“To the beach?”
He didn’t look at all surprised that she could play. Young ladies of his class were expected to be competent at such things. Trained from birth, just like Allegra had been. If her parents hadn’t died, perhaps she… No. That was an old fantasy, and one it was healthier not to revisit. People did die. There was no undoing it. The obituaries were her reminder to keep moving forward for as long as she still had life.
“I would bring a piano everywhere if I could.”
“What would you play if you had remembered to pack it in your reticule?” he asked.
“Anything,” she said.
“Beethoven? Haydn? Dalayrac?”
“None of them quite capture the mood. It would have to be more…” Her fingertips pulsed against her skirts.
“You compose,” he said. “Brava. I would love to hear you play.”
She lifted a reticule that was empty, save for two hairpins and a handkerchief. “Forgot the pianoforte.”
“Do not the larger circulating libraries rent instruments along with everything else?” he asked, as if renting an enormous pianoforte were the sort of thing any traveler ought to have within their means.
To be fair, she supposed, she had met him whilst at the reins of a sporty phaeton, followed by appearing at a ball wearing a gown that likely cost three times as much as a pianoforte. It would not be unreasonable for him to assume her current attire was one of her eccentricities, rather than one of the only five dresses to her name.
Portia had tried to give Allegra one of her nicer gowns, once. Uncle had spied it in Allegra’s belongings and accused her of theft. When Portia insisted she had given it to her cousin willingly, Uncle said this was more evidence that Allegra was reaching above her station. He made her return it to her cousin, and warned her that the next time she grew airs, he would show her the door and she would not return.
Eccentricities. Yes. She had a few.
“Renting a musical instrument is not within my means,” she told John.
There. Blunt and honest. He could think of her as he liked.
“But you have access to one,” he said. “Somewhere else?”
She nodded. Back at the Townsend residence, not that she would see it again. She would turn thirty here in Brighton. As soon as her inheritance was in her banking account—as soon as she had a banking account—she would rent her own small room and fill it up with a pianoforte of her very own.
“The Cotswolds,” she said. May she never return. “I live with my uncle, and gave lessons to my younger cousins for many years.”
When word had got out about her skill, she had also given lessons to a few other families in the area. At first, Uncle had been furious. If she needed something else to do with her time, he was happy to supply her with more chores. But when he realized the coins she was earning meant he no longer needed to provide her with a half penny himself, he hadn’t said another word.
“I feel lost without music,” she said without looking at John.
“As lost as I felt when your cousin asked which was the best pistol for storming an enemy ship?” he teased.
She snorted. “Did you make one up? If you invent a name and say it with enough conviction, no one will question your authority.”
“I did not make one up,” he said with faux affront. “I informed her that a two-shot double-barreled flintlock was eighty percent superior to an ordinary pistol because it could be fired twice without reloading.”
“Wouldn’t that make it twice as good?”
He shook his head. “The dual triggers and extra powder make it twenty percent more likely not to discharge as intended in the heat of the moment.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Are those real facts about a real gun? Or are you deploying my make-it-up advice back at me?”
“Gribeauval made double-barreled flintlocks for Boney a decade ago,” he replied. “I make a habit of knowing everything there is to know about dangerous things in order to best avoid them.”
Ah. Then she was not the only one with eccentricities.
“Walk on the beach with me?” he asked.
Together? Now? As if he were courting her? As if they were already betrothed?
“All right.” She made to scramble to her feet, but he took her hands in his and pulled her gracefully up instead.
He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow.
She fought the urge to use her free hand to swipe sand and debris from the seat of her gown.
“Tell me everything you’ve ever invented about Captain L’Amour,” he said.
“Good Lord. Everything?”
“If I’m to parry your cousins’ questions with anything resembling verisimilitude, I will need to have some idea of the person I’m meant to be impersonating.”
Her chest grew warm. He was preparing for more encounters, not fewer.
“Well… The good Captain L’Amour loves kittens, can kill a man thirty-six ways with a snuffbox, has a penchant for walnut biscuits, has double- and triple-crossed every Western government, sleeps in the nude even in the heart of battle—”
“Sleeps in the nude whilst besieged at war? How is that practical?”
“The first rule of Captain L’Amour is that nothing about Captain L’Amour is practical.” She paused. “That was the detail you found the most shocking so far? How thick is your woolen nightshirt?”
She should not have asked the question. It was improper, invasive, and entirely too intriguing.
“I sleep in the nude like Captain L’Amour,” he answered. “But I am not at war. How do you sleep?”
Oh, dear. She definitely should not have broached the topic.
“In full body armor with a loaded pistol strapped to each hip,” she replied. “As Captain L’Amour ought to do.”
John’s expression could only be described as horrified.
“Could I offer you some alarming figures on all the ways sleeping with a loaded pistol might go horribly awry?”
She laughed. “Are you saying Captain L’Amour had the right of it and everyone should sleep in their altogether?”
“I don’t know about the captain,” John answered, “but you and I—” He coughed into his fist and quickly changed the subject. “What sort of ship do I own? What is the crew like?”
“Big,” she answered. “Loyal and deadly.”
“Big,” he repeated. “Number of sails? Is it steam-powered? Do we row with the bones of our enemies?”
“Er…yes?” she guessed. “The premise of Captain L’Amour is that there isn’t anything that he hasn’t done. If I said your ship had four cannons and you say it has ten, it’s simply a different ship than the last time.”
“And if I tell a story that in no way resembles the version that you told?”
“It was a different occasion,” she said promptly. “Or I got the details wrong. Perhaps the truth of the matter did not fit properly into sonnet form and your bard was forced to take poetic license with the facts.”
“I’m to simply agree with any interpretation, no matter how illogical or contradictory, your cousins might have with my past exploits, and if asked a direct question, give the most outlandish reply possible?”