Outshine (House of Oak Book 5)

by Nichole Van

  He let the thought dangle.

  “I shall ponder it, my lord,” she finally said. “Perhaps it would make me seem less odd in company?”

  Odd? He found her refreshingly delightful. How typical of the world to demean the parts of her that he found most interesting.

  “I would call you an Original, Miss Lovejoy,” he said.

  “A clever twisting of perception, to be sure.”

  Silence hung.

  Fossi shook her head, as if mentally dismissing their topic.

  “To return to your original question, my lord, I wish to use my new wealth to start a school for girls. A real school,” she hastened to clarify, “not a glorified academy for embroidery and bonnet decoration. A place for those of my sex who are intelligent and wish to better their lives through extensive education.”

  Her eyes dared him to laugh at her.

  “That is an excellent use for your wealth, Miss Lovejoy.” He nodded solemnly.

  Of course, Foster Lovejoy would use her money for a good cause. It was so innate to her, as natural as breathing.

  He found himself admiring her even more for it.

  Admiration. Warmth. Tenderness.

  What had gotten into him today?

  “You do not censure my desires, my lord?” She mistook his silence.

  “No.”

  “You do not find them fanciful and silly? An aberration to my sex?”

  He was quite sure her father and brothers—perhaps with the exception of Will—would think so.

  But not him. “No.”

  She looked away, as if the dream were too large to contain, and she didn’t know how to process it. Her fingers twisted around each other again.

  “I think the idea to start a school as lovely and magnificent as its owner.”

  The compliment dropped from his mouth, startling even him with the depth of its sincerity.

  She started and then whirled her head back to him, obviously trying to parse his words into meaning.

  “That was more flirting, Miss Lovejoy,” he said, attempting to cover the slip.

  Apparently, his reply was correct.

  “Oh!”

  Fossi . . . smiled.

  A brilliant, delighted thing that lit her face and captured all the shades of the forest in her eyes—earthy brown with flecks of mossy green and summer gold.

  She was quite . . . transformed.

  A ferocious blush followed swiftly at its heels.

  “It is this, Miss Lovejoy,” he said. “You are apprehensive and worried about the scope of your dreams. But I say—”

  He paused for effect.

  It did not go unappreciated. Her gaze bounced back to his.

  “If your dreams do not terrify you, then they are not yet sufficiently grand.” He smiled sincerely. “You should be genuinely frightened by the desires of your heart. Only then will you know you are reaching high enough.”

  Her eyes flared and she sucked in a gasp of air.

  It was a good maxim. He remembered reading it on a motivational poster at university years ago.

  “And you?” she asked in return. “What dreams could possibly scare you?”

  He stiffened. Had she known that question was like an arrow through the chest? Was he so transparent?

  He could never maintain the upper hand for long with her. She always found a way to outshine him.

  Suddenly, his own skin felt too tight.

  He walked over to the window, staring out across the manicured gardens.

  Silence.

  “Sometimes—” he finally began. Cleared his throat. “Sometimes there is not enough money in the world to purchase what we want most.”

  Unbidden his eyes drifted toward the wooden box on his desktop.

  “Ah.” A universe of understanding in one syllable.

  He continued, “A wise friend once told me that if money can solve a problem, then it is not truly a problem.”

  “Ah.” Again. Laced with humor this time. “Though I would hazard that only someone who had never known genuine want would say such a thing.”

  Daniel snorted. “True.”

  Silence reigned, this time more comfortable.

  The events in his study continued to haunt Daniel hours later . . .

  He decided to do whatever it took to draw Fossi out more—flirt, tease, cajole—and blamed this decision on his innate sense of fairness.

  Someone as intelligent and honorable as Foster Lovejoy deserved to live life fully.

  Yes. That was it.

  He pondered this as he watched Fossi throughout dinner. She had protested when he asked her to dine with them that evening.

