Chapter Four
Wolvesfield House, Devonshire, 1790
What had Elizabeth done to deserve it?
After two years abroad, her so-called brother had come home for a stay in the country to irk her father; as if this weren’t enough—and believe that Lord Broughton could do enough for three brothers—he’d brought a guest with him, a certain Lord Killiney of Dublin, Ireland.
She first met him late one night upon her return from a hack in the fields. He was in the music room, and with no introduction nor warning of any kind, how could she have guessed him a peer? Behind the pianoforte, playing one of Haydn’s sonatas, he looked to her only a hired musician and therefore a servant. Her father was always bringing in starving composers.
Certainly, with his dark hair hanging free and his sleeves pushed to the elbow, he had no air of nobility about him. His wide, square jaw was littered with freckles. His appearance was perfectly ordinary in stature, like a bricklayer or a tenant farmer. He was unremarkable in every way, and as he played the pianoforte, he was even sweating.
And thinking him a servant, from the dining room doors Elizabeth called him. She asked him to stop, to abandon his sonata and come forthwith to stoke the fire. ’Twas nothing she wouldn’t have asked anyone to do, servant or not, and she didn’t think twice when she pulled up an armchair and laid down her gloves. After all, her concerns were far more consuming than the music of some starving composer. She had that dream to worry about, the one which had disturbed her for two days running and now seemed as foreboding as that night she’d first dreamt it: that her cousin, Lord Launceston—or Christian as she’d called him, for they’d grown up together—had died in America.
The forest had been dark where she’d seen him in this dream. Bent down on his knees, his clothes soaked with rainwater, Christian had worn a sailor’s breeches and these had been stained the dark russet colour of the cedar-bark soil. The wind had blown fiercely, had come in off the desolate ocean coast nearby; where the gale tore at Christian’s blond hair, the callused hand of a savage had appeared in her dream, and that hand had pushed Christian slowly and forcefully toward the forest floor.
Such an utterly foreign being, this savage. His dark skin had shone through cedar-bark clothing. His black hair, all gloss and length, had obscured his smudged features and tangled with the bit of shell he’d worn through the septum of his nose. Elizabeth couldn’t stop thinking about it—the gentle expression on the Indian’s face. ‘Twas as if the savage saw no sin in his assault. He hadn’t taken pleasure in it. He’d merely thrust an iron blade with an elaborately carved haft right into the base of Christian’s skull, and Christian had screamed.
With the memory of his dying voice, Elizabeth withdrew from her recollections. She shook a little. She glanced toward the door. For all the blood still tarnishing her thoughts, she hadn’t noticed how the sonata had stopped.
“Do you mean to take your time, or have you heard me?” she called, walking toward the music room doors.
When she saw the musician, she startled. He sat frozen in mid-reach for the highest notes of her father’s piano. How odd, she thought. Did he intend to mock her, to bring about her temper?
Then she caught sight of the musician’s eyes. Filled with a blatant temper of their own, they were not the eyes of a servant whatsoever, but alarming, dangerous, and by the blue of them, unquestionably Irish.
“Do you mean to make a fool of yourself?” he asked. “Or do you actually possess so much nerve as you pretend?”
Hearing his tone, Elizabeth was mortified. She might have asked him to cook up a nice squab with some tart, bring her a cup of chocolate and polish her boots! No less than a friend of James’s could incite such a feeling of smallness in her. This man was obviously the Irish viscount.
She thought of James and his taunting of her every action. He’d be laughing quietly now, had he witnessed her presumptuous blunder, and still while she thought these things Lord Killiney didn’t move. From behind the pianoforte, he glared at Elizabeth. His back was bent ever so slightly, as if he’d been caught in the act of bringing his hands down hard upon the keys. He’s waiting for an answer, she thought, and as she bit back the threads of indecision and found that nerve he’d spoken of, she told herself, This is not James, he cannot humiliate you.
“’Tis not nerve,” she said finally, “but cold that fuels my presumption, my lord.”
Killiney nodded, but still he didn’t move. “Cold can bring about the spirit, that’s true.” Those blue eyes remained locked upon hers, and for a moment he gazed at her, as if measuring her ability to meet his stare. “Shall we mend that nerve?” he asked in a whisper. “Shall we stoke the fire and tame you like a kitten curled before the hearth?”
“Shall I call my father down to teach you some manners?”
Killiney shrugged. “Any man would agree with me.”
Elizabeth shifted her foot uncertainly, and she lost some of her bravery then; she lowered her eyes, heard her own voice waver just a bit when she asked, “Agree with you about what, my lord?”
“That you are a wild thing, of course.”
“I am a lady!” Her gaze flew up, and she couldn’t help scolding him, nervous though she was. “I am the mistress of this estate and if you knew the ways of a gentleman, Sir, you’d retract your loose words and behave yourself.”
“You’re not,” he said simply.
“Not what?”
“A lady.” The faintest ebb of an Irish accent tinged his words as he regarded her carefully. “Ladies don’t ride the way you do, my sweet.”
Elizabeth’s heart began to race. Her hands worked their way into tight little fists, her thoughts tumbled anxiously, and still she couldn’t resist knowing the explanation for what he’d said. “And how would you know of the way I ride?”
Without stirring from his posed stance behind the pianoforte, Killiney’s gaze moved over her body. He might as well have performed some crude gesture simulating copulation; the effect was the same. He stared at the proof of her femininity, let his gaze ease down her quivering frame at a leisurely rate until she thought she would blush with embarrassment.
“Horse hair,” he said finally. “All down the front of you.”
And at last he moved, lowered his arms and let his hands touch the keys once more. He began to play, and as the dark waves of hair obscured his face from Elizabeth’s view, he picked up the melody precisely where he’d left it before their altercation had begun.
For a moment, perhaps two, she stood there. She wondered just how long she should embarrass herself in the absence of his attention until, suddenly, he spoke. “Do you like Joseph Haydn?” He didn’t divulge one glimmer of interest in hearing her answer, but kept on with his playing.
Even so, Elizabeth chanced a step into the room. “Mozart,” she said. “I prefer Mozart.”
“Ah, for her nerve the girl has musical tastes to match.”
“Do you mean to insult me again, my lord?”
“I mean that in England, there are few who know of our friend Herr Mozart. His music is not for the absentminded…or those who desire a fanciful, meaningless noise over which to spread their gossip.” He lifted his eyes from the instrument quickly. “And Lady Elizabeth does not gossip, unless it’s to quicken lies amid the horses’ ears, am I right?”
Smiling to himself, turning to his music in a seamless execution of melody and emotion, he said nothing more.