Free Count Toussaint’s Pregnant Mistress by Kate Hewitt Page A

finally. ‘Not as much as I thought I would, anyway.’ Yet she knew she was lying, at least in part. She missed the music. She missed wanting the music, needing it, loving it, having it consume her.
    ‘Why did you retire, Abby?’ Luc asked, his voice low and intense as he moved closer to her, filling the small kitchen. ‘Why did you leave it all so suddenly?’
    ‘You really have the most amazing guilt complex,’ Abby told him. She turned around and found a smile. ‘You blame yourself, don’t you? You think you ruined my career.’
    ‘It made me wonder,’ Luc replied coolly. ‘Tell me I’mwrong.’ Although he kept his voice detached, almost cold, Abby heard the sorrow, the grief, underneath. It reminded her of the man he’d been in Paris six months ago—a man who seemed tormented by regret. What had happened to make Luc the man he was, tortured by guilt? What had he done?
    ‘You’re wrong, Luc,’ she said quietly. ‘It wasn’t you, not really. It was me.’
    ‘What happened?’
    Behind her the kettle whistled and Abby busied herself, making herself at home in the kitchen, preparing tea. She needed the time to sort her thoughts and prepare an answer. What happened? So much.
    ‘I suppose a lot of things happened at the same time,’ she finally said when the tea was ready. She handed Luc a mug and they stood in silence, hands cradled around their mugs, both of them lost in thought, waiting.
    ‘Our night together was a bit of a wake-up call,’ Abby continued after a moment, choosing her words carefully. ‘I realized then how closed, how caged , my life was. I know it looked glamorous from the outside, but all I’ve known, all I’ve ever known, is piano—concert halls and practising and not much else.’ She took a sip of tea. ‘Not much of a life.’
    ‘And you wanted to change that?’ Luc asked eventually.
    Abby paused, remembering. She hadn’t wanted mere change; she’d wanted escape. The lacklustre reviews had simply spurred her on. She took another sip of tea. ‘Yes. And, to be frank, I needed it. I was, as they say in the trade, burned out. And it showed.’
    ‘You’re brilliant,’ Luc objected and Abby shrugged.
    ‘I stopped being brilliant.’ She still felt the sting of the disappointed audiences, the scathing reviews. And worse, far worse, had been the emptiness within herself, the feeling that the intimate connection she’d forged with music had suddenlybeen severed. It had left her grieving, lost, adrift in a sea of self-imposed silence, and so she’d gone. She was glad…now. At least, she told herself she was.
    They both lapsed into silence; the only sound was the distant swoosh of the sea, the endless pull and tug of the tide.
    ‘All right,’ Luc finally said. ‘But why Cornwall? Why heft boxes like some lackey?’
    He didn’t keep the disbelieving disdain from his voice, and Abby bristled. ‘There’s nothing wrong with manual labour.’
    ‘It’s beneath you. What if you injured your hands? What if you lost the ability to play?’
    Abby had considered this, but when she’d taken the job with Cornish Country Kitchen Catering she’d been too weary and heartsore to care. ‘I haven’t played piano in six months,’ she said quietly. ‘I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever play again.’ She’d never spoken those words, that fear, aloud, and now they tore at her soul. She looked away from Luc’s shocked face.
    ‘Don’t,’ she warned him, trying to laugh, ‘take this on yourself. This has very little to do with you, and everything to do with me and my family.’
    ‘Your family?’
    ‘My parents are professional musicians. It’s all they’ve known, all they’ve ever cared about. Right around the time I was born, my mother’s career as a violinist began to take off. My father’s career as a pianist was faltering, and so he took over as my primary care-giver.’
    She spoke flatly, as if she were talking about someone else. She almost felt like she was; she