clock in the morning when Dylan arrived at his own home in Portman Square, not an unusual time for him. Though it was not a large house, Dylan had amused himself by filling it with as many modern conveniences and comfortable luxuries as possible. Another diversion, for in truth, the only material thing that mattered to Dylan was his piano.
Though his body was tired, he was not home to seek his bed. He never slept well, and after the events of this evening, he knew any attempt to sleep would be futile. He left Roberts waiting out in front of the house with the carriage, for he intended only to bathe, shave, and change out of evening clothes, then depart again.
When his butler, Osgoode, opened the front door, Dylan had only taken one step inside the black-and-white tiled foyer before the servant said, “You have had a visitor, sir.”
Dylan handed over his cloak, hat, and gloves. “When?”
“She came about two hours ago.”
“She?” Though there were several women at present who might be inclined to call on him at such a scandalously early hour, he doubted that the only woman who piqued his interest at this moment was one of them. “Who was it?”
“A nun, sir. A Catholic nun.”
Despite his headache, Dylan could not help laughing at that. “A nun coming to call on me at any time of day is unbelievable, but at seven o’clock in the morning, it is ridiculous,” he said as he crossed the foyer to the stairs. “Does she expect to find contributors half-asleep and hope to collect more for her charities that way?”
“She did not come to collect for charity, sir,” the butler called after him. “She came to deliver something to you.”
“Oh, yes?” He threw the words carelessly over his shoulder as he climbed the stairs, uninterested. “Religious tracts, I suppose.”
To his astonishment, the butler followed him up the stairs. “Begging your pardon, sir,” he said, panting as he attempted to keep up with Dylan, whose long legs and impatience had given him the habit of taking stairs two at a time. “It is of far greater significance than that. I believe you should see for yourself. At once.”
Dylan paused at the first floor, his hand on the polished rosewood cap of the wrought-iron stair rail as he turned to stare down at the servant who had halted several steps below him. This insistence was impertinent in the extreme, and Osgoode was never impertinent.
“Indeed?” Dylan murmured and started back down the stairs. “Your insistence makes me curious. What is it this nun has brought me?”
The butler waited until they were back down in the foyer before he answered. “It is a rather difficult thing to describe, but the nun called it a gift, sir. Although she also said it is something that has always belonged to you.”
Riddles amused him. “You intrigue me, Osgoode. Bring it at once, then.”
“Yes, sir.”
The butler turned to go toward the back of the house, and Dylan crossed the wide foyer to open the pair of doors that led into the music room. He walked to the piano and pushed back the walnut lid to reveal the ivory keys beneath. It had been so long since he had even attempted to play a piece of music. Almost hesitantly, he placed his hand on the keys and pressed half a dozen of them in slow succession. That was it, he thought, a bit stunned. That was what he had heard from her.
He did not know why, when he looked at that woman, he heard these notes, or why there was a black void after them where a melody should be. He did not know why that woman seemed to bring him the only hint of music he had heard in five years. But there was one thing he did know. This time, he was not going to let her get away.
A slight cough broke into his thoughts, but Dylan did not glance up from the musical instrument before him. “Well, what is this gift a nun has brought me, Osgoode?” he asked as he played those notes again.
The butler did not answer, and Dylan looked up to find that the servant was not there. Instead, he saw a much smaller figure standing in the doorway. It was a little girl.
He straightened from the piano, staring at the child. Though not very familiar with children, he figured her to be about eight or nine years old. She was dressed in a blue-and-green plaid dress with a white collar and stockings, and there was a woolen bundle clutched in her arms. He knew he had never seen this child before in his life, but her long braids and big, round eyes were as black as his own. Dylan let out a curse worthy of a sailor.
The girl came into the room. “I don’t think I want a father who swears.”
Father? He swore again.
The child’s black brows knitted in a dubious frown, making it clear to Dylan that he wasn’t quite up to snuff in her opinion. “Since you are rich, am I going to have my own room?”
Dylan did not reply. Instead, he stepped around the girl and out of the music room to find his butler hovering nearby. “Osgoode, come with me.”
The butler closed the doors of the music room, shutting the little girl inside, and followed his master across the foyer to the drawing room opposite. “Yes, sir?”
Dylan heard a squeaking sound, and he looked across the foyer to see that the doors to the music room were once again open. The child’s face was peering at them from around one of the doors, her small fingers curled over the wooden edge. He closed the drawing room door to shut out her curious gaze, then turned to his butler. “Who in Hades is that?” he asked, jerking one thumb over his shoulder.
“I believe her name is Isabel, sir.”
“I don’t care about her name! I want to know what she is doing here. Have you lost your sense, man, to be accepting stray children brought to my door by nuns?”
His rising voice caused Osgoode to give him an apologetic look. “Sister Agnes said Isabel was your daughter, and the child would be living here with you from now on. She spoke as if it had all been arranged
in advance.”
“What? I have made no such arrangement.”
“I tried to convince the good sister of that,” Osgoode hastened to assure him, “knowing if it were true, you would have told me of Isabel’s arrival. But the sister explained she had come all the way from St. Catherine’s Orphanage in Metz to bring your daughter to you. Her ship returning her to the Continent was leaving within the hour and she had no time to wait—”
“I don’t care if she joined the British Navy and was bound for the West Indies. I have never seen this child before, nor even heard of her, and you are correct that if I had made such an arrangement, I would have told you of it. Good God, what were you thinking? Any woman could dress up as a nun, wait until I am not at home, and drop her child here for me to care for. I would not be the first gentleman in such a circumstance.”
“Isabel does look like you, sir.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I am sorry if I have given offense,” the butler said, looking pained at the very idea, “but I did not know what else I could do. Sister Agnes refused to take the little girl away with her, nor would she wait until you returned. I could not shove such a little thing outside into the London street, could I, sir? To be at the mercy of all manner of ruffians and villains? Not your daughter.”
“She is not mine!” Dylan roared. “Did this nun provide any proof of my paternity? Any proof at all?”
Osgoode gave one of those irritating little coughs butlers always use when they are about to impart news their masters do not wish to hear. “She left a letter and asked that it be given to you.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of parchment. “I assume the proof is mentioned there.”
Dylan took the letter from the servant’s hand, broke the wax seal, and unfolded it. It was from the Mother Superior of the Order of St. Catherine, a convent and orphanage in Metz. The Reverend Mother stated that the child, Isabel, born in 1824, was the daughter of a French woman named Vivienne Moreau who had died of scarlet fever six weeks before. On her deathbed, Miss Moreau had sworn an oath to Mary, Holy Mother of God, that the father of her child was Dylan Moore, the English composer. Since the young woman was making her final confession to God, the Reverend Mother had added, she would not lie.
Guilty Series Page 30