“Oh.” She shifted to the side, putting a small space between them. “That is rather clever.”
“I do have those moments occasionally.” His fingers moved slowly over the keys, testing their pitches.
“Do you want to play a duet?”
“No, no. I only know a little. I wanted to learn when I was a child, but I wasn’t permitted.”
Why was it his hands were so intriguing? Whether folding a scarf or dancing over an instrument, she loved to watch their deliberate movements. Surely they would move with the same certainty over a woman’s skin.
Her toes had not yet managed to uncurl. Desire threatened to slip its bounds, and she had to hold it back. This pianoforte, glorious as it was, came as a gift from a friend. The man whose leg brushed against hers was a friend.
A friend who had sent lavender flowers to a pretty woman a decade Eleanor’s junior.
Her toes relaxed.
“Why were you not allowed to play?” She sounded credibly calm and curious.
“Future dukes shouldn’t be wasting their time learning the pianoforte, or so my father told me.” He played an arpeggio, looking pleased at the sound thus created. “I was encouraged to play instead with lead soldiers or a globe.”
“Better to become vainglorious than musical, then.” When he laughed, Eleanor added, “I am beginning to wonder if dukes can do whatever they like after all, as you insist.”
He shoved back with one foot, putting the small bench off-balance. “Of course they can. Or I can. I couldn’t then, because I wasn’t a duke yet.”
She braced herself with a hand against the nameboard above the keys. “If you would like to play now, we could manage a simple duet. What do you think?”
Thump went the front legs of the bench, settling squarely again on the carpet. “I’ve no doubt you can manage your part and mine together. What shall I plunk out?”
“Put your hand here…just here. That’s right.” She guided his hand. It was broad and strong, and the simple touch of skin to skin made her bite her lip. Friendly. Casual. “Press with the thumb and the small finger.”
“Ellie! I know the names of the notes.” He drew his hand away, settling it where she indicated.
She blushed, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Thumb on C, then. And I’ll take the melody.”
It was old and familiar, the song she chose. It had come to her mind as a simple one, one that would let Nicholas key with his left hand while she carried the tune.
But it carried her instead, its steps lilting and dropping, as she remembered the words of the country song.
I sowed the seeds of love,
It was all in the spring…
So she had once, and she’d then lost.
“The willow tree will twist,” she whispered, “and the willow tree will twine.” Her left hand lifted to the keys, then she drew it back.
“It is a beautiful piece,” said Nicholas. “Will you sing it?”
“It’s melodramatic. A tune from the country, about love and loss. Aren’t they all?” She tried to laugh.
“Sing it anyway, Ellie. I haven’t heard you sing for years. Here, I’ll get out of your way so you can play properly.”
She thought he would stand—but he didn’t. He only pressed over to one side of the bench. When Eleanor slid to its center to take both parts of the song, they were side by side again, so close that her left elbow was almost pinned between them as her hand rested on the keys.
Shyness seized her. Singing was even more private than playing, and she had got out of the habit of both. Yet she wanted to sing for him too, as she’d often done before they were grown and the business of being a man and a woman, a duke and another man’s wife, had driven a distance between them.
She wanted to sing. She wanted to sing this song.
She began quietly, slowly, with the lines she’d recalled first. Her voice felt tight. She had not limbered it in song for a long time.
“I sowed the seeds of love, it was all in the spring,
In April, May, and June likewise when the small birds they did sing.”
“You can tell it’s a country song,” Nicholas observed, “because the birds sing. London birds only cough and choke on coal dust.”
She caught him in the ribs with her left elbow, winning a laugh from him before she sang on.
“My garden planted was with flowers everywhere;
I’d not the liberty to choose the flower I loved dear.”
As she sang the next lines—rejecting the lily, the pink, the violet offered by the song’s gardener—she prickled with awareness. He was beside her, watching her, listening to her. To play and sing like this, honestly and with passion, was to bare herself. In a way unfathomable with anyone else, anyone she knew less well.
“For in June there’s a red rosebud, and that is the flower for me,
For oft I have plucked the red rosebud till I gained the willow tree.”
“You don’t like buds, though,” Nicholas said quietly. “You like the big roses. The redder the better, with golden pollen at their hearts.”
Her fingers paused on the keys. “You must stop interrupting. You are marring the wonderful musical experience I’m attempting to create for you.”
“Apologies, apologies. Play on, my lady.”
So she did.
“The willow tree will twist and the willow tree will twine,
I wish I were in that young man's arms that once had the heart of mine.”
He was sitting so close to her, too close for ease. As she sang, she wished he would interrupt her again.
“…in the midst of a rosebud there grows a sharp thorn there.”
He was quivering with suppressed words, one knee jouncing up and down.
She lifted her hands from the keys. “Go ahead, say it. You’re about to fall over with eagerness.”
“A rosebud with a thorn in it? What a monstrosity. The center of a bud is the last place a rose would grow a thorn. This song offers bad botanical teaching.”
“What on earth do you do at a musical party when you are required to be silent while the musicians perform?”
“I usually don’t listen.”
