Courtney Milan (42 page)

“She is not allowed to pay any calls.” John was unsure how much else he would have to say to convince the woman.

But Lady Northword leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. “Ah.”

She’d been a viscountess and the leading lady of this region for nearly half a century. What Lady Northword would have seen in that time, John could only begin to guess. She was no fool, that was for certain. She inclined her head to look out the windows in the direction of her onetime home.

“All is not well at Doyle’s Grange,” she said softly.

“No, my lady.” He drew a deep breath. “Lady Patsworth sends this to you with her regards, and her most desperate plea for your assistance. She would have brought it herself, were it allowed. She needs you.”

Lady Northword looked still to Doyle’s Grange, unmoving, as if caught in the grip of some long-ago memory. “Nobody should be imprisoned like that. What must be done?” she asked.

“Invite her to dinner,” John said. “She needs to get away from her husband’s domain. You’ll have to make the invitation in person…”

He trailed off, realizing he was giving commands to a viscountess. But she simply raised an eyebrow and motioned him to continue.

“And you’ll have to insist that she come—no excuses allowed. If her husband complains, insist that Beauregard and I have seen her strong and well. You own Doyle’s Grange, do you not? And as nobility, you and your husband are the only ones in the area that Sir Walter cannot truly refuse—if you insist. Insist, and we’ll manage the rest.”

Her eyebrow rose even higher. “We? That is you and…Lady Patsworth?”

He met her eyes straight on. “Lady Patsworth has a companion. We were once engaged.” He frowned. “In fact, as the engagement was never officially broken off, we are still betrothed.”

She sat back in her chair and gave him a curiously pleased grin.

“You see,” he repeated. “There’s nothing strange about it.”

“Consider it done,” she said. She raised the piece of jewelry in the air. “And give Lady Patsworth my compliments, if you please.”

M
ARY DID NOT OFTEN MOURN
the loss of her gowns. But a week after she and John had made their plans, as she dressed for the dinner party, she wished she still had one of her finest. Her blue silk, for instance. She was, after all, preparing for battle. The right gown could serve as both sword and shield.

She’d contemplated her Sunday best, but the dove-gray gown had no pockets. If everything went well tonight, she might never return to this room. And if she was going to be restricted to the contents of her pockets, she wanted those pockets to be as large as possible.

The practical took most of the space available: a comb, a toothbrush, a sliver of hard soap, and a small hand towel—she’d learned in her last desperate flight from home that a lady should never be without a towel.

Aside from that…

She’d been carting around the damning pages she’d sliced from her father’s account book for too long. She couldn’t leave them here to be discovered by Sir Walter; after all she’d gone through to keep her father’s secret, there was no point betraying his shame to her worst enemy.

But she didn’t want to keep those words near her heart any longer. His note had all the sentimental value of a bludgeon. It was time to let the words go.

Sighing, she lit a candle and fed the pages into the flame. But as the edge blackened and smoked, her eye was caught by the numbers on the reverse of his final message—not blank, of course; it was an account book. She’d seen those numbers a hundred times without thinking about what they meant.

The last entries were not surprising or strange. But they’d never before set in motion the cascade of possibilities that rushed through her now. She’d been so used to seeing those words as a chain, holding her in place, that she’d not recognized that they could be something else entirely. She’d seen only what her father had taken—those thousands of pounds, spent on her behalf. She hadn’t thought about what he’d left behind.

The paper caught fire right at that moment, a thin lick of orange darting up. Mary dropped it on the desk and beat her fist into the flame, smothering it before it could consume the future she’d glimpsed.

She brushed away ash and the charred edges of cracked paper before unfolding the pages and surveying the damage.

The numbers were still there, unburnt.

When John talked of thousands of pounds missing, she’d thought of the money her father had spent. But the way he spoke, he made it sound as if nothing had remained. Her father had taken thousands, but he’d husbanded his ill-gotten gains. The other partners should have recovered quite a bit.

If John thought they hadn’t…

Mary reached out and picked up the paper again. She folded it—this time, not for the words he’d written in front, but for the ones she’d never thought about on the back. And then, for the first time in a long while, she laughed.

Now she was ready to take on Sir Walter.

Chapter Ten

B
Y THE TIME THE
dinner guests adjourned to the back room, Mary felt too wracked by her nerves to speak. She’d scarcely touched her food; she hadn’t dared look at Lady Patsworth, lest her questioning gaze give everything away to her husband.

The closer they came to success, the sicker Mary felt. Luckily, as a mere companion, there was no need for her to join in the conversation. She let it swirl around her, and she waited.

The salon was grandly appointed. The walls were a mix of moss-green and gold, clever carved moldings around the edge telling a story about a nymph and a harp. Windows looked out over the night-shrouded valley, dotted by little flashes of lamplight where there were settlements.

Easier to look out the window than to focus on what stood before it: a pianoforte. That would be Mary’s contribution this evening. She’d never been nervous about performing before. This crowd—just Lord and Lady Northword, John, the Beauregards, Sir Walter and his wife, and two other families—would hardly have flustered her a few years ago. Then again, she’d never had a performance this important.

“Miss Chartley,” the viscountess said, “you keep looking at the pianoforte. Do you play?”

