Miss Devon's Choice: A Sweet Regency Romance (Branches of Love Book 5)

by Sally Britton

  Rebecca sighed and started toward the hall. When she spoke again, it was to change the subject entirely.

  “Would you come listen to me practice?” she asked. “The concert is tomorrow evening and half the county has been invited. I think every member of the local nobility and gentry will be present.”

  Christian fell into step beside her, clasping his hands behind him as he walked. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure at this moment, carina. I do hope you’ve improved since the last time I heard you on the pianoforte.” He put on an overly severe frown, but instead of laughing, Rebecca crossed her arms before her again, her step quickening.

  “The last time you heard me, I was emotionally compromised. Today will be much better.” As if to prove her point, she put on an artificial smile.

  What happened to the cheerful Rebecca I’ve been coming to know?

  Christian moved swiftly, overtaking her and raising a hand to stop her. When she froze, looking up at him with wide eyes, he offered her his hand. “Rebecca,” he said, rolling the R of her name, savoring the sound of it. “I look forward to it. Truly.”

  After glancing from his expression to his hand, she finally slipped her palm into his. They entered the music room together and he left the door open, to at least keep up the appearance of respectability.

  It took Rebecca but a moment to find her music on the shelves nearest the pianoforte. She spread the sheets out on the music stand before taking her seat at the instrument. Christian picked up a chair and moved it beside the bench. In her current state, he doubted she would welcome him on the bench next to her.

  “Begin whenever you like, Rebecca.”

  She looked at him from the corner of her eye and he finally caught a different expression on her lovely face. Her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed. Skepticism.

  Christian sat back, surprised.

  Rebecca cleared her throat, pushed a loose curl behind her ear, and swallowed twice before daintily put her fingers on the keys. Finally, she assumed the proper posture at the bench.

  Rebecca began to play the same song she had been practicing the first time he heard her play. She wasn’t nearly so accomplished as he on the instrument, but her abilities were fair enough for private performance. She had made it halfway through the first movement when Christian interrupted her by clearing his throat.

  She froze, her fingers still pressing down, and turned to him.

  And all at once, his irritation arose. She looked like she expected him to have grown a second head. Had she finally grown weary of his appearance? Of his company?

  And she was doing the music a disservice.

  “Would you, I wonder, indulge me for a moment?” he asked, leaning forward in his chair. “You are a talented player, but you are playing as though your only desire is to finish the piece.”

  She blinked at him, hardly reacting. Had the woman lost all her emotions?

  “Isn’t that the point?” she asked. “To play a song to its conclusion?”

  “No, carina.” He spoke the endearment with less fondness than normal. Why had he begun calling her that anyway? “The point of music is not to finish, but to become lost in the journey. When you play, do not think of attaining the last note as the goal. If you feel nothing, your audience will feel nothing. If you are playing to get to the end, then your audience will not be pleased until you do so.”

  A symphony of emotion played across Rebecca’s face, everything from hurt, surprise, frustration, and even fear appeared and disappeared again. She said nothing. Rebecca chewed her bottom lip, faced her music again, and started over.

  What is it? He longed to ask her. But the answer could undo him. Somehow, he’d given her the power to hurt him. He realized it in that instant, when he was too afraid to ask. Frustration clawed at him, his inability to do anything about it made his temper raise.

  He stopped her earlier, moving to sit on the edge of his seat. “No. No. I can hear it. You are indifferent to what I have said. That is almost worse.”

  She didn’t look up at him, though every muscle in her body grew tighter, winding up like a spring, with each word he said. Rebecca didn’t speak. She began again. Each movement nearly violent for all that it was so small as moving her fingers across the keys.

  “Are you trying to murder the keys?” he asked, keeping his voice neutral.

  She slammed her hands down on the instrument, the discordant notes assailing the air, and spun on the bench to face him.

  “At least I am putting my emotion into the music,” she said sharply, throwing her hands in the air. “I am not attempting to earn the praise of a master musician, my lord, but to get through an evening of forced performance without scandalizing or disgracing anyone. I have completed my formal instruction and have no need of a tutor. If you think you can do it better, perhaps you ought to take my place in the program.” Her words flowed quickly, with heat.

  Christian’s chest tightened and his temper flared dangerously. He pushed himself up from the arm chair and glared down at her. She stared up at him, mouth slightly open, skin pale.

  His heart sunk. He’d frightened her. Of course he had. He was tall, ugly, and built like an ox. He felt as stupid as one, too.

  But Rebecca pushed away from the pianoforte and stood, arms at her sides and fists clenched tightly. “What else would you like to tell me about how I play? Or perhaps you wish to criticize some other facet of my life. My clothes, perhaps? My lack of other accomplishments? Or my looks? Would you like to berate me for anything at all? Because I have heard it all, Lord Easton.” She said his name haughtily, raising her chin and giving him an icy glare.

  “Have you?” he asked, his voice low, almost mocking her sudden flare of anger. What had she to be angry about? “Then you needn’t hear any of it from me.”

  She winced and he nearly did as well.

