“Oh, divine!” she told them, sincerely. “How lucky our guests will be.” She was beginning to feel as though it was a bit of a pantomime, this pretending there would actually be guests. But life had surprised her before.
“Did you come to help?” Helga was teasing. One did not press the guests into folding dough for apple tarts.
“Well, I did come about work, but it’s of another sort. I know I usually use it earlier in the day, but would you mind terribly if I availed myself of the ballroom this evening before dinner? Privately, if you don’t mind. To rehearse a bit. I know I normally do it earlier, but the urge suddenly took me.”
“Oh, we should love for you to sing in the ballroom anytime you like, Miss Wylde.” Mrs. Durand gave her the key from the ones jingling merrily at her waist.
Mariana had in mind the aria from The Glass Rose. Sung at full voice. It was full of all those—how had the duke dryly put it?—very original words. Perhaps they were mundane. Nevertheless, they could cut like a sword, and they would, when she sang it.
He’d lifted his head from the world of his writing to find that Dot had apparently come in with the tea and a scone, and he hadn’t so much as noted it. The tea was, naturally, cold. The sky outside his window was twilight-mauve, and the river had gone pewter.
It rather felt gray inside of him, too.
He lifted his body from the chair to go out for the evening. Dully he performed a shave, splashed in the washbasin with some soap for a few of his other parts, dragged on a fresh shirt, and tied a fresh cravat.
He’d been gravely injured in battle once. Took a musket ball, bled until they’d thought he would die. He was surprised to note that he felt a bit like that now.
It was how he knew Mariana had already become more a part of him than he’d realized. It was not something he would recover from overnight.
He buttoned his coat, reached for his hat, inhaled a deep breath in order to sigh it out again, and made for the stairs.
The sound reached him before he’d fully descended.
His breath caught. He stopped abruptly.
She was singing.
And oh, the sound. Full-throated, glorious waves of it reached him through the walls as though he was hearing it from a distance as far away as heaven.
And he moved toward it. Slowly. Breath shallow, heart beating slow and absurdly hard.
He stopped again.
The door of the ballroom was ajar.
Entering to witness her seemed like something he had irrevocably forfeited the right to do.
But it seemed he could neither stop nor deny himself, because stealthily, quietly, as though he was stealing this moment, he moved into the room and pressed himself against the wall.
Mariana was onstage, head tipped back, eyes closed. Her arms, crossed over her chest, unfurled outward as the note she held grew in breadth and depth until he could feel it everywhere in his body.
He was motionless. Held fast by awe.
That such a small person should possess such power.
It wasn’t just the volume, which seemed otherworldly. He was helpless against the tide of its outrageous beauty, against the sorrow and yearning.
He couldn’t recall the last waking moment he’d felt truly helpless. He couldn’t remember the last time he wasn’t at least somewhat conscious of the full weight of who he was.
But all of it was borne up, and then away, on her voice.
He’d hurt her, and this glory was what she’d done with her pain.
Suffice it to say he felt things. Things for which he had no vocabulary, possibly because they could not be captured in mere words. Why one of them should be pride—pride like a sun in his chest—he didn’t know.
She hurled skyward a final glistening note, and held it aloft, elongating until its edges frayed with a sort of weary, bitter triumph. Then, like a handful of leaves tossed, down in half steps the notes drifted into a forever-altered silence.
Battlefields had that kind of silence, he thought, even when the smoke had cleared and the bodies buried. One always sensed something of consequence had happened there.
Perhaps one would call this room a beautyfield, instead.
And when that last note receded like floodwaters, hidden things were suddenly revealed to him: old wounds and terrible griefs and guilts. Dormant ecstasies and needs.
And painful, unpalatable truths.
Perhaps he’d done the right thing when he’d sent her away.
But it was also the fearful thing.
He’d done it because he was afraid. As afraid as a green lad.
And therein lay his crime. He could not see what lay on the other side of this.
Her shoulders moved swiftly as she caught her breath. She dropped her chin to her chest, briefly, then lifted her head.
And then she went still.
And she suddenly looked toward him.
Her features were indistinct in the twilight, but she seemed to glow more than the light warranted. Perhaps she simply had a diva’s instinct for finding whatever light there was, and standing in it. Perhaps there was a light in him that illuminated her.
In the blacks and grays of his evening clothes, he might have blended seamlessly into the shadows, apart from his posture. It had the profound stillness of the transfixed.
Her traitorous heart leaped higher than her highest C.
There was really no mistaking who it was. She fancied she’d still know he was standing there if her eyes were closed.
He showed no sign of moving.
But then she realized she was already moving toward him, as if the floor between them were a river bearing her along, inexorably, in one direction. No one should possess such power. She wanted no one to have that kind of power over her again, not to hurt her, not to save her.
But she yearned to hear his voice again speaking only to her, alone in a room.
The heels of slippers gently ticking on the wood floor was the only sound.
He waited.
She’d meant to pause before him, and to formulate, and say, something clever, cutting.
But then she saw the raw need in his expression.
She paused only to get her bearings, then walked right into his already reaching arms as if he were a lifeboat.
They all but collided.
One of his hands fanned to cradle her head as it tipped back and his face came down.
It was a mutual siege. At once swift and hard and ruthlessly, searchingly erotic, frank and drugging. A kiss they broke only to drag in hot, swift, rough breaths so the next and deeper kiss could begin. Her arms went around his waist; his muscles, taut as iron, contracted when she touched him, and he pulled her closer still. He was everywhere in her senses. Velvety and hot against her tongue, his cock hard at her groin, his fingers delicate at her nape, his other hand sliding stealthily down to the curve of her arse to squeeze, to stroke in a coarse claiming. Bolt after bolt of lust shivered through her, and she could hear her own breath coming in short sobs. She hadn’t known that desire had a taste. It burned like whiskey in her throat.
But she had known he would be like this.
He ended the kiss abruptly, with a soft oath.
He didn’t release her. She clung to him, and he held her close. His hand was soft on her back now.
For a second or two, she held on to him. Her eyes remained closed. His breath gusted against her temple. His chest rose and fell hard against hers. His lips were against her brow. He brushed the gentlest of kisses there. Her hand remained over the hard thud of his heart.