It had begun. The evening was so carefully scripted; Mary had only to do her part, and the rest of it would happen.

“A little,” Mary said, looking down.

“A little?” John, a few feet away, made a sound of disbelief. “That’s balderdash, if you’ll excuse the expression. Miss Chartley is utterly brilliant.”

“A bit of exaggeration, I’m afraid.” Mary put her head down in a pretense of modesty.

“But…” Sir Walter looked up, frowning. “Mr. Mason, I thought you didn’t know Miss Chartley. How would you know that she plays?”

John met Mary’s eyes and gave her a melting look; Mary looked away. They’d decided it would do best to have Mary pretend embarrassment—to have Sir Walter believe that she’d been caught out in misbehavior. Mary didn’t have to pretend at all; a slight pink flush rose on her cheeks unbidden.

“Well,” John said, “I had to find out.”

Sir Walter let out a soft hiss. “But you…”

Mary looked up. It wasn’t difficult to meet John’s eyes. And she wasn’t pretending when everyone else in the room seemed to fall away. There was only his smile, only the light dancing in his eyes.

“Hmph,” Sir Walter said. He gave her a dark look, one that said,
Don’t you dare speak to that man
.

“Well, Miss Chartley, perhaps you could play for us a little.” Lady Northword spoke as if she hadn’t seen that interchange.

“Of course.” Mary blushed and glanced at John again. “And perhaps, Mr. Mason, you might turn my pages.”

“Miss Chartley,” Sir Walter whispered in harsh tones. “This behavior is most unbecoming!”

But Mary stood anyway and moved to the instrument. Sir Walter glared as she thumbed through the available music. His arms were folded across his chest; his chin promised retribution.

John came to stand by her. His simple presence assured her that she was not alone. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t say anything as she flipped, unseeing, through sheets of music. He was just
there,
steady and honest and trustworthy.

It wasn’t hard for Mary to turn to John and give him the largest, most scintillating smile she could muster. She was
supposed
to be doing it to rivet Sir Walter’s attention. But she had only to look at the man who’d kissed her every night for the last week, and she felt herself burst into bloom. It wasn’t just a smile she gave him; it was her heart, writ large across her face. Her nervousness faded. Her breath eased. The whole room seemed to fade to an indistinct blur—everything except him. He was the only solid thing in a shifting world.

“You know,” he said, leaning down and whispering in her ear. “There’s one flaw with this plan. I don’t know how I will turn your pages. I can’t read music.”

“Don’t worry,” she murmured back. “I’ll play from memory. Just count to twenty-five and turn, and nobody will be the wiser.”

She took out a sheaf of music and set it in front of her and set her hands on the keys.

It had been so long since she’d touched an instrument. She had worried that she might have forgotten how. But the ivory, cool under her fingers, woke memories that went deeper than a few years’ hiatus. Her muscles still knew what to do. The first sprightly notes came out precise and clear, exactly as she remembered them.

She had always loved Beethoven’s
Diabelli
variations, in part because the individual pieces were so…various. They were not minor alterations in key and structure, but complete transformations. Chords were taken from one variation and built into a new melody in the next. The notes of the original waltz were still present if you knew what to listen for—they were just given an entirely different meaning. It was music tied to a common heart but made without limitation.

Her fingers faltered at first. But the joy of a variation was that it was all too easy to cover a mistake. Those first missteps she converted into alterations of her own—little ones, at first, and then trills that she added on purpose.

Herr Rieger had told her—and Mary suspected the tale was apocryphal—that Beethoven had composed the music on a dare from a friend: Take the most mediocre waltz you can find, someone had taunted the composer, and see if you can make it magnificent.

That’s what Beethoven had done, thirty-three times over.

She glanced up at John, standing behind her, and smiled again. She’d had her run of mediocre waltzes. Now it was time to make what she had—what they had—magnificent. The music didn’t carry her; she carried it, from chord to breathless chord, from variation to variation.

She didn’t do all of them. She hadn’t the time or the strength in her fingers. But she played until her fingers began to ache with the unaccustomed exercise. She played long enough to see Lady Northword tap Lady Patsworth on the shoulder out of the corner of her vision. She played with John’s hand hovering mere inches from her shoulder and Sir Walter glaring at her, promising dire retribution.

When her hands began to falter, she skipped to the final variation and ended.

The handful of guests clapped vigorously—all but Sir Walter. The applause died into a moment of silence. Then the windows rattled, and the house shook with the booming roll of real thunder. Even the weather itself applauded her. Mary smiled and ducked her head.

“Miss Chartley,” said Lady Northword. “Mr. Mason was right. You are more than proficient. You are magnificent. I see that I shall have to ask you to visit far more often.”

“Unfortunately,” Sir Walter said, “that will not be possible. You see, my wife…” He stopped and looked about him and abruptly shot to his feet. “Where is my wife?”

There was a moment of absolute silence—the kind of moment that performers dreamed of. Mary was not yet off the stage. She stood, collecting the piano music into some semblance of order.

“Why,” Lady Northword said, “she is talking with her brother.”

“Her brother.” Sir Walter took a step toward the door. “Why is her brother here?”

The back door to the salon opened. “Because I am leaving with him,” Lady Patsworth said.