This was the happiest Allegra could recall feeling since arriving in Brighton. She adored her cousins, and the crowded beach was beautiful, but sometimes what Allegra wanted most was a moment alone. A chance to just…be.
When she was seated before a piano, the rest of the world disappeared. The piano itself became hazy. Her fingers danced across the keys of their own free will, allowing Allegra to fly with the music. It was as though the pianoforte had been created just for her, allowing her to escape into another universe, no matter where she was.
Even when playing as accompanist at the Townsends’ balls, even when forced to play specific pieces in a specific order, she still managed to lose herself inside her head and imbue each note with a hint of her own personality.
But this—this! John would never understand what a glorious, precious gift he had given her. A holiday, every morning from seven to ten. A brief visit to heaven. She would soak up the music in her skin, in her pores, in her soul, and carry it with her for the rest of each day.
The only way it could be better would be when she had a pianoforte of her own. When she would not need the kindness of others to find her inner joy. When she could sleep as late as she wished, and play for hours before breaking her fast if it pleased her. Or if she awoke in the middle of the night with a new idea, a change in chord progression, a new melody, she could dash to her parlor in her nightrail if she liked, and allow the music to flow out from her dreams and into the piano, right then and there.
And people felt sorry for spinsters!
Allegra could not wait to come into her inheritance. She didn’t even need a parlor. Just a room big enough for a small bed and a large pianoforte. Unbothered, unhurried, uncomplicated. An independent woman of leisure, with no one begging her to take the reins of anything but her own life.
When she glanced up at the clock in the corner, she was startled to discover it was almost ten o’clock already. Even though he had promised he would not interrupt, she had half-expected John to peek in on her anyway.
That he had not done so warmed her heart to him all the more. He had not just given her the perfect gift—he’d allowed her to enjoy it, in whatever way she wished.
She had thanked him already, but he deserved an even bigger gesture. Unfortunately, it would have to wait. She could not call upon a gentleman’s private lodgings, if that was even where to find him. Mornings at Brighton were for bathing. The men’s beach was on the west side, but she couldn’t go there, either. Unlike women, most men bathed in the nude.
Mm, the thought of glimpsing John naked wasn’t bad at all. Her fingers paused over the keys. Despite the tales she’d told her cousins, Allegra had never had a love affair, torrid or otherwise. She was not opposed to filling her holiday with adventure of the illicit kind. Or at least a stolen kiss or two.
The door to the music room burst open. Dorcas and Portia tumbled inside.
“What on earth?”
“It’s ten after ten,” Portia said breathlessly. “Dorcas wouldn’t let me enter until your time was up.”
Oh. Her time was up.
Allegra forced her fingers to her lap and felt her relaxed muscles start to tighten again. “Am I to be reprimanded for overstaying my allotted time?”
Dorcas shook her head. “The room is free until half past ten. I asked. They said if another guest arrives before that, you’re to relinquish your seat, as you’ve had your turn.”
“Of course. I suppose it was time to wind up anyway.” But she ran a finger longingly above the ivories. “How was the beach?”
“Cold.” Dorcas shivered. “And salty.”
“Who cares about the beach?” Portia bounced over to the piano. “Aren’t you going to ask about Captain L’Amour?”
Allegra’s eyebrows rose with interest. “Do you know where he is?”
“In the tea room.” Portia clapped her hands. “Lurking suspiciously from every corner. He might be planning a mutiny.”
“He’s not going to sack a tea room,” Dorcas said in exasperation.
“You don’t know! Pirates are unpredictable. Perhaps he wishes to keep his looting and pillaging skills sharp whilst on holiday.”
“Of all the…” Dorcas muttered.
Allegra’s inner smile rose to her lips. Her pirate was every inch the gentleman. Nearby, in case she needed him, but out of the way, in the event she did not.
“Go get him,” she told her cousins impulsively. “We seem to have a few minutes before the next scheduled renter arrives.”
More importantly, Allegra had been longing to see him. Already her heart beat a little faster. Yesterday on the beach, he had seemed so close to stealing a kiss…
Chapter 11
It wasn’t until Allegra’s cousins had gone from the room that doubts began to assail her. She was an almost-thirty-year-old rag doll amidst a menagerie of fashionable young ladies. Did he see her as an object of pity?
Or the opposite: was the dwindling window of opportunity to claim her dowry the reason for his attentions?
Before she could decide which would be worse, footsteps sounded outside the open door. Her cousins had returned. She leapt to her feet and made a futile attempt to smooth the new wrinkles from her mismatched violet gown.
When John strode through the door, heat filled his stormy gray eyes upon sight of her. As though when he looked at her, he did not see an aging spinster in dowdy attire, but rather a dashing piratess fully capable of doing some plundering of her own—and him, the willing captive, eager to remand himself to her sensual custody.
He took her hand in his and brought it to his warm lips for a kiss, without ever dropping his gaze from hers. “Was the piano to your liking?”
“The what? Oh, the piano. Yes. Everything is very much…to my liking.”
He still hadn’t released her hand. Not that she wanted him to. Allegra wondered if the fifteen minutes that remained was enough time to progress from chaste-hand-kiss to bent-backwards-in-his-passionate-embrace.
“The music was lovely,” he said softly.
“You could hear it from the tea room?”
“Just barely. It was as though bits of your essence floated through the walls and into my body. My heart beat in time with your music, and my chest swelled with a slice of your joy.”
“I… That’s… the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me.” Allegra’s stomach fluttered at the idea that she was not simply pouring her emotions into her music, but also injecting a tiny part of her directly into his soul.
“Play him something else,” Portia blurted out in excitement. “Play the game!”
John’s brows rose. “The game?”
Allegra slipped her hand from his with reluctance and reseated herself on the bench before the pianoforte. “Press any two keys and tell me a mood. I’ll start there.”
He looked at the piano doubtfully. “Any two keys?”
“Or more. It’s up to you.”
He hunched behind her, one strong arm reaching around from either side of her, as though preparing to envelop her in a warm hug. Instead, his fingers pressed two discordant keys. His lemon-scented breath tickled a tendril of hair by her cheek as he murmured, “Pining.”