Page 58 of More or Less a Countess
Nick was hurrying through the saloon toward the drawing room, but he paused when he heard her name, and a moment later he caught the familiar sound of her sweet laugh. It drifted through the door of a tiny, neglected music room tucked at the far end of the hallway, hidden behind the library. It was so far out of the way of the public rooms Nick hadn’t even recalled it was there, but when he peered through the crack in the door there was Miss Somerset, sitting in front of the pianoforte, her cheeks flushed with laughter.
Nick’s chest went tight at the sight of her. Not just because she was beautiful—though she seemed to grow more beautiful each time he saw her—but because for him, she was the beating heart at the center of every room she was in.
Her back was to him, and he didn’t approach her, but remained quiet, leaning a hip against the doorframe, watching as she teased and laughed with the two children who shared the pianoforte bench with her.
“What, you mean “Shepherds Watched Their Flocks at Night?” Is that the song you want, Charles?” She reached out to tousle the sandy hair of the boy beside her.
The child shook his head. “I’m not sure. Is that the one about the angels all around, and glory shining, and the child in the manger, and all that?”
“Yes, that sounds right.” Miss Somerset struck a few notes on the pianoforte. “Is this the tune?”
Nick straightened from his slouch against the doorframe as she flexed her fingers over the keys. He hadn’t heard her play since Lord and Lady Derrick’s dinner party, when she’d performed the Haydn so masterfully. Pleasure washed over him at the thought of hearing her again.
“Yes!” The boy gave a vigorous nod. “You’re capital at the pianoforte, Miss Somerset, isn’t she, Eliza?”
A small girl with light brown curls was gazing up at Miss Somerset with a worshipful expression. “Yes, and ’specially when she sings about the sheep and the angels, and that lot.”
Miss Somerset tweaked one of Eliza’s curls, then said with a laugh, “Oh, I’m dreadful, and all of London knows it, but you’re a most loyal audience, and the only one I play for willingly. Shall we, then?”
Nick’s brows drew together with confusion. Dreadful? She played like an angel, so why—
The first note rang out, and Nick’s eardrums screamed in startled protest. She’d slammed down on the keys as if she were trying to flatten a poisonous spider under her fists, and the note was harsh, discordant. But then anyone could miss the first note, couldn’t they? Perhaps she just needed to warm up—
Crash!Nick flinched as her fingers came down again with a vengeance, and all the melodic notes he’d anticipated with such relish fled for their very lives. The long, pale fingers that had played the Haydn so delightfully pounded onto the keys, striking one sour note after another in such a deafening cacophony it took every bit of Nick’s self-control not to cover his ears.
And then, dear God, she began to sing.
“While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground, the angel of the Lord came down…”
An angel? Dear God, no angel had ever made such a sound. That was the devil himself, and it sounded as if he were trapped inside the pianoforte.
The children joined in happily, and the two childish voices helped to disguise Miss Somerset’s tone-deaf warbling, but nothing could drown it out entirely, as she sang just as she did everything else, that is, with great enthusiasm.
Loudly.
Nick reached blindly for the back of the chair next to him. He lowered himself into it, pressed his fingertips to his temples, and waited for it to be over, but the final shrill note was still reverberating inside his skull when the children began clamoring for the song “where heaven and nature sing.”
Nick, who’d heard enough by now to know heaven had abandoned them entirely, shot to his feet. “No!”
All three heads swung around to face him, the delight on the children’s faces fading at once to shock, and—in the case of the little girl, fear—but neither of them looked as appalled as Miss Somerset.
Nick winced as they all continued to stare at him in stunned silence, but it was too late to repair the damage now, so he strode into the room, took Miss Somerset’s arm and drew her to her feet. “That is, Miss Somerset looks fatigued, and she must need refreshment after singing so…lustily.”
“I’m perfectly well, my lord, and not at all thirsty.”
She stared up at him, her face pale. She made a frantic attempt to tug her arm from his grasp, but now that Nick had her, he had no intention of allowing her to slip away from him again. “Oh, but I insist, Miss Somerset.”
This moment of reckoning between them was as inevitable as the sunrise, and despite her reluctance, she must have known it would come, one way or another. Either that, or she could see from his expression he’d catch her in his arms and carry her from the room if he had to.
Her shoulders sagged as the fight drained out of her. “Go on without me for now, children. I’ll be back after I have a short rest.”
“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Miss Somerset,” Nick murmured against her ear as he led her through the connecting door and into the adjoining library. “I expect you’ll be engaged with me for quite some time.”
But once he’d closed the door behind them and turned to face her, Nick didn’t know where to begin, and her agonized expression made him hesitate. Her eyes were wide and wary, and her lips were trembling, as if she were trying to hold back tears.
This, because of a few sour notes on the pianoforte? Well, more than a few, but still, it seemed unlikely.
“Did you only ever learn to play the Haydn piano sonatas?”