  First she cited her lack of appropriate clothing, which he dismissed. Then she pointedly remarked that a servant did not dine with her employer. But as Garvis and Linwood’s man of affairs were dining with them too, that argument didn’t take either. In the end, she had agreed to join everyone for dinner.

  She had changed into what Daniel recognized as her nicest dress. It was somewhat threadbare and dreadfully out of date, but Daniel didn’t care. It was Fossi herself who captured his attention.

  She asked questions and offered intelligent comments throughout the meal. Over roast beef and creamed peas, Daniel, Timothy and Fossi found themselves in a deep discussion regarding the strength of frequency waves relative to sound in the new locomotive industry. Wherever the conversation went, Daniel found himself watching Fossi.

  After dinner, he stared as she followed the other ladies from the room leaving the men to their port. Which basically meant Daniel regarded her backside as she left the room.

  Such behavior was . . . unlike him.

  Though he had admired the view.

  He managed to shake such thoughts until Arthur, Timothy and himself joined the ladies in the drawing room a short while later.

  Jasmine and Marianne were laughing over some quip or another, Fossi looking on with a small smile that didn’t quite touch her eyes. Daniel sensed Fossi’s unease. She didn’t feel at home in these surroundings.

  He hoped that changed.

  And then he spent a solid five minutes wondering why he cared so much that Fossi felt at home with his friends.

  What was this woman doing to him?

  “How are preparations coming at Whitmoor House, Daniel?” Marianne’s voice broke through his reverie.

  “Pardon?”

  “Preparations for your annual harvest festival. I assume your housekeeper has them already underway?” Marianne leaned forward as she spoke. “We received our own invitation just yesterday.”

  “Heavens, Marianne. The festival must be a full eight weeks off.” Arthur Knight sat back in his chair, stretching his legs and nursing a glass of brandy. “Surely Daniel shouldn’t have to discuss the festivities for at least another month.”

  Marianne laughed good-naturedly and patted her husband’s knee. “Not everyone is as opposed to celebrations as yourself, my dear.”

  “Daniel is, I daresay,” Arthur muttered behind his glass of brandy, “particularly after everything that transpired—”

  “Yes, tell us how the preparations are going, Daniel.” Timothy interrupted Arthur, somehow sending the man a quelling look without even glancing in his direction. It was quite the feat of aristocratic breeding.

  Of course, it was too little, too late. Tension had flooded Daniel at Arthur’s words. Grief and guilt washed in behind in equal measure.

  Jasmine, bless her, watched him with eyes that said I understand.

  Daniel suppressed a grimace and downed his own glass of brandy in one throat-searing shot. “The festival preparations are going ahead as planned. There will be sack races and leg wrestling and a feast for the tenants, followed by a harvest ball in the evening.”

  “The harvest festival at Whitmoor House is the event of the season in northern Gloucestershire,” Marianne said to Fossi by way of explanation. “I, for one, am excited to attend every year.”

  Arthur opened his mo
uth as if to say something more. Daniel had a good guess as to what it would be.

  None of them wanted to think or talk about Alice tonight.

  Marianne noticed too and instantly morphed into management mode.

  “Do you play, Miss Lovejoy?” she asked Fossi, gesturing toward the gleaming grand piano in the corner.

  Fossi blinked. “I-I play only a little,” she stammered.

  Silence hung for a moment, awkward and laden.

  A crimson blush flooded up Fossi’s cheeks. “I could sing, however, if you would like,” she murmured into the hush.

  “That would be delightful. I should enjoy that.” Jasmine sagged against Timothy. She appeared less tired today but still far from her buoyant, animated self.

  “Excellent.” Marianne bustled to her feet, heading toward the piano. “I will play for you.”

  “Marianne plays excessively well,” Timothy said, a wry smile touching his lips, “so it is fortunate that you do not, Miss Lovejoy. Nearly all others suffer in comparison.”

  “Timothy.” Marianne shot her brother a most aggrieved look.

