“What’s this?” said August. “You’re to be married?”
“A request from the king, but more like an order. Some favored border baron’s got to be rewarded with a high-placed duke for a son-in-law.”
“What a disaster,” August said. “I’m sorry. When is this happening?”
“When the crown orders it to happen, I suppose.” Nothing betrayed the duke’s feelings on the matter, except perhaps the steady tapping of a finger upon the sill. “It’s just as well. The rest of you have married. It’s bloody boring to gad about all by myself. The women in Wales are pretty, aren’t they?”
August hadn’t any idea what women in Wales looked like. He imagined they looked rather similar to English ladies, at least he hoped so, for Arlington’s sake.
“So you see,” said his friend. “At least you’ve got a known quantity, a willing and eager minx who adores you beyond measure, whom you’ve known more than half of your life.”
August wished he could explain what it was like, to lie beside Minette night after night, and want her and ache for her, and feel too conflicted to have her. It was a special sort of torture, one he had probably earned.
*** *** ***
Minette made her way toward her husband’s study after dinner, with ropes of ribbon and garland on her arms. The servants had decorated some of Barrymore House’s rooms, but Lord August’s study was not among them. When she asked why, they told her it was not normally decorated for Christmas.
Minette didn’t care. She wished to brighten his quiet, private space. August spent a great deal of time at work in there, and she wanted it to look cheerful for the holidays. If she couldn’t embroider a passable handkerchief, at least she could give him this.
She grinned at a footman as he bowed and opened the door, and then shut it behind her. Her husband sat at his desk, just where she expected to find him, but he wasn’t working. Why, he wasn’t even awake. His head was cradled on his pinstriped evening coat; the flickering candles reflected off his ebony hair.
She dropped her armful of greenery onto a chair and rubbed herself where the needles had abraded one wrist. She regarded August, feeling the usual fond fluttering in her heart. Or her stomach. Or somewhere down there. Even asleep, sprawled gracelessly upon his writing desk, the man was handsome as sin. She tiptoed closer, being careful not to wake him. She had long ago memorized every feature, every eyelash, every wave of hair upon his head, but that didn’t stop her from staring at him daily, hoping to notice more.
How long and curved his lashes were, and my, how tired he looked. Perhaps it was only the shadow of candlelight that wrought dark circles beneath his eyes. His elegant hand still held a quill. It had nearly slipped from his fingers. She worried that his correspondence would be ruined if ink dripped upon it. She thought to slide the quill from his hand, but then became distracted looking at the page. Why, it was not correspondence. It was music, pages of it spread across the desk, each measure filled with notes penned by his own hand.
Her husband was a composer.
A cabinet door stood open beyond his shoulder. Drawn by curiosity, she skirted the desk and peeked inside, and found more pages of music, both loose and bound into volumes. This was not a recent lark, to jot down some song. Good gracious, there was so much!
Beneath the cabinet, a drawer was partly ajar. It was full of music too, in the same bold, heavy hand. Some of the bound pages had titles and dates.
Concertos One and Two, 1788
.
Sonata et Fugue, 1785.
Etude in Red, 1777.
Why, he would have been only thirteen or fourteen then.
She stared at the complex arrangements of notes, wondering if her brother and his friends knew of this talent. If so, they’d never discussed it in her hearing. She tried to read one of the sheets as he’d taught her, analyzing it for tempo and tone. She wished to go play some of the music, even though most of it appeared too intricate for her modest talents. What a lovely motivation to get better. Someday she would play all of it, every single note. She opened the cabinet above to leaf through more of the handwritten music. If she could find some piece he’d written at eight years of age or so, perhaps she could perform that.
She took out a folio of work and the lined papers slipped from within, scattering over the floor. “Bother,” she whispered. She didn’t want him to wake, especially now, when she was snooping through his cabinets. She knelt to collect the scattered pages, but they were all out of order. She started to stand but—
ow!
—she knocked her head into the open cabinet door above her, sending it with a bang against the shelf. She clutched at the volumes of music to retain her balance and ended up knocking them over in a cascade of noisy thumps.
