Page 27 of Caught by the Forbidden Duke
Five notes, the first phrase of the melody, hummed without the keys. Up and around, down and back.
Somehow, it sounded far more than a six-year-old humming a melody. It sounded like a lullaby. Like a soothing balm spread over the hollow void of grief.
How could a small boy express so much with such little effort?
Dominic tensed, his mind yanking him back to the old music room, to his mother’s soft smile, to her fingers over the keys.
Then the blood?—
His heart sped. “No,” he muttered to himself.
He swiftly turned on his heel and walked on, trying to muffle James’s tune and the melody of grief that was seared into the back of his soul.
Chapter Eight
“From where I sit, the arrangement is proceeding very pleasantly. He comes, he plays, he eats two biscuits, he discusses Newton’s character, he leaves. That part you barely mention.” Helena was saying as they sat in Annabelle’s room, tilting her head. “But the other part, where the Duke arrives at the door, says as little as possible, and then exits …that is the part you think about rather more.”
“I think about whether the whole situation is working,” Annabelle said.
“And is it?”
“James is better.” She crossed from the window and sat down. “Mrs. Greer told Miss Hartley, who told me that he’s been sleeping well lately. He ate his supper two nights ago without any encouragement. He’s speaking more at home, apparently. He told me about it himself, which is its own improvement.”She paused. “He said the melody helps. That the loud parts go somewhere else when he plays.”
Helena was quiet for a moment. “You sound like a very good teacher,” she said, and the weight was fully on the last two words.
“James is a very good student.”
“He also told my mother last week that Newton is the second-best animal he’s met. She asked what the first was. He said a dog he saw in the park on Thursday, and then described it for four minutes.” Helena smiled. “She was charmed. She did not tell him so, obviously, but I saw her face.”
Annabelle looked down at Newton, who had migrated from Helena’s feet to the edge of the cushion and was eyeing the floor in contemplation.
“So…” Helena pressed.
“So?” Annabelle asked.
“About the Duke, Anna.”
Annabelle sighed and recounted the most recent lesson to her friend. After she was done, Helena studied her for a moment.
“I’m not advising you,” Helena said. “I have no advice. I am simply observing, as a person who has watched you these past weeks, that you look at the Duke of Silverford as though you are trying to locate the place where the damage starts. And that this is not how you look at Lord Penmore, or Lord Caverley, or any of your potential suitors.” She picked up her book. “Lady Rosenhall will be back from morning calls at noon, which gives us twenty minutes to have this conversation honestly.”
Annabelle straightened her back. “He’s grieving something,” she said, finally. “And he’s very good at not showing it. Everything about the piano—the excuse he gives to James, the way he leaves whenever someone plays at an event—it isn’t stubbornness. It isn’t even coldness, exactly.” She looked toward the window. “It’s old. That’s what makes it different.”
Helena did not fill the silence.
“And the arrangement is the arrangement,” Annabelle said, with the resolution of someone who has been telling themselves something that has not fully taken. “I have no business reaching beyond it.”
“No,” Helena agreed pleasantly. She turned a page. “Of course not.”
The Mallory soiree ran late, as Lady Mallory’s entertainments always did. By ten o’clock, the rooms were warm and full, the supper table crowded with things no one was eating, and twohundred guests performed the evening’s required mathematics with varying commitment.
Annabelle had danced once already and was standing with Helena and Lady Rosenhall near the east wall when Lord Ashby presented himself.
Viscount Ashby was thirty-two and fair-haired, with the easy bearing of a man who had never found himself unwelcome anywhere. He bowed with the direct confidence of someone who had considered the request and concluded it was worth making.
“Lady Annabelle. Might I have the next dance?”
“You might, my lord.”
