“But why should I want to keep something like that?”
Grace laughed at Isabel’s genuine bewilderment. Like her father, there was nothing of the sentimentalist about this child. “Believe it or not, Isabel, someday you might look at that crimson scrap of fabric, remember that first day we went shopping, and laugh about it, wondering why on earth you ever wanted a pet lizard. Lots of things happen to us that don’t seem significant at the time, but then, when we look back, we are glad they happened, and remembering them makes us happy.”
Isabel pointed to the items on the table. “Do these make you happy?”
“Some of them do.” Grace reached for a gold tassel from the pile and lifted it in her fingers. “This is from a dress I wore to a ball at Schönbrunn Palace.” She laughed, remembering that night. “I danced every waltz.”
“You waltzed at Schönbrunn Palace?” Isabel demanded. “With who?”
“My husband. Appalling, everyone said, for a married couple to dance all the waltzes together. We did not care. We rather enjoyed scandalizing the aristocrats.”
“You truly have a husband? You didn’t make him up?”
A bit surprised, Grace tilted her head to one side, studying the little girl. “I had a husband, yes. He died two years ago. Why would you think I made him up?”
“Some women don’t have husbands, but they say they do so people will think they are respectable.”
“Isabel!” Grace cried, not knowing whether to laugh or reprove the child for such a remark. She knew the most unexpected things about life.
As usual, the reproof slid off Isabel like water off a duck. “You’ve never said anything about your husband, and I just wondered about him, that’s all. I’m sorry he died.” She lowered her head, staring at the items on the table. “Do you—” She stopped.
“Do I what?” Grace prompted, wondering what the child wanted to ask.
“Do you ever get lonely, Mrs. Cheval?”
Lonely? Grace closed her eyes, a heavy tightness in her chest. “Sometimes.”
“Me, too.”
Grace opened her eyes and looked at the child. Isabel was still standing with her head bent, hair falling over her face, shoulders slumped forward. She reached out and pushed the hair out of the child’s eyes. “Everyone gets lonely, Isabel.”
“I know.” The little girl paused, then said in a hushed, confiding sort of murmur, “I didn’t mean it, you know, what I said.” Seeing Grace’s puzzled look, she added, “I don’t hate you.”
“I’m glad, because I did mean what I said. I like you very much.”
“You do?” Isabel grinned at her suddenly, showing one of those mercurial changes of mood so like her father. “Then you won’t make me do embroidery any more, will you?”
“No,” Grace answered at once, “if you stop complaining about having to learn German.”
Isabel made a face, then capitulated, her expression brightening. “I suppose it would help me understand Weber’s operas better, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, it would,” Grace agreed, laughing, wishing she’d thought to point that out at the beginning. “Very true.”
Isabel pointed to a blue velvet sack on the table. “What’s that?”
“Ah.” Grace put aside the gold tassel and picked up the sack. She untied the drawstring and pulled out a man’s white glove, holding it out to Isabel. “This glove belonged to Franz Liszt.”
“No, it didn’t!” Isabel said, but she took the glove. “You’re just teasing me.”
“I’m not. I acquired it last year when he gave some concerts in Paris. He lives there, you know.”
“Did he tear off the glove like they say he does before he plays?”
“Yes, he did. I was playing in the orchestra, and I saw him do it.”
“You played with Liszt? Truly?”
“Yes. Three times.”
That impressed Isabel, Grace could tell.
“I saw a portrait of him once,” Isabel said. “Is he as handsome as he looks?”
“Yes, quite handsome. Probably the handsomest man I have ever met.”
“Liszt is not more handsome than Papa!”
“That’s my loyal girl!”
The sound of Dylan’s voice caused both Grace and Isabel to look up as he walked through the open doors of the music room, surprising both of them with his unexpected appearance.
“You’re back,” Isabel said, but this time, she did not go running to him. Instead, she turned her back on him and sat down at the table, arms folded. “You said you weren’t coming back until late.”
“I changed my mind.” His gaze slid away from his daughter, and Grace saw something in his countenance she would never have expected to see. A hint of guilt. She began to smile.
He caught that smile, and he did not like it. He frowned back at her, looking quite defensive all of a sudden. “My appointments finished earlier than I expected,” he told her. “That’s all.”
Grace wanted to point out that neither she nor Isabel had asked him for an explanation. “Of course,” she said, her smile widening. “Perfectly understandable.”
He did not like being teased about this, Grace could tell. He turned away and pulled off his coat, tossing it over a chair. He moved to the piano and stood leaning over the keys, scanning the sheets of his music that were scattered across the polished walnut surface.
She was not, she told herself, the sort of woman who ogled men. But that did not stop her from taking a moment to indulge in a long, slow perusal down the length of his body, appreciating the view. His white linen shirt, black-and-gold striped waistcoat, and black trousers only served to emphasize his powerful physique. She let her gaze linger on the tight fit of those trousers. A woman would have to be blind not to appreciate a view like that.
Do you ever get lonely, Mrs. Cheval?
Lonely? Lord, she ached with it.