  “Wonderful. Tell me, then, is there anything about me that pleases you at all? Have I done anything right in your presence?” She raised a hand and gestured between them. “I thought we could, at the very least, be friends. I meant every word I said about being honest with you, about trying to care for you.”

  “I am so very difficult to care for, after all,” he threw in, narrowing his eyes, daring her to admit it was the truth. “I never asked for that from you, Miss Devon.” He could throw titles around as easily as she could. “In fact, I asked that you treat this betrothal as the practical arrangement that it is. You couldn’t even do that simple task.”

  Rebecca’s hands flew up, dismissively, and she turned her back on him. Her shoulders were stiff, her posture straight and trembling with what he assumed to be fury.

  “Because, unlike you, I have a heart. I cannot bear the thought that I will live out the rest of my life with someone who has no more care for me than a stranger.” Each word burned into him with her fury and hurt.

  Was that it, then? Did she finally accept he couldn’t and wouldn’t love her? If so, her love had never been true. Yet the loss he felt at her declaration, the way her words pierced through to his heart, cooled his anger and left something else in its place.

  I’ve lost her affection. And I’ve no one but myself to blame.

  He didn’t care. He didn’t want it. Love was weakness, and pain, and destructive.

  “Your heart is obviously fickle if your feelings are so changeable,” he accused, taking a step back, hoping and fearing she’d turn around. More anguish than anger had colored his words.

  She didn’t turn, but lowered her head. “I will never make you happy, will I?” she asked, her voice cracking on the last word.

  He froze, watching her shoulders begin to shake.

  Tears. She’d started crying. He raised both hands and shoved them through his hair, cursing in Italian and trying to recover his scattered thoughts. “You are the most baffling person I have ever met.”

  She shook her head, wrapping her arms about herself. “Why? Because I have feelings?”

  Another barbed word might
well doom them both. Christian took another step back. “I do not understand what has happened here, Rebecca. Not at all. But I am sorry for my part in it.” He turned and left, without waiting for her to speak. He left the house. He went across the grounds to fetch Ajax, ignoring the way a startled groom fell backward to stay out of his path. Then they walked. Around the lake, into the woods, with Christian barely paying attention to where he went.

  Something had gone terribly wrong, but whatever it was had started the day Rebecca’s father came to Annesbury Park.

  Fixing things would be impossible, unless he discovered how they had been broken in the first place.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Christian woke early, as was his custom, but didn’t immediately climb from his bed. He stayed there, arms folded across his middle, glaring up at the dark blue canopy. Early morning light peeked through a slit between curtains, casting a warm yellow glow across the room. The other men would be up early, preparing for yet another morning of shooting and traipsing across the earl’s vast tracts of land.

  The wilds of woods and thickets called to him, especially as a form of escape. Because he longed to get away, he wouldn’t allow himself to move until he had worked through the problem at hand. Never mind that he’d spent most of the night trying to untangle his thoughts from his emotions.

  After kissing Rebecca several days ago, Christian determined he must keep his distance. Being physically attracted to her wasn’t a true difficulty, of course. They were to marry and such a thing between them would be acceptable, even sought after. He needed heirs, after all. Enjoying her company was also acceptable. It would make things easy between them, once wed, if they had pleasant conversation and friendly exchanges.

  The real problem, the problem which kept his mind working and his heart racing in a panic, had only manifested itself when she withdrew from him. From their growing friendship.

  Somehow, Rebecca had battered and cajoled her way through his defenses.

  What defenses? He snorted out loud. I’ve been laying my heart bare to her almost since we met.

  It started that day in the music room, the first time, when she ought to have been the vulnerable one. Rebecca had been crying, after all. Something about her drew him in, as a light in the darkness, as music heard and unseen. Wanting to be near her, anticipating when he might be in her presence again, left him unsettled in the company of others.

  The day before, their argument had exhausted him. He’d also realized how compromised his heart had become.

  He’d watched as his father had folded in on himself, after his mother’s death, and blamed himself for it. Had his parents not fallen in love, had they not wed, his mother would’ve remained safe in Italy with her family. Instead, she died of a fever in a place where no one cared.

  “I loved your mother with my whole soul. When she passed, what was left for me, but you? If I didn’t have you, Christian, there would be nothing.” His father had spoken those words to him, or a variation of them, many times over the years.

  When he was younger, Christian had wished he had been the one to succumb to the fever instead of his mother. Then his father would’ve been happy.

  Christian groaned and rolled out of the bed, his feet hit the floor with a thud. At home, that sound would’ve immediately been met with Ajax’s paws on the floor, trotting toward him. The dog had been his sole comforter for years. It would’ve been nice to sink his hands into Ajax’s red coat while he thought.

  Walking for hours had helped him clear his mind, but as soon as he tried to understand what had happened to change Rebecca’s manner towards him he found himself at a loss again.

  Christian went to the pitcher and basin on his nightstand. He poured the water into the bowl and splashed his face and the back of his neck. He dried his hands and face, walking to the wardrobe. Opening its door, and reaching into the back, Christian found what he sought.

