“Because he will always love another,” her mother said, seeming to follow Anne’s unspoken question. “I would see your life be different than the one I’ve lived.”
Anne imagined herself thirty years from now a bitter, empty, angry shell of the woman she’d been. For everything wrong and flawed in her mother’s thinking, she would be correct on this. Harry would break some woman’s heart. And if Anne weren’t careful, she would be that poor, unfortunate soul. Her heart twisted. She tugged her hands free. “Please be assured, Mother. I know that. I do.” She slid her gaze over to the pianoforte.
Mother touched Anne’s chin. “Learn from my mistakes. I loved your father enough, so much that I foolishly believed I could teach him to love me.” Her voice broke and she coughed in an apparent attempt to hide her uncharacteristic show of emotion. “You can’t teach the heart to know that which it already knows.”
Oddly, those words made sense to Anne. She wandered back over to the pale blue upholstered pianoforte bench and sat. “I understand, Mother.” She raised her hands, poised above the keys. “I’ll not do anything foolish where Lord Stanhope is concerned.” If one could exclude enlisting the rogue’s assistance on matters of seduction…
Anne began to play a polite, if clear, dismissal. She’d had enough of her mother’s rain upon her happiness. She buried thoughts of Harry, and mother’s aching reminder of a too-sad past, and the Duke of Crawford’s intentions, in the strands of John Dowland. She lost herself in the haunting melody and sang.
Not to seduce.
But merely because it was a singular pleasure she could allow herself. Her books, she could barely see. Her ribbons were empty fripperies. In the strands of song, she could drift off and be someone other than empty-headed, pleasingly pretty, Lady Anne Arlette Adamson.
And Anne sang.
“Weep no more sad fountains. What need have you flow so fast…?”
~*~
As Harry trailed behind the butler through the Countess of Wakefield’s townhouse, the haunting melody soared from the room at the end of the corridor and danced around the plaster walls. He froze mid-stride. His heart pounded loud and hard in his ears.
A contralto.
The whisper of song that makes a man think of bedrooms and bedsheets and all things forbidden…
The butler paused and looked back at him questioningly. Harry told his mind to tell his legs to tell his feet to move. And so he moved. Onward to the husky contralto. They paused beside the parlor. The butler cleared his throat. “The Earl of Stanhope….”
Anne’s song broke into a sharp shriek and her fingers slid along the keyboard in a discordant tune that echoed around the room. She jumped to her feet, high color on her cheeks. “My lord.”
For a quick moment, Harry wasn’t sure if hers was a greeting or a skyward prayer.
Her gaze met his and then wandered off to the young maid who hurried past him and advanced deep into the room. Out of the way. But certainly not forgotten.
He damned propriety to the devil. Harry beat his hand against his leg. “My lady.”
Anne fiddled with her satin skirts.
“Should I…”
“Would you…”
They fell silent. He motioned for her to continue.
Anne cleared her throat. “Would you care for refreshments?” she asked loudly.
He cupped his hands around his mouth. “A seat should suffice,” he returned.
Her lips twitched and she motioned him forward. The butler hurried off and Harry entered the room. “Please, sit,” Anne murmured. She hovered beside the rose-inlaid pianoforte.
He claimed a seat on the sofa. He narrowed his eyes at Anne’s unexpected show of hesitation. For the tart, biting hellion she’d proven herself to be since they’d met, she’d never been timid around him. And he rather found he disliked it. Disliked it, immensely.
She hurried over and sat in the mahogany ladder back armchair across from him. Not on the sofa directly beside him. Or even the bloody chair directly next to his. Across. She shifted in her seat. “Are you certain you wouldn’t care for tea?”
He looped his ankle across his knee. “Quite certain. But please do not let me discourage you.”
Anne glanced at her maid. “Mary, will you call for refreshments, please.”
The servant hopped up from her seat and rushed to do Anne’s bidding.
Silence reigned between Harry and Anne. He drummed his fingertips on the edge of his boot. What accounted for the suddenly mute version of Anne’s usually vibrant self? She studied the tips of her ivory satin slippers with the attention she might show a fireworks display at Vauxhall Garden. He leaned back in his seat. Alas, it would appear the charm he usually evinced failed him whenever Lady Anne Adamson was near.