She remembered him standing half-naked in his bedchamber. Oh, yes, she remembered it too well. Every line of muscle and sinew on the hard, wide wall of his chest and shoulders was still quite vivid in her mind. The bruises had only enhanced the appeal of his masculine strength and power.
Grace studied him standing by the piano, and she reminded herself that she could not go down this road, imagining his naked body. If she did, she knew what the result would be. The idea of how it would feel to touch his bare skin and have him touch hers sent waves of that honeyed warmth through her.
She forced herself to look away, and she returned her attention to her scrapbook, opening it.
“I thought,” Dylan said, “I would come home for a bit and spend time with my daughter before she goes to bed.”
Grace glanced at Isabel, who was still sitting with her arms folded, her lips pressed together, not looking at all ready to forgive him.
Grace glanced over at Dylan to find he was looking at her, not at the child. What did he think? That she was going to jump in and smooth everything over for him? If that was what he thought, he was sorely mistaken. He was on his own here. She looked away and began to rummage through the things on the table as if far more interested in her scrapbook than his paternal difficulties.
It was a full minute before he crossed the room to his daughter. He knelt beside her chair. “I thought we could play duets. Unless she would rather bash my piano over my head?”
Grace looked up just in time to see that smile curve his mouth. Any female with half a heart would forgive him anything.
It was wasted on Isabel, however, because she wouldn’t turn her head and look at him. She sniffed. “I couldn’t lift a piano,” she muttered.
“Good thing. Do you know how much that Broadwood Grand cost me?”
That did it. Isabel began to laugh, unable to resist all her father’s devastating charm any longer.
“So, are you going to play duets with me?” He began to tickle her. “Or are you going to pout some more?”
“I’m not pouting.” She turned her head, saw his smile, and laughed harder. “Oh, Papa!”
“Excellent!” He stood up and pulled out Isabel’s chair. “Go,” he said and pointed at the ceiling.
The child stood up, looking at him in puzzlement. “Go where?”
“Go get your sheet music. You don’t think I would play any other duets but yours, do you?”
Isabel laughed, slid off her chair, and was out of the room quick as lightning.
“She was far too easy on you,” Grace told him.
“You would have been much more stern with me, I know.” Dylan moved around Isabel’s chair to stand beside Grace’s.
“Much,” she agreed, but she did not look up at him. Instead, she grabbed the jar of glue and pretended to be wholly absorbed in pasting the gold tassel of her ball gown onto the page. “I would have truly made you suffer.”
“How long, Grace?” His hand, still marked by bruises, came into her line of vision. He leaned closer to her and touched the tassel fringe. “How long will you make me suffer?”
She watched his hand toying with the silky gold strands, and the memories of those fingertips brushing her skin sent a rush of warmth through her entire body in an instant. He leaned down, closer to her. “How much suffering does a man have to endure?”
He wasn’t even touching her, for heaven’s sake, and her body was on fire. She closed her eyes. No woman with sense would ever become entangled with Dylan Moore. She said it three times before opening her eyes.
He had left off playing with the tassel fringe. Instead, he was holding the white glove in his hand, his thumb rubbing the black silk threads of another composer’s embroidered initials. He straightened beside her chair. “Liszt gave you this, did he? If you were in orchestra, he probably threw it in your lap.”
He must have heard a good deal of her conversation with Isabel. “Yes, he did throw it in my lap.” She looked up at him with a provoking smile. “Is that so surprising?”
“God, no.” He paused, his hand tightening into a fist around the glove, such a masculine contrast to the pure white fabric and satiny monogram. “You knew why he did it, of course?”
“Of course I knew,” she said, widening her smile, playing with fire.
There was a long pause. “Did you accept his invitation?”
The idea that she might have done angered him, Grace realized. She could bedevil him, too, it seemed. “That is a very impertinent question,” she said primly.
“Answer it anyway.” He leaned closer to her. “Did you?”
Isabel’s running footsteps thumped on the stairs, saving her from having to answer that question. Dylan straightened, tossed the glove back onto the table, and moved away from Grace’s side before his daughter reentered the room.
“Grace,” he said over his shoulder as he walked toward the Broadwood Grand, “will you come and turn the pages for us?”
She glanced at Isabel, who was looking at her father with such adoration that she could not refuse. She joined them at the grand piano, taking the proper place at Dylan’s right, slightly behind him. Isabel propped the sheet music of her duet on the music stand and opened it.
“One, and two, and three,” Dylan counted, and they began. The tempo was fast and the tune lively. Between turning pages for them, Grace watched their hands roam over the keyboard, his so large and Isabel’s so small, side by side. They might have been playing piano together ever since the child was old enough to sit up, as beautifully as they did it.
Even without a practice run, they only made two mistakes, both from colliding as the music forced their hands to cross. Grace turned the last page, they pounded their last chords, then stopped. Both of them began to laugh. Grace applauded. “Bravo!” she said, laughing with them.
“Excellent duet,” Dylan told his daughter. He grabbed her suddenly around the waist, and she shrieked with laughter as he placed her on his lap. “Let’s play it this way,” he said. “You take half of my part of the duet, and I’ll take half of your part.”
“Papa!” she cried, still laughing even as she protested. “That won’t work!”
“Why not?”