  A long, rectangular mahogany case, narrower on one end than the other. He took it to his bed and turned the key in the lock, then opened the lid. It was long enough to house violin and bow, with two small compartments on either side of where the violin neck would go and a larger compartment at the narrow end. He touched the violin, wishing he’d found a way to practice during his stay. But there wasn’t anywhere in the house he could go without risking being heard.

  He opened the largest of the compartments and took out a red silk pouch. He held it for several minutes. Christian had brought it almost as a talisman, a reminder of things past. It was one of the few things of his mother’s he owned. His father had kept most of her personal belongings in Italy, and they were presumably with her family since his death.

  Christian sighed and tipped the purse into his hand, causing a small gold cross inlaid with red gemstones to slide into his palm. His mother had worn it often, a silent testament to her faith. She’d worn a more ornate crucifix, his father had told him, until she came to England. Then he’d bought her this, hoping it would not mark her so clearly as a Catholic.

  “She wore it every day. To please me, I think.” His father had said it with a smile, giving Christian the pendent on a gold chain. His father had been wearing her crucifix, and he had probably been buried in it.

  Holding the beautiful cross, Christian breathed in slowly, hoping it would anchor him once more to his principles. He could not allow Rebecca to take greater hold over him. He could not allow his heart to be more lost to her than it already was. His parents had suffered for their love, and he had suffered, losing them both.

  Hasn’t she proven, only yesterday, how much power she had to hurt him?

  This is different. He swallowed, pushed the thought aside, but asked himself the next question anyway. How can it be different? Love is dangerous, foolish, a mistake.

  Even if she is English, being connected to me will make her life difficult. I am ugly—

  Rebecca had never seemed to care, after that initial moment when she spied him from the stairs. He nearly forgot the pox-scars running across his face, his neck, his arms, when he was with her.

  I am despised. The son of a merchant’s daughter, an Italian.

  But he stood to inherit a title and fortune that would swiftly elevate him above many of those worries. Rebecca would be a viscountess, then a countess. She was connected to other powerful people through her cousin and her aunt.

  Even if I allowed my feelings to grow, I could still lose her. Or she could grow tired of me. Stop caring for me.

  It seemed she already had.

  The thought made his heart feel cold, as though a fist had wrapped around the vital organ and squeezed it. Christian put a hand to the spot, the same one holding the necklace, and rubbed his chest. The gold cross pressed against his shirt, warm from resting in his palm.

  “I’m too late,” he said aloud, the realization simultaneously aching and giving him hope.

  If I lost her at this very moment, my heart would break.

  Christian clutched the necklace tighter, raising it to his mouth in a fist. “What do I do?” he whispered to the room.

  No answer came, and he’d never been so afraid in his life.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Rebecca sat at the breakfast table, idly stirring her coffee. It had already grown cold, of course, as had most of the food on her plate. What little appetite she had fled when she’d been presented with a note by one of the footmen. The paper had been addressed to her, but it was a formally worded invitation from her father to both the viscount and her. To take refreshment with him. That very afternoon.

  What would he do when he realized she’d made an even greater mess of her betrothal? If it had been a crumbling wall before, it was now a pile of rubble. Shouting at and insulting a man who already had second thoughts about their marriage would hardly endear her to him.

  Lady Felicity sat reading her own post, tittering over a letter in her hand. She finally exclaimed to the other young ladies sitting at the table, “I have had the most wonderful n
ews about a new seamstress. She is from Austria.”

  That startled Rebecca out of her thoughts. Austria had long been a threat held over her by her father, after all. She dropped her spoon with a clatter against the cup, and all eyes went to her. She forced a smile. “How lovely. Is Austria known for its forward sense of fashion?” she asked, her throat a trifle tight.

  “I have never heard it so,” said Miss Dunhill, turning to her mother for confirmation. The baroness immediately began speaking of European houses of fashion and ranking their abilities in terms of creating suitable clothing. Rebecca pretended to listen for several moments before she dabbed at her lips with a napkin and quietly excused herself.

  With her father’s invitation in hand, she went to the nursery. At this early hour, she hoped to find her cousin there. Virginia, though a countess, doted on her children and spent a great deal of time in their company, when she was not with her husband or attending to her duties.

  She met Virginia on the stairs leading up the nursery floor, a gaggle of children following behind her and baby Emma in her arms.

  “Dear me, what goes on here?” Rebecca asked, making her eyes as wide as she could. “A parade? A festival? A march of the army?”

  Edward, Virginia’s second-born son, answered while the other children giggled. “Mother says we are all to go outside and play in the gardens.”

  Phillip, at eight, was the eldest of Virginia’s three children. He was at the rear of the group, which included the youngest children of the marquess, two girls and a boy. The gap between the three in the nursery and Lord Sharpeton and Lady Felicity was due to the marquess having married a second time, after losing his first wife. It was the same reason for the age difference between Virginia’s sons and baby Emma.

  “That sounds positively lovely, Edward. Might I join the procession?”

  “Yes, please.” Edward eagerly put his hand in hers.