Seduction - His Every Kiss Part 20

"You are a mixture, then, of both sides of your family, musical like your mother, fond of sport like your father. Where does the wild side come in?" He gave her a pirate smile. "That's all mine." Grace watched the wind carry his hair across his cheek, and as he shook it back, she wondered what it was about men who were wild and disreputable that attracted her so much. It seemed to be her lot in life. "Since your mother was musical, she must have understood your pa.s.sion for it."

"Yes. I adored my mother. She knew what music was, you see, she comprehended it in the same way I do. She wrote symphonic poems before there was a name for them. She was the only person who supported my talent. My father could never understand why we both had this pa.s.sion for music. Despite the fact that he loved my mother until the day she died, he never understood her. He never understood me. Ian doesn't either. He is a great deal like our father. My mother died when I was a boy of eleven."

"That must have been hard for you."

"Yes." He bent down and began to collect some of the small stones beside the path. "When she died," he went on, "I had no one in my family, or anywhere really, who understood what I do and why it is so important to me. I began to rebel and do what I pleased, and my father could not really control me. He did not care about my music, and because of that, I did not care what he thought of me." Dylan straightened, stretched his arm back, and threw one of the stones in his hand. It cleared the cliff and arched out to the sea. "After Cambridge, I went to Europe for four years. I toured. First, piano concerts, then conducting." He tossed another rock over the cliff.

"I understand why you do not tour now," she said. "You do not need the money. But why do you not conduct?"

"I just don't." He did not elaborate, and she did not press him. After a moment, he said, "Anyway, my father and I never got along. I only came home to see him once before he died."

Grace took another look at her surroundings. "Yet, when you were looking for an estate of your own, this is the one you chose," she pointed out gently. "One near where you grew up, one that has orchards, one like home."

"Yes." Dylan looked over at her and laughed a little. "By G.o.d, I did, didn't I? I never thought about it that way. All I knew was that I loved this place from the first moment I saw it."

"Then why do you not live here all the time?"

He was silent so long that she thought he wasn't going to answer her. "London is... easier. I haven't been here in quite some time. Two years, at least."

"But why not?" Grace gestured to the prospect spread out before them, the trees on either side, the white rotunda that gleamed a few feet away from where they stood, and the terraces of garden and lawn that sloped down into a wild tangle of shrubs and trees before it dropped over the rocky cliff to the ocean below. "How could you stay away?"

"I had forgotten how much I used to love it here," he murmured without answering her question. Then, with a shake of his head, he turned and started up the steps toward the house.

"Used to love it?" she echoed, following him. "Do you not love it now?"

"I don't know." He stepped up onto the terrace and took several steps along its length, then stopped to look out at the view again. "It is so d.a.m.nably quiet here, so serene. I had forgotten that."

"You talk as if quiet and serenity are bad things. Would not those very things help you write music?"

"No." She watched his lips tighten as he turned his back to the sea. He sat on the edge of the short wall that surrounded the terrace, his hands curling over the stone edge on either side of his hips. He closed his eyes. "I don't even know what serenity is anymore."

Grace thought of Etienne and his erratic mood changes. "What is the turbulence all about?" she asked him, almost as if to herself. "Does everything have to be exciting all the time?"

"You do not understand." He opened his eyes, but he did not look at her.

Instead, he straightened away from the wall and started back toward the house.

Grace watched him go, and something made her call after him, "Dylan?"

He stopped, but he did not turn around. "Yes?"

"I would like to understand."

"I doubt you ever could." With that, he went inside the house.

It wasn't until Dylan was lying in bed that night that he fully appreciated why he never went to the country anymore. No diversions. No distractions. Country hours. Nothing to distract his attention at this hour of the night but the nightingale singing outside his window. Nothing to take him away from the hated, grinding sound inside himself.

I'd like to understand.

How could anyone understand what this was like, this maddening sound, day after day, night after night? Unless one heard it and lived it, one could never understand it.

