“Is that why you refused my proposal? Because you fear I’d shatter this false shell of perfection that you’ve built around yourself? Are you afraid that I won’t treat you like a porcelain figurine, but like a real woman?”
Plenty of people had accused her of lacking human feeling. She never betrayed how it hurt. Hearing it from the man who claimed to know her, who claimed to want her, who lied about loving her, stabbed sharper than a knife. She tensed her jaw against the pain and told herself that this was why she was right to reject him.
“You know exactly why I refused you, my lord,” she said flatly and turned to Mr. Bullstrode. She began to discuss the weather at such length that it saved her having to address Elias until the ladies left the gentlemen to their port.
Chapter Seven
* * *
Marianne admired how her hostess found space and sustenance for the multitude and ensured that the gentlemen had enough port and brandy to oil their evening. All with a warmth and ease that made the party feel like a civilized gathering and not an emergency camp on a flood plain. With the house organized, Sidonie retired after dinner for a coze with Genevieve and Marianne.
Marianne’s father had never approved of her friendship with Lady Hillbrook. Sidonie’s family was undistinguished, and society had counted the six months between her marriage and the birth of her daughter. Not to mention the gossip clinging to her formidable husband, including rumors that he’d murdered the previous Viscount Hillbrook.
Only the lure of a fat profit on his Hampstead land had brought Lord Baildon to Ferney. Sidonie’s charm and beauty had since worked their magic. Tonight, Marianne’s father had looked almost jolly once he’d stopped scowling at his daughter. And this was despite the presence of Elias and Lord Tranter. Marianne supposed her father relied on her obedience to his wishes, an obedience inculcated since childhood.
What a predicable little nonentity she was.
Genevieve and Sidonie were much more dynamic personalities. Both women had fought for their happiness. They’d dared the world’s disdain and in return found marriages that united heart and soul—and perhaps most disturbing to a woman facing a loveless future, of body. Even someone as inexperienced as Marianne felt the zing in the air.
After four days at Ferney, she was envious. And stirred.
She couldn’t imagine her breath hitching with excitement at Desborough’s touch. She couldn’t imagine love softening his voice when he spoke her name the way Hillbrook and Richard’s voices softened when they addressed their wives.
It was late when she left Sidonie’s parlor. After her friends retired, she’d lingered behind to select a book from her hostess’s stash of naughty novels. Although given how fragile she felt, some improving volume on stoic philosophy might be a better choice.
Marianne told herself that she felt so low because she was tired and the day had been beyond difficult. But thinking of everything she’d never have made her falter to a stop. Blinking back stinging tears, she leaned one hand on the wall of the lamplit corridor. Standing in the quiet hallway while the rest of Ferney slept, she finally admitted that blindly following her father’s dictates was poor spirited. Worthy of George Seaton’s insipid daughter, not of the woman who claimed gallant Sidonie Merrick and brilliant Genevieve Harmsworth as friends.
She’d never gone after what she wanted. And because she’d always done what she was told, a lifetime of dreary duty stretched ahead. The house crowded around her, silently reproaching her for her cowardice.
Except when she clambered out of her slough of self-pity, the house wasn’t completely silent. Somewhere someone played the piano. Something slow and melancholy.
Marianne had sent her maid away before she came downstairs. Her father had gone to bed hours ago. She hadn’t seen her suitors since dinner.
Nobody waited for her. Nobody watched her.
This was so unusual that it felt like freedom. If she wished to enjoy beautiful music in the still of the night, no one would gainsay her.
She drifted toward the music room where Desborough had proposed. Even that memory couldn’t pierce her trance.
She was close enough now to identify the piece. Part of a Beethoven sonata, slow arpeggios and solemn bass, music that always made her picture moonlight on a calm sea. When she’d left Sidonie’s parlor, she’d been weary to the point of dropping. Now she felt alert, curious, strangely expectant.
The pianist reached the end and Marianne waited outside the closed door, wanting more.
As if in response to her unspoken request, the mysterious musician began the piece again. Soft, sweet, sad, beautiful. Whoever played was an artist indeed. For a long time, she stood captive in the empty hallway, the exquisite music making her want to cry.
Unable to resist, she edged the door open. In Ferney, the doors didn’t dare squeak so she was safe from discovery. For a few transfixed minutes, she poised on the threshold.
A branch of candles on the gleaming square piano. Rain catching gold from the candlelight as it battered the windowpanes. The tall man with black hair sitting with his back to her while he played from memory.
“Come in,” Elias said softly, without interrupting the steady procession of notes.
Of course it was Elias. Somewhere in her soul, she’d known that from first hearing the music. She glanced past him and realized he could see her hovering figure in its rich purple taffeta gown reflected in the wet glass.
Her belly knotted in useless yearning. Her fingers curled at her sides, aching to touch those straight shoulders, that long back. She bit her lip to curb a sigh of longing. Good sense dictated that she retreat, but the rebellion that had sparked earlier demanded that she snatch this moment. She’d spent her life avoiding danger and all it had got her was a wedd
ing to Lord Desborough to look forward to.
On shaky legs, she edged further into the room and waited without speaking as Elias finished the Beethoven and continued into music she didn’t know. Something bittersweet that spoke of opportunities lost and joy so fleeting that it vanished even as it bloomed.