  “Do not look askance at me, sister dearest. ’Tis only the truth.”

  “Agreed,” Jasmine said, suppressing a yawn. And then realized she might have been rude. “Not to say that you don’t play well, too, Miss Lovejoy—”

  “I play quite ill indeed.” Fossi took a fortifying breath as she stood. “I shall do my best to not disappoint with my singing, my lady.”

  Fossi joined Marianne at the piano, both women rifling through a large stack of music, their bent heads nearly touching.

  It struck Daniel how natural it felt to have Fossi here. Almost familiar. Like she belonged with them somehow even despite her apparent unease.

  He was hesitant to study the emotion too much. Perhaps it was because, unbeknownst to her, she now shared their burden of maintaining the time portal.

  “This one,” Fossi murmured after a moment, pulling a book from the pile.

  Marianne looked at it, a frown creasing her brow. “Are you certain?”

  “Of course.”

  Marianne raised her eyebrows and then shrugged and sat at the keyboard, the music before her.

  Fossi positioned herself in front of the piano, hands clasped at her waist. Her position with the piano at her back announcing that this was a piece she already had memorized.

  Marianne studied the music for a moment and then launched into a series of scales and trills. Marianne was truly a gifted pianist. The music sounded vaguely familiar but Daniel struggled to place it.

  Mozart, perhaps.

  Like everyone else in the room, he reclined casually, an ear angled toward Foster Lovejoy’s performance. Hands at the ready to politely clap when she was finished.

  It was a standard routine for any informal entertainment among friends.

  For Fossi’s part, she focused on a point above all their heads.

  And then she opened her mouth and began to sing.

  Bloody hell!

  Daniel was quite sure he would remember the shock of the moment fifty years on.

  She was . . . astonishing.

  He instantly sat up, back rigid.

  It was . . . inexpressible. Her voice . . . a coloratura soprano of such clarity and brilliance—

  She was . . . no, he was transformed.

  It was Mozart.

  The Queen of the Night aria from The Magic Flute, to be precise.

  It was notoriously difficult . . . legendary, in fact. Most sopranos attempted but failed to master the impossibly high trilling arpeggios.

  Fossi sailed through them with the blinding ease of a true virtuoso.

  Daniel had heard it performed before . . . on the London stage by opera singers of international renown.

  And they all paled in comparison to Foster Lovejoy, spinster mathematician, late of Kilminster, Dorset.

  Shabbily dressed . . . looking so much like that little gray mouse he had first supposed her to be.

  And yet, the sound coming from inside her . . . she was anything but a mouse. A lioness, perhaps.

  Words failed him.

  Once again, she had utterly whitmoored him.

  She sang with her whole body—

  Correction.

  She sang with her entire soul.

  It was that point in the opera where the Queen of Night, in a fit of vengeful rage, shoves a knife in her daughter’s hand and threatens to disown her unless she assassinates a rival.

  The German words poured from Fossi, the anger and fury of a denied Queen.

  Outcast be forever/Forsaken be forever . . .

  Voice soaring with crystalline purity, breathtaking in sheer ability.

  How could shy, retiring Fossi be the originator of such exquisite sound?

  Shattered be forever . . .

  Like that moment earlier in his study, it was a vision straight to the very center of her. The realization it was a vibrant place of color and emotion and so very . . . alive.

  This was the woman who found magnificence in numbers.

  Emotion pricked at the back of Daniel’s throat. Raw. Aching.

  She drew it from him . . . pain, longing, sorrow and wove it into treasured beauty.

  She sounded the last note and Marianne finished with a few flourishes.

  The silence was deafening.

  Jasmine’s sobs intruded, face pressed into her husband’s chest.

  Arthur wiped a tear from his cheek.

  Even Timothy appeared moved which . . . he was Lord Linwood, for heaven’s sake. Icebergs had been accused of showing more emotion than Linwood.

