Page 103 of Dukes All Night Long

A nnie found a new piece on the stand above the keyboard. How odd. Had someone else been playing? She had never seen this composition at Woodglen, or anywhere else.

“John Field,” she murmured. “I’ve never heard of him.” A nocturne, the title said. A new form. The notion pleased her. Music for the night.

She had come, certain the stranger would have gone on his way by the end of the week, but wary.

If one visitor came to the manor, there could be another.

Picking her way through the piece for the first time, she found it ideal.

A soft sound for the quiet of night. The second time went more smoothly.

By the third, she floated over waves of sound.

The very softness of the gentle piece gave her a sense of privacy, as if locked in a magic world of her own.

Gone was the pressure of performing for an audience.

Gone was the fear of Uncle Virgil’s censure.

Gone was the risk of discovery. There was only the music and the night: balm for her beleaguered soul, the reason she came.

Lost in that world, she didn’t realize she was no longer alone. When the final arpeggios faded away, she sat back with a sigh. A faint sound, however, an indrawn breath, perhaps, drew her attention to the doorway. When did it open ?

A man holding a candle, his face lost in shadows, stood there watching. She leapt to her feet, almost knocking over the bench, and took a step backward.

“Don’t go!” the man said.

Anger flared in Annie. How dare he invade my world. How dare he destroy my time. She inched backward toward the open window, ready to break into a run.

The shadowed man took a step into the room, the flickering light of his candle giving him a sinister appearance. “Stay! Please.”

Fