Free An Ideal Duchess by Evangeline Holland Page B

at her parents.
                  “Why not?”
     
    *          *          *
                 
                  Bron felt strangely vulnerable leading the Vandewaters around his home. He seemed to finally notice the shabby carpets and velvet drapes covering the windows, the cracked Ming vase a careless housemaid had overturned while dusting in the large drawing room, the age-darkened portraits adorning the walls, and worse, the water damage to the stenciled ceilings of the library and dining room. He walked awkwardly across the Saloon, eyeing the dirty Gobelin tapestries covering the walls, as Mr. and Mrs. Vandewater trailed into the music room after their daughter. He stepped inside after them just as Miss Vandewater opened the lid of the grand piano, sat on the bench, and pressed three polished ivory keys. The discordant sound of someone with absolutely zero musical talent met his ears, and he winced.
                  “Do you play, Your Grace?” Mrs. Vandewater gave him an expectant look.
                  Miss Vandewater merely raised a brow in question.
                  “Tolerably well,” He said, walking towards her. “I haven’t in years.”
                  Miss Vandewater peered at the sheet music stacked neatly on the music rack and then smiled slyly at him.
                  He narrowed his eyes at her. “You aren’t going to ask me to play, are you?”
                  “I don’t mean to inconvenience you…”
                  “Rot!” He laughed. “You will make me feel like a heel for demurring, even with a bad arm.”
                  “Then you shall play?” Miss Vandewater’s grin was infectious, causing him to respond with a grin of his own. “Papa, Mother, His Grace is going to play for us!”
                  His grin faltered when her parents sat on the chairs facing the piano with an expectant look.  He could not get around this without seeming bad-tempered and rude, and he moved to the piano as Miss Vandewater shifted over to give him room. He sat beside her and grew aware of her delicious scent, the fragrance of rosewater and vetivert tickling his nose. Her full skirt brushed his skin where it coursed over his legs and covered his feet as he felt for the pedals, and he stiffened when she leaned against his shoulder, reaching across him to choose the piece of music he was to play.
                  He forced his eyes to the sheet music, to the black notes dancing up and down the black lines instead of the soft pink whorl of her ear and the wisps of her tawny hair escaping from beneath her upswept coiffure.  She had removed her hat and he noticed it sitting on top of the piano, almost as though she had marked her place.
                  He glanced over to the chairs where her parents had settled. Mr. Vandewater’s disarming and benign bulk masked the heart of a man who grasped what he wanted, and what he wanted, Bron realized, as Mr. Vandewater cast a covetous glance about the music room, was Bledington. He grimaced and then turned his attention back to the piano, gingerly sliding his arm out of the sling. The pain had mostly subsided, though Dr. Satterthwaite refused to remove his splint, and Bron wriggled his fingers to stretch the unused muscles. He glanced at the piece Miss Vandewater had chosen and was taken aback to find it one of the simpler pieces, chosen in obvious awareness of his injury.
                  He smiled awkwardly at her, unsettled and pleased by this small, almost insignificant favor, and then bent his head to the ivory and black keyboard. His fingers curved lightly on the keys as he began to play number four of Liszt’s Consolation in D flat major. He stumbled a bit over the beginning, his playing rusty and his hands unused to the movements, but he fell easily back into his old,