August startled awake and turned to her in alarm. “Minette. What are you doing?”
She might pretend to be sleepwalking. It would explain the mess she’d made of his music and exonerate her from blame, but she was too disarrayed to lie. She rubbed the back of her head. “I’m sorry I woke you. I was poking about where I should not be. I suppose I deserve this bump on my head.”
He stood and smoothed the back of her hair, and inspected her scalp for injury. His light, seeking caress raised goose bumps on her arms and neck.
“I came to decorate your study for Christmas,” she said. “I found you asleep over your music and I saw the open cabinet, and then I—”
“Then you started sorting through all my private papers and ended up flinging half of it on the floor,” he finished in exasperation.
“Not half of it. And I intend to pick up what I’ve dropped and put it back in order for you.”
She whacked her head on the cabinet again as she bent to retrieve the music. August muttered an oath and lifted her bodily away from the mess. “Go sit over there.” He pointed to a chair on the other side of the desk.
“But I would rather help.”
“I don’t want you to help. I want you to obey me before you crack your head open.”
He didn’t sound in a pleasant mood at all. Well, she had woken him from a sound sleep and made a mess of his music, so she supposed she wouldn’t feel pleasant either if she was in his position.
He shuffled the music heedlessly together, jamming it back into various folios. She wanted to tell him to take care, but was wary of irritating him further. The
WAR
paddle was in the desk’s bottom drawer.
“I never realized you wrote music,” she said instead. “And so much of it. What a fascinating hobby.”
He made a grunt of a sound, shoving some folios back into the cabinet.
“I didn’t mean to pry and disorganize everything, I only couldn’t believe there were drawers full of it. If you like, I’ll stay up and organize it for you, perhaps by date?”
“No,” he said, and this time it was more like a growl.
“What sort of music were you writing tonight?” she asked, wishing to mollify him. “And how do you write it in here with no instrument? Why don’t you write in the ballroom, at the pianoforte?”
He rubbed his forehead, rearranging a pair of pages. “I hear it in my head by this point. I know all the notes and how they sound in various combinations.”
This was a brilliant talent, surely. How had she never known about his gift for composition when she had uncovered everything else about him, down to the name and direction of his favored courtesan? “I can barely believe how skilled you are, to play and write, and know all the notes in your head like some kind of musical savant. Why, you ought to be part of a show, a revue where people request a song and you instantly and perfectly play it, only by ear. I saw something like that once, I don’t remember when, but Warren took me and everyone was so impressed and clapped for the gentleman, although he wasn’t much to look at, or even a titled person—”
“I don’t want to be part of any shows. I’m not some dancing bear.”
The heat in his voice silenced her. She had truly angered him with her meddling. “I’m sorry. I never said you were a dancing bear. You look nothing at all like a bear, of course, and you certainly don’t play like one. If it annoys you, I won’t peek into your music cabinets again.”
“I’d prefer that you didn’t.”
“But...” She was really pushing it now. She could see it in his taut expression. “Aren’t you proud that you write music? Wouldn’t you like to share it with someone? Perhaps you can play some of your compositions at our next dinner party.”
“No, I don’t think so.” His voice softened at her crestfallen expression. “I suppose it’s difficult for you to understand, but my music is a very personal and private thing, hence my decision to write it in here, privately, and not share it with the rest of the world.”
“I only wonder if I might hear something you’ve written. I admire you so. I imagine it’s wonderful music, but it’s too far above my abilities to play it. Will you play some of it for me? Perhaps the one you like the best, your most favorite composition.”
“I’d rather not. It’s late.”
It hurt her terribly that he wouldn’t play his music for her. Did he dislike her so much? “Well, of course you needn’t play for me if you don’t want to,” she said glumly. “I’ll just put up a few decorations—”
“I don’t want you to clutter my study. We don’t decorate in here.”
“Ever?”
His eyes fell on the pile of holiday trimmings on the chair near the door. “I’m sorry. The servants ought to have told you.”
