Free Madrigals And Mistletoe by Hayley A. Solomon Page B

cautious adjoinder. He would teach, but in his own inimitable way. Stuffy music rooms bored him to tears. He suspected Miss Seraphina suffered from the same complaint.
    â€œWhen would you wish to start, Miss Seraphina?”
    â€œNow if you wish! I promise to try with those detestable scales but I warn you, sir, you shall regret it, for more clumsy, muddlesome fingers you would not credit!”
    â€œThen I shall not press you, Miss Camfrey! There is nothing I loathe more than cowhandedness when it comes to music. We shall take a stroll through the gardens rather.”
    Seraphina was so taken aback she quite forgot how pleased she should have been at escaping the misery of scales. Instead, she scowled in a most unbecoming manner and announced she was not in the habit of being called cowhanded.
    â€œNo?”
    The captain’s one-syllable response brought the blood rushing to Seraphina’s cheeks, for behind the syllable lay a wealth of meaning. Seraphina could tell he meant that, if she had not previously been so described, she should have been.
    Useless to tell him that she was being hailed as a diamond of the first water from all sources. A music master would not be privy to high society and so he would not understand its significance. Besides, being boastful would hardly recommend her to him. There would be only one thing he could be interested in and that, maddeningly, was the one thing Seraphina fell far short of: music, music, detestable music! True, she adored listening to some of the baroque composers, but listening was worlds from performing and performing, as she knew, was something that she simply could not do.
    She was at an impasse and Frederick, watching her struggle with her thoughts, knew it. He stood with his back to the window. His shoulder-length chestnut hair was caught in a velvet riband at the back of his head, slightly old-fashioned, but then, he had never been an arbiter of taste like his good friend Rhaz.
    He had taken care not to dress above his station, so his coat, while an excellent fit, was not of the first stare and his cravat would have reduced any self-respecting valet to tears. Though crisp and ice white, it was nevertheless tied in a deplorably simple knot, threaded through shirt points of such a constrained height that any dandy seeing him would have chortled himself into fits.
    Still, there could be no denying the perfectly smooth outline of his buckskin knee breeches, nor the athletic muscles that they encased. Seraphina, glancing downward, found herself dwelling on intriguing parts no lady strictly ought to. In fairness, it was hardly her fault, for the breeches were such a snug fit she would have had to be blind not to be drawn to the very region that they so artlessly covered.
    A slow curve crept across Captain Argyll’s slightly pink, bow-shaped lips. He placed his gloved hands upon his head and regarded Miss Camfrey with a twinkle. “Do I pass scrutiny?”
    Seraphina was shaken from her reverie. What a detestable man! He was positively gloating at her, as if he had read her thoughts! She turned her nose up coldly. “I have no notion of what you mean, captain!”
    To her chagrin, the infuriating man merely chuckled and pointed out the window. “What lies out there?”
    â€œA forest does!” Seraphina’s words were abrupt to a fault. She could not imagine why the man should wish to know, since he had been engaged for the sole purpose of tying her remorselessly to the stuffy old room.
    â€œExcellent! I have a mind to a walk!” The captain’s tone was bracing and brooked no argument. Seraphina’s eyes widened in surprise. “A walk? I thought we were to begin our lesson!”
    â€œWe are!” The captain grinned and an engaging twinkle lit his eye. “Music is an intonation of nature. Its echoes, its crests, its waves and its silences are all an aural reflection of that which we see. To understand it, one has to