He tried to shut it out, but as usual, the harder he tried, the louder the sound became. Laudanum was nearby, ready to dull his senses into an opiate-induced haze that might pa.s.s for rest. He had brought hashish with him as well, but he was strangely reluctant to take either of them. He thought of Isabel and the hashish he had smoked that night at Angeline's, and for a reason he could not quite define, he did not want to dull his wits anymore. It wasn't something a father should do.

He rolled onto his side, staring out the open French door onto his balcony, watching the cool ocean breeze play with the sheer white gauze curtain in the moonlight. If only he could spend the night like an ordinary person; how blissful to simply lay his head down, close his eyes, and drift into sleep.

He knew from experience that eventually his mind would surrender to his body's demand and sleep would claim him. Tomorrow perhaps, or the next day, but not tonight. He shoved back the sheet, got out of bed, and walked naked out onto the balcony.

Nights in early May were still a bit cool here on the coast, but he scarcely noticed the chill in the breeze. He inhaled the fragrance of the herbs in the garden below and the tangy smell of the sea beyond. The moonlight reflected off the caps of the waves in the distance like sparks in the night.

Dylan went back inside and shut the door. He walked into the dressing room. Careful not to wake Phelps, and fumbling a bit in the dark, he located a pair of black Cossack trousers, took his favorite dressing gown off the hook on the door, and left the dressing room. He slipped on the loose-fitting trousers and shrugged into the robe of heavy black silk, not bothering to tie it. He couldn't sleep, he might just as well work on the symphony, he decided and went downstairs. Since the music room at Nightingale's Gate was on the ground floor, a fair distance from the bedrooms, he probably wouldn't wake anyone.

The moonlight enabled him to see well enough to find an oil lamp and friction matches in the drawing room before he pa.s.sed through one of the three wide arches that led from there into the music room. He poured himself a gla.s.s of claret, opened the French door that led into the garden to let in the cool air, and he sat down on the upholstered velvet bench of the piano, placing the lamp in the holder on the right side of the music stand. Phelps had already placed a stack of composition paper, a desk set, and his folio on the closed lid, ready for him whenever he chose to work. To dampen the volume, he left the lid down.

Given a choice, he preferred the Broadwood Grand in London to the one here in Devonshire, for the tone was just a bit richer, but one couldn't just toss a grand piano onto the rack of a traveling coach and take it along. This instrument was almost as excellent, and when he ran his hand over the keys, he found that Mrs. Hollings had followed his instructions. It was in perfect tune.

He played scales for ten minutes, then took a swallow of his wine as he scanned what he had already written.

He was in the midst of the second movement, and as his gaze ran across the notes he had scrawled on the staff lines, he remembered why that was so. He was stuck. The chords he had finally worked out for the feminine exposition didn't work here in the slow, lyrical second movement. He didn't know quite why. He tried several different variations on the theme, but none satisfied him, and that was the problem. He was never sure what worked and what didn't anymore, and as a result, he could not feel satisfied with what he had and just go on. He was constantly getting stuck.

Dylan stopped playing. He rubbed his hand over his eyes and made a grinding sound of exasperation through his teeth.

"Not going well?"

He looked up at the sound of Grace's soft voice. She was standing in her nightclothes under the middle arch that opened into the drawing room, a lamp in her hand, her hair caught back in that heavy braid across her shoulder, her feet bare beneath the unadorned hem of her nightclothes. She had very pretty feet.

He took a deep breath and looked into her face. "Did I wake you?" he asked.

She gave a yawn and nodded.

"I'm sorry. I didn't think anyone could hear in the bedrooms."

"I had my window open a bit for the ocean air, and I heard you." She glanced around at the slate blue walls, the creamy white columns and moldings, and the solid, unpretentious furniture. "These are nice, these two rooms."

"How is your bedroom?"

"Pretty. Willow green paper and a soft rug. I like it. In fact, I like your house, Dylan." She walked around the piano as if to stand behind him and have a look at the music, but then she paused and glanced at him. "May I see it, or do you not let anyone see your work?"

Dylan made an open-handed gesture toward the sheet music on the stand. "Just do not critique it," he said with a short laugh. "I hate that."

She did not laugh with him. "I shan't criticize," she promised and moved behind him to peek over his shoulder. She set her lamp in the holder on the left side of the music stand and leaned forward. She put her right hand on the keyboard and awkwardly played a few bars. "Despite my lack of skill at piano, I think it's lovely."

"Thank you." He looked at it and frowned, thoroughly dissatisfied. "But it's all wrong."

"Wrong? But it sounds beautiful."

"It isn't right. I cannot explain why." He pressed his hands to his skull with a heavy sigh and closed his eyes. "It just doesn't sound right."

She put a hand on his shoulder. "Perhaps you should stop and relax for a bit." She leaned down closer to his ear. "It always helped Liszt."

She laughed and started to walk away, but he grabbed her around the waist and hauled her back. "Oh, no," he said, "you are not getting by with that. How do you know what worked for Liszt, hmm?"

"I was teasing," she said, laughing, grabbing his wrists at her waist and trying to push his arms away. "I was only teasing, I swear it."

With that admission, he let her go, and she walked away. "I am going to the kitchens to make myself a dish of tea."

"You don't have to do that. Ring for a maid."

"Wake up a maid at this hour? For tea?" She shook her head. "Maids work very hard and need their rest. I shall make my own. Would you like a cup?"

He shuddered. "I loathe tea," he told her and lifted his gla.s.s. "Besides, I have claret. I do think I shall take that pause you suggested, though."

"You don't like tea?" As he stood up, she stared at him, looking baffled. "How can you not like tea? Everybody likes tea."

"I don't."

He followed her to the kitchen. While she went into the b.u.t.tery and searched among Mrs. Blake's kitchen stores for tea, he stoked the boiler of the stove and put a pot of water on for her tea.

"Would you like anything to eat?" she asked from the interior of the b.u.t.tery. She appeared in the doorway with a cannister of tea in one hand and a smile on her face. "There is a tin of shortbread in here."

"Bring it out."

She laughed. "Somehow, I thought that would appeal to you."

She fetched it from the b.u.t.tery and set it on the worktable in the center of the kitchen. While she made her tea, he helped himself to shortbread and watched her.

"You don't put anything in your tea," he commented as she lifted her cup to blow on the steaming beverage.

"I used to, and then-" She stopped and looked away with a little laugh, as if she was embarra.s.sed. "It has been so long since I put milk and sugar in my tea, I cannot remember how it tasted."

Dylan knew what she meant and why she was embarra.s.sed. He had not thought much about her dest.i.tution and desperation, and even when he had, it hadn't been because he had been pondering their effect on her. He was angry at himself for that, angry and a bit ashamed.

"Why don't we go down and sit in the garden?" he suggested, picking up his gla.s.s of wine and gesturing to the door out of the kitchen.

"Now?"

"Why not? You should know the best time to sit by the sea is at night, and you like gardens, especially roses. Let's sit in the rotunda. If memory serves, there are chairs down there."

"There are. I noticed them as we walked past the rotunda this afternoon."

They left the house through the French door in the music room, guided by the moonlight down the winding flagstone steps of the garden until they reached the domed structure, where four iron chairs, painted white, were set around a matching table.

Grace did not sit down. Instead, she took a sip of her tea, set the cup and saucer on the table, and walked to the edge of the rotunda, where the path continued to slope down through more trees and gardens down to the cliff. She looked at the shimmering, moonlit waves in the distance. "I always missed this," she murmured. "London, Paris, Florence, Vienna-wherever I went, I always missed the sea."

He moved to stand behind her. "Grace, are you ever going to tell me why you were selling oranges and living in a garret in Bermondsey?"

She hesitated, then she said, "My husband had died, and I had no money."

"But you come from a gentry family. I knew that from the beginning-it's in the accent of your voice. It's in the way you move, as if you spent a good part of your life carrying books on your head and practicing your curtsies. There is something very... fine about you. You were gently bred."

"Yes."

"Then why didn't you return to Cornwall after your husband died? Why didn't you go home?"

She did not answer him, and several minutes pa.s.sed. Just when he thought she wasn't going to tell him, she spoke. "I did once. It was a mistake. Now I can't go home again."

She looked at him, pain in her moonlit face that hurt him, too. It reminded him of when he had dragged Isabel home in the carriage a week ago. He had that same tight squeeze in his chest, that same feeling of helplessness, the same outrage. Hurt on another's behalf, something he hadn't felt in years.

"Grace," he murmured and reached over to touch her face, brush his fingers over the little wet streak on her face that glistened in the moonlight. "When I ask you about your past, it always upsets you. G.o.d, love, what happened to you? Did your husband do something to you?" Just asking the question constricted his chest even more. But she shook her head, and he guessed again. "Your family, then. What did they do to you that is so painful you cannot talk about it?"

"They did not do anything to me. I'm the one. It is what I did to them. That is why I can't go home."

Somehow, the idea of Grace doing anything to hurt anyone was absurd, impossible. She felt guilty if she ate her dessert in the afternoon. Grace, by her own admission, was never naughty. "Stuff," he said, not believing it. "What could you possibly have done that was so awful?"

"I eloped eight years ago."

"What?" Given what he knew about her, it was so out of character that he almost laughed, but the look on her face stopped him. "You're serious."

She nodded and bit her lip, looking for all the world like a guilty child who wasn't going to get any supper. "He was French. I'd known him a week. He was disreputable, poor, and ten years older than I was. I was seventeen and the most serious girl you could ever meet. No one ever dreamed that Grace Anne Lawrence, the most high-minded, sensible, and-yes-virtuous girl in Stillmouth would cause the biggest scandal in Land's End in fifty years."

"So you eloped. Many girls elope. It's always a scandal, but the brides and grooms are usually forgiven."

There was a long pause. Then she said, "Not when they don't get around to actually saying vows for nearly two years and go gallivanting across Europe together with no marriage lines. That sort of thing doesn't go down well in my family, or in Stillmouth. Respectability and reputation mean everything for a woman, especially in a small village."

"You lived with your husband for two years before you married him?" He was getting more surprised by the moment. "Grace, you never even stole sweets from your family cook. You were never naughty, you told me yourself. How did you go from that to eloping with a man you barely knew and not even marrying him for two years?"

"I went mad."

Startled, he looked over at her. "What?"

"I mean, I fell in love. I fell in love with my husband the first time I saw him." Her lips tilted up in a wistful sort of smile that twisted his guts in a knot. "He made me laugh. I felt alive for the first time in my life. I never knew how much joy there could be inside one's own heart until I met my husband."

Dylan looked away. He didn't want to think about her being in love. He didn't want to think about her making love with some other man, especially a Frenchman, especially her husband, a man who had waited two years to marry her. "Did he love you?"

"Yes, he did."

Dylan scowled. "Then why didn't he marry you up front and do the honorable thing? He was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. A French b.a.s.t.a.r.d," he added for good measure.

"Listen to the man!" She began to laugh through her tears, wiping them off her face with the backs of her hands. "How many women have you lived with?"

"Seven."

"Did you marry any of them?"

"That is not the same thing. I did not love any of them. They did not love me."

"Are you sure they did not?"

He thought of each mistress with whom he had lived. He could not really imagine that they had felt any love for him, but he could not be sure. "Can anyone really be sure of another person's true feelings? In my case, there was never a question of marriage. Surely you expected marriage?"