“How lowering. I can stop playing anytime.” Please, please, don’t tell me you want me to stop playing.
“I believe that you can. You have already done so several times. But please don’t stop again on my account.”
She smiled. “Very well.
“I told him I did take no care until I felt the smart,
For oft I’ve plucked at the red rosebud till it pierced me to the heart.
I’ll get me a posy of hyssop—”
“What is hyssop?
“It’s a…sort of minty thing. It’s symbolic of becoming pure, I think.”
And then she finished the song:
“…no other flower I’ll touch,
That all the world may plainly see I loved one flower too much…
Come, all you false young men who have left me here to complain,
The grass that once was trampled underfoot, give it time, it will rise again.”
She indulged in a little trill at the finish. What a treat to play keys of such fine ivory.
Nicholas touched the lowest key, but did not press it. “You may insist you want a proper husband, Ellie, but you play and sing as if there’s a scandal in you waiting to get out.”
Oh, if he only knew the decadent twists of her thoughts. “Wasn’t my first marriage enough of a scandal?”
“Was it? Yet you wish to have him back.”
She turned her head to look at him, so close they were almost eye to eye. “What, you mean the bit about the ‘young man’s arms’ and him once having my heart and all that?”
His jaw tightened. His nod was short.
He had no idea about her heart; he never had. She adopted a dismissive tone. “That was only a song, Nicholas.”
It was
n’t, of course, and they both knew it. Palmer had taken her in his arms, and she’d once given him a piece of her heart. If he had been who she imagined him to be, he would have it still. She had drawn the veil before her own eyes, willing and wild.
But Palmer wasn’t the one about whom she’d been singing.
“Give it time, it will rise again,” Nicholas mused. “Sounds rather lewd, that.”
She choked, drawn at once from her willow-wound thoughts. “It’s meant to be a profound image of hope and resilience.”
“If that’s what you have to tell yourself so you don’t blush while you sing it, go right ahead.”
She laughed. “You can’t make me blush anymore.”
“I should like to try.”
It was difficult to hold his gaze, but impossible to look away. Was he joking, or…what did he mean? Her fingers tingled, a sweet echo of the twist of awareness through her body. How dark his eyes were, and how shadowed, and how she wanted them fixed upon her.
She moistened her lips. “What…what do you mean by that?”
“I would see you happy all the time, Ellie. Happy and blushing and laughing.”
Oh. “That sounds pleasant,” she replied. “Though not realistic.”
“Which,” he asked quietly, “is your favorite part of the song?”
“Oh…it’s difficult to say. It has a pretty melody, I think. But if you’re asking about the words, I don’t care for the verse about the gardener, and how the singer asks him to pick the flowers.”
“It’s meant to be a profound image,” he mimicked, “of hope and resilience.”
“It’s not, though. The gardener picks flowers that stand for qualities no one much cares about. Violets for modesty, lilies for purity, pinks for…I don’t know what.”
He looked thoughtful, breaking their gazes to fiddle with the hinge of the music stand. “What does lavender represent?”
“It’s not in the song.”
“I know. I was only wondering.”
She could guess why. “It means the same sort of quality. Good qualities, I mean. Like purity and silence. And modesty, maybe?”
“Good qualities, you say?” The corner of his mouth curved. “You just said no one cares for them.”
She lifted her hands. “I shouldn’t have said that. They are fine qualities. Undervalued qualities.”
“You and I don’t undervalue them, though. We both want them in a spouse, do we not?”
She looked at her hands, ringless. They weren’t as smooth as they’d been when she was younger. They were thinner now, and the knuckles were strong.
She did want those qualities in a spouse. She did.
But she didn’t want only those qualities.
“Then,” Nicholas added, “you chose the red rose for love. How did it go? In June there’s a red rosebud, and that is the flower for me?”
“That is what the song says. I was singing a song. That’s all.”
“Right, the song. Well. It’s May, so you haven’t long to wait.”
She didn’t bother protesting again.
He fell silent—then blurted in a rush, “Why now, Ellie? Why do you want to marry again? Men are beasts. Bears and wolves and…oh, something dirty and careless.”
This seemed ludicrous, sitting beside him as he was impeccably dressed, skin clean and lightly scented with spice, touching the ivory keys as lightly as if he feared to wake them.
“A wild boar, maybe?” she replied. “You are harsh upon your sex.”
“I just don’t know what a proper husband would have to offer a woman like you.”
“What, precisely, is ‘a woman like me’?” She moved closer to him again with the excuse of smoothing her skirts. “I probably shouldn’t ask. I probably don’t want to know what you mean by that.”
“Nothing bad. Only good. What I mean is that you’re a woman with everything you need. Independence. Enough money to live. Friends, family, intelligence. A damned fine pianoforte.”
“But I don’t have a family,” she said. “And that’s what I want. Sidney and Mariah are creating their own family now. Aunt is a nice enough title, but it’s only a courtesy.”
“You want to marry so you can have a baby?”
I want to be loved. “I would be glad to have a baby.” It hadn’t worked out with Palmer, more than once. Sadly. Each time, there was another reason for him to drink and flee.