She turned her head to look up at the face behind her. “We can’t play a duet that way!”
“Who says so?” Dylan asked. “Let’s try it.”
They did, and it was such a mess that Grace didn’t need to turn any pages for them. Father and daughter gave it up, for Isabel was laughing too hard to play anything coherently.
At that moment, Molly came into the room, and Isabel’s laughter faded at once, knowing the nanny’s arrival meant an end to all the fun. “Begging your pardon, sir,” Molly said with a curtsy, “but it is Miss Isabel’s bedtime.”
“Oh, no!” Isabel cried, turning on her father’s lap to lean her cheek against his chest. “Oh, Papa!” she cried and threw her arms around his neck. “Not yet, can’t we play again? I’m having so much fun. Please.”
A man would have to be made of stone not to be moved. Grace watched him close his eyes, watched his lips tighten, watched him reach up behind his neck and catch her wrists as if to extricate himself. Then, to Grace’s surprise, he changed his mind, wrapped his arms around his daughter, and turned his head to bury his face against her hair.
Grace blinked and looked away. Perhaps Isabel had been right, and she was the one who had been wrong. Perhaps men could change. Some men. Sometimes.
After a moment, he pulled back and stood up with Isabel in his arms. “Little girls have to go to bed because they need their sleep,” he said. “Hush now,” he admonished as she began to protest. He started for the doors, carrying her in his arms. “There’s plenty of time for more duets.”
Grace and Molly followed him up the stairs to the nursery and into Isabel’s bedroom. Molly pulled back the sheets, and Dylan placed his child in bed, then pulled the sheets up around her and sat down on the edge of the mattress. His large frame seemed to dwarf the small bed and the even smaller child.
Grace watched them from a few feet away as Molly moved about the room, putting things away. From where she stood slightly behind Dylan, Grace could not see his face, but she could see Isabel’s, and she observed the child’s suddenly pensive expression.
“Papa?” Isabel looked up at him with a frown. “Are you going out tonight?”
A second passed, then two. “Yes.”
Isabel pulled one arm out from beneath the sheets and grabbed his hand. “Do you have to go?”
“I have engagements, things to do.”
“Things like what?”
Grace saw him shift his weight on the mattress, but then he leaned down to kiss Isabel’s nose. “What do you care?” he teased. “You’ll be asleep.”
To Grace’s surprise, Isabel did not make any more attempts to discuss it. She gave a little nod and let go of his hand, still frowning abstractedly. Dylan rose to his feet, moved the child’s arm back under the sheets, then tucked her in. “Good night, little one,” he murmured and pulled the counterpane up to her chin.
Isabel did not reply, nor did she try to argue with her father about this matter any further. That made Grace a bit suspicious. She watched for a moment, but Isabel stared up at the ceiling, clearly lost in her own thoughts. Grace would have given a great deal to know what was going on in that child’s clever mind. Whatever it was meant trouble. Grace was sure of it.
Chapter 13
Grace and Dylan left Isabel in Molly’s care and departed from the nursery together. Since he intended to go out, she expected him to take leave of her at the second floor and go to his room to change, but to her surprise, he did not. Instead, he continued down to the ground floor with her.
“Do you intend to work?” she asked, gesturing to the things she had left on the table as they entered the music room. “If so, I can move my project into the drawing room.”
“No, leave it. I am going out.”
He made no move to do so, however. When she returned to
the table, he followed her, but he did not sit down. As she resumed work on her scrapbook, he circled the table, studying the fragments of her life that were scattered over the white tablecloth.
Grace watched him from beneath her lashes as he moved around the table. He was the most unpredictable man. His moods shifted in an instant, and he could do the most unaccountable things. Tonight, for instance. If someone had told her this afternoon as he was practically running out of the nursery that tonight he would tuck his daughter into bed, she wouldn’t have believed it. If someone had told her he would feel guilty about anything he did, she would have called that person a dreamer.
She lowered her gaze to his hands as he paused across from her, watching as he brushed his fingers across something small and glittering gold. He picked it up. “A hairpin?”
She stared at the thin bit of gold wire in his fingers. “At one time, I had a whole box of them,” she said. “I had to sell them, but I kept one.”
“Why keep one? And why put it in your scrapbook?”
“The pins were a gift from my mother when I turned seventeen. I kept one because I did not—” She broke off and swallowed hard, not looking up, keeping her gaze focused on his hand and the hairpin. “I did not want to forget.”
He took another step around the table, moving closer to her. “Forget what?”
He halted to her right, standing a little behind her. She forced her gaze up, turning her head to look into his face. He was studying her, his mouth a grave, unsmiling line as he waited for an answer, as if this were a matter of vital importance to him, when it couldn’t possibly be. “I did not want to forget my mother, my childhood, where I came from. My home and my family.”
Her voice broke, and she looked away from him, staring at the items on the table. Her whole life was here, all of it, in this book and this little pile of stuff. This and memories were all she had left. It all blurred and ran together before her eyes into one unholy mess of a life.
“Grace, don’t cry.”
How on earth could he know she was getting stupid and weepy? He could not see her face from that angle, standing a bit behind her like that. “I’m not crying.”
Guilty Series Page 45