She didn’t want to admit that they had, and that she’d disregarded their instructions. He was already irritated enough. “Perhaps just a bit of holly over the fireplace.”
He thought a moment. “All right. If you want.”
She went to fetch the prettiest, glossiest holly bough of the bunch. August sat and looked at the music he’d fallen asleep on, then shuffled it into a pile and turned it over. “Are you having trouble?” she asked as she returned.
He blinked at her. “Trouble?”
“With the music?” She smiled, hoping to fortify him. “It’s so difficult to do anything at the holidays, with the calls and invitations, and gifts to purchase, and friends to have over for dinner.” She arranged the holly carefully over the hearth.
Joy and peace
, she thought.
Bring them to him.
“Will we go to any entertainments this season?” she asked, turning back to him. “Perhaps it’s insensitive to ask, with your father so ill. I ought to just leave you alone.”
“Do you want to go to entertainments?”
He looked so tired sitting there at his desk. “No,” she said quickly. “We don’t have to. We shouldn’t, I suppose.”
“It’s not your fault my father’s ailing. You should go to some balls or dinners with Warren and Josephine. I’m sure they’d be delighted to take you, especially now that Aurelia and Townsend have left town for their country estate.”
“You won’t come too?”
“I might. It depends on the day.”
Minette bit her lip. Warren and August were still not at ease with each other, so no, he probably wouldn’t come.
Her husband stared down at the pile of pages before him. “Things will get better, Minette. Next year, next Christmas we’ll have a great dinner and a ball. Would you like that? We’ll have a house party in the country and invite all our friends, and have decorations and dancing, and a yule log in every room.”
“That sounds very warm and wonderful.”
He smiled, and a little of the tension inside her uncurled. He wasn’t angry about the music anymore, only anxious and busy and terribly sad about his father. “Next Christmas will be better,” she agreed. “Yes.”
“Will you come and give me a kiss before you go?”
“You ought to come to bed too. You look tired.”
“I’ll come up soon.”
Minette crossed to him. A hug, a kiss. She got them more now, but they were always the same—rigidly restrained and lacking in passionate desire. His arms came around her, embracing her as a brother might embrace a sister. Near the end, he brushed a hand through her hair.
“Is your head all right?”
“My head?” she asked.
“From the bump. Are you perfectly all right?”
No. I think I need a real kiss to heal me.
But since that awful night when she’d had tried to pleasure him like a wanton, he’d kept her at arms’ length, so much that she feared to be bold again.
“I’m perfectly all right,” she said in a perfectly cheerful voice. “Everything is perfectly well.”
“I’m glad. And thank you,” he said, hugging her tighter. “For reading to my father and decorating my study, and for making me smile when I don’t feel like smiling.”
Minette smiled back at him, because she knew it was what she ought to do.
Minette put her fork down and looked around the table at her brother and his wife, and the Duke of Arlington.
“And then Lady Barrymore told me, in her ghastly warbling voice, ‘I wish for you to bear many heirs, Wilhelmina. Many fine boys, and girls too,
if you must have them.
’”
Josephine and her brother burst into laughter as Minette related choice snippets of the conversation she’d had with her mother-in-law the night before. “What did you reply?” asked Josie, who sat beside her.
Minette waved a hand. “Oh, something polite and boring about not having a choice in the matter. One can never think of the proper cutting response until the opportunity has passed.”
Arlington chuckled from his place across the table, poured himself more wine, and lifted a glass. “To Minette, for being polite and boring in the face of tiresome old ladies.”
“Hear, hear,” echoed Warren and Josephine.
Minette laughed at their silly accolade. She’d missed being silly. She’d missed these casual dinners with the Warrens, when all of them gathered around one end of the table and traded funny tales. It was good to be together again, although Townsend and Aurelia were gone to the country already to prepare for their baby, and August had been unable to attend.
It was such a relief to be away from Barrymore House that Minette felt she could breathe freely for the first time in weeks. A disloyal thought, but it was only one dinner, and August said she ought to go and take some holiday cheer where she may.