“You don’t really want a husband, then. You want a stud.”
“Remember that look you said I gave you? When whatever you’re saying is foolishness? Behold, Nicholas. You are on the receiving end of it now.” She paused. With a crash of fingers on keys, she added, “Wait. What you just said is what you want. You want to marry someone who will give you heirs and leave you alone.”
He went very still. After a long moment, he slowly stood. “You are terrifying, Ellie. You see far too much.”
“Is that an admission that I’m right?”
He shook his head, but the curve of his lips made it other than a denial. “Play some more.” He crossed to the long sofa that spanned the space between two windows. “I’m going to close my eyes, but it’s not because I’m bored.”
“Oh? And what am I to think, then, if my presence puts you to sleep?”
“Think that it’s nice.” He sat on the hard seat of the sofa, then leaned to one side, resting against a silk cushion. “It’s nice, hearing you play. Being…”
He was mumbling by then, prostrate with the boneless fatigue of the exhausted.
And what was she to think of that?
She didn’t know. But he wasn’t wrong, altogether. It was…nice. Being here, in this lamplit room, just as if they belonged together. Being right about what he wanted, even as she was unsure about herself.
She had asked for roses, and she had received them: pink roses, admiration. Sent with highest regard. If she had what she asked for, and no more, she ought yet to be satisfied.
Or she ought to ask for more next time.
She shifted to the center of the bench and spread her fingers lightly over the keys. From the stringed heart of the pianoforte, music sounded quiet and sweet.
I sowed the seeds of love…
Chapter 4
Thump. Thump. Thump thump thump thump thump.
Stripped to his shirt-sleeves, Nicholas hit the sandbag again and again. One punch for each day that had passed since he’d fallen asleep to the sound of Ellie playing the pianoforte. One for each night in which he’d slept raggedly again.
For each day he had called on her, only to learn that Barberry had denuded another hothouse in her service.
For each posy he’d sent to Miss Lewis, for each awkward fifteen minutes spent drinking tea under the watchful eye of her mother as she sat in bashful silence.
And some extra blows, quick-fire and sharp, because hitting a suspended pillar of sand wasn’t erasing the confusing twists of the past week. Everything was going just as it ought, yet it all seemed wrong. He couldn’t stop striking until it seemed right again, or until he was too tired to care.
“May I join you, Your Grace?”
Nicholas halted, fists raised and perspiration trickling down his temple, and looked to his side. Lord Killian, an older earl from Ireland who was newly appointed to the House of Lords, was strapping mufflers of wool and leather over his knuckles.
Nicholas caught his breath before answering. “Do you want to box?” He looked at his fists. The bare knuckles were already reddened by the coarse canvas of the sandbag.
“Oh, no, though I thank you. Beating the stuffing out of this bag is sufficient for me.” He stood little more than a foot from Nicholas, adopting the boxing stance: light on the balls of his feet, fists at the ready. With his graying dark hair and impeccable form, he could have been the father of Gentleman Jackson, in whose saloon they now stood.
“I prefer that too.” When the sandbag swung toward Nicholas, he hit it wi
th a quick flurry of jabs that sent it swinging toward Killian. “I don’t come here to fight; I’m here to become stronger.”
Jackson’s saloon was tonnish, and some men paid their dues only for the novelty of standing in a ring with the former champion. Plenty of others came to test their own merits and learn from the ever-patient and cordial Jackson.
They boxed in a dim space with gray walls and high-set windows, a smooth wide-planked wooden floor, and a square-off space for formal fisticuffs. To one side of the room was a scale, with a seat on one side and racks of lead weights to counter. The smells of perspiration and liniment, of wet wool and old metal, pervaded the space.
John Jackson was inevitably present, making a circuit of the area whenever he was not occupied in a private match. He drew up now. “My lord. Your Grace. May I string up another sandbag so you each have your own?”
Nicholas and Killian paused. Met eyes. Said at once, “No, but thank you.”
Jackson was a dark-haired man of the duke’s age, with a strong-boned face and ears like jug handles. Just under six feet tall, he was solid as a stump. Nicholas had boxed with the champion once and had earned himself bruises and a pair of ringing ears. For each blow he absorbed, Jackson countered with enormous force. A man might put all his effort into a headlong rush and still be halted by a single fist.
“Very well,” said the boxer. “No hitting that bag below the belt, now. Use the Broughton rules.” He winked. “Your Grace, would you care to wrap your knuckles?”
“Not today.” Nicholas rotated his fists, loosening his wrists. “I don’t want to soften the blow today.”
When Jackson moved along to check the settings on the scale—two men were trying to weigh themselves at the same time—Lord Killian regarded his wrapped hands. “A man who works to become stronger has a better chance of winning should he have to fight in future. But only if he does not fight when he need not.”
“No doubt.” Not really listening, Nicholas aimed a blow at the sandbag, then followed with a flurry of strikes. Punching from the shoulder, as Jackson taught, holding the rest of himself still.
“Your Grace?” Killian put a flat palm out, halting the sway of the sandbag. “I am being figurative.”
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