Her fingers clenched around the thin leather volume she carried. She’d heard Elias play before. Occasionally he accompanied a singer at a musicale and he’d played for dancing at Cam and Pen’s Christmas party. She’d never heard him make music purely for its own sake. It was a revelation. She’d fought her attraction to him. Tonight as he conjured such transcendent beauty with his fingers, she gave up fighting. Twice today they’d exchanged bitter words, but right now she couldn’t summon anything except a forbidden delight in his presence.
When the rippling accompaniment finally stopped, he rested his hands on the ivory keys before he turned to meet her eyes. “You’re crying.”
She raised an unsteady hand to her wet cheeks. The music had cut through her pretense at serenity to the roiling turmoil in her heart. “Yes.”
A smile hovered around his mouth. “Was I so bad?”
Confused emotions crowded too close for her to rise to his gentle teasing. “What was that last music?”
“Something by a young Viennese composer called Franz Schubert. I met him when I visited the city and he gave me a copy.”
“It’s lovely.”
“You’re lovely.” He rose from the piano stool and approached slowly as if afraid she’d fly away if he made any sudden movement. “I was thinking of you as I played.”
She should tell him to be quiet. She should turn on her heel and retreat to her lonely bed.
The music must contain magic because instead, she remained in quivering stillness. Waiting.
As Elias reached out to release her hold on her book, he glanced idly at the cover. His mouth curled in admiration. “’Lady Jane’s Secret’? There’s hope for you yet. Does Lady Marianne have a secret, too?”
Her heart beat so hard, it promised to smash clear out of her chest. A distant corner of her mind was astonished at her daring. The lily-livered Marianne she’d always considered herself would have fled long before this. For once the pleasure of the moment outweighed her fears of what he might want from her. “Everyone has secrets.”
“Let’s see if I can discover yours.”
That statement, however mildly spoken, was a threat. They both knew it was. So why was she standing here, staring up at Elias as if he offered the answer to her prayers? She swallowed to moisten her parched throat, but nothing calmed the mad throb of her blood.
He set the book on the piano behind him. Without looking away from her, he reached past to shut the door, then linked his fingers with hers. Immediate heat shimmered through her. Her lips parted on a soft betraying gasp.
Through the rising mists of enchantment, a warning clanged, barely audible over the thump of her heart. Her feet in their lilac silk slippers remained glued to the parquet floor and her gaze remained fastened to his. Who knew black could contain so much light? She tumbled into a million stars.
Run, Marianne, run.
She swam in luminous night eyes while his clean, musky scent fed her senses. Even as he bent his dark head toward her, still with that watchfulness, she kept silent.
Those long musician’s fingers flexed on hers without tightening. The merest hint of coercion would chase her off. He let her retain the illusion that she had some choice in what happened.
His other hand cupped her jaw with more of that breathtaking sweetness. He’d touched her before, but not like this, not with such intimacy, not as if the merest breath might shatter her.
As naturally as a swallow learned to fly, his lips met hers. She stood beneath the kiss, drowning in unearthly tenderness. This was a question, not a demand. Her eyelids became heavy and fluttered down, abandoning her to a universe of touch and taste and scent.
Before Marianne worked out how to respond to his chaste kiss, it was over. On a sigh so soft that she only heard it because they stood so close, he pulled away.
Unwillingly she opened her eyes, not sure what she’d find in his face. Triumph? Disdain? Desire?
His expression was unfathomable. This Elias was a stranger. For the first time tonight, an eddy of fear tightened her stomach.
“You…you shouldn’t have done that,” she said unsteadily, struggling to remember duty and honor and common sense. All those important, serious concepts were less substantial than the invisible thread tethering her to this place and this man. When her tongue touched her lips, she tasted something new. Elias?
“I’ve wanted to kiss you for months.” His voice was rich and deep as sable.
“Months?” she asked wonderingly, too beguiled to find that intimidating.
“Since I first saw you at the Worthingtons’ ball in March last year.”
“You didn’t speak to me then. We weren’t introduced until the Oldhavens’ musicale, the night Pen made her debut as Duchess of Sedgemoor.”
His lips lifted in a smile that she felt in her heart more than saw with her eyes. “You remember?”