  “That was truly exquisite, Miss Lovejoy.” Timothy said, voice gruff as he pulled his crying wife closer. “Thank you.”

  Jasmine bobbed her head. Yes.

  “Well.” Marianne dabbed at her own wet cheeks with a handkerchief. “I know what I am going to request every evening for as long as Miss Lovejoy is here.”

  Fossi blushed, twisting her fingers together, eyes everywhere but on any of them.

  “You are too kind,” she murmured.

  “No,” Timothy snorted. “Jasmine and Marianne, perhaps. But I have never been accused of excessive kindness.”

  “Indeed.” Daniel found his voice. “That was . . . remarkable in every way, Miss Lovejoy.”

  His praise simply deepened her blush.

  “Who was your tutor?” he asked.

  It went unsaid that she had to have received training. One was not simply born with the ability to sing the Queen of the Night aria anymore than one was born able to paint the Mona Lisa or formulate a theory of gravity. Such a skill required a combination of natural talent and years of dedicated learning.

  Fossi knotted her fingers further. “My mother was classically trained, and she taught me. My father”—here she paused, swallowed—“my father does not approve of my vocal theatrics, as he calls them. I am allowed to sing in church, but I have missed being able to sing more openly.”

  “A brilliant mathematician and soprano virtuoso.” Marianne shook her head in wonder.

  “They are quite linked, you know.” Fossi hastened to explain. “Music is merely mathematics in practical application.”

  “If you insist.”

  “Truly. Harmonics adhere to strict fractional rules. Why Fourier himself was the first to postulate that sound is nothing more than a wave nearly a quarter century ago.” Fossi’s face opened again, lit with earnest intelligence. Daniel would never tire of seeing her thus. “So much is contained with a single note. For example, when I sing the high B-flat in the Queen of the Night, you can hear the corresponding overtone an octave higher which would result in a wave height—”

  “Heavens, Miss Lovejoy. You bury us all with your knowledge,” Arthur said, voice strained.

  Fossi instantly clamped her lips shut—pulling the plug on all that lovely vivacity—a blush making another appearance.

  Damn, Arthur.

  Daniel considered the man a friend
, but his manners could be off-putting at times.

  “Your brilliance is a thing of beauty,” Daniel countered. “I, for one, thank you profoundly for having shared it with us.”

  Of course, his words only served to move her blush from simply red to scarlet.

  Her eyes flitted to his, showing him another tantalizing glimpse of the beauty that lay within.

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  They insisted she sing more for them. Her glorious voice too rare to not be heard. Every song lit Daniel’s world in brilliant color, setting his heart thumping.

  And again, at the end of the evening, his eyes followed her as she retired from the room.

  Chapter 13

  The blue bedroom

  Kinningsley, Herefordshire

  In the early hours of August 12, 1828

  Several hours later, Fossi was quite sure she would never sleep again.

  She shut Frankenstein with a firm snap and tossed it on the bed beside her.

  The coal popped in the fireplace, sending sparks up the flue.

  Fossi flinched, gripping the counterpane tightly.

  The descriptions of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster had her jumping at shadows.

  Yes. Sleep would definitely be elusive now.

  In her defense, Fossi had only opened Frankenstein in an ill-guided effort to banish Daniel from her mind.

  Daniel . . .

  The image of his shocked face when she first opened her mouth in song. The almost painful burst of joy that washed her in its wake.

  His reaction had been unnerving.

  Granted, that described nearly her entire day.

  I think the idea . . . as lovely and magnificent as its owner.

  His words would not leave her.

  To think she had achieved another item on her list so soon—flirt with a gentleman.

  She didn’t know whether to bless Jasmine for her insight or curse her for her meddling. It went without saying that Jasmine had asked Daniel to teach her how to flirt.

  A man like Daniel Ashton did not just take a fancy to a woman like Foster Lovejoy and flirt with her. It spoke volumes to the level of friendship between Daniel and the Linwoods that he would listen to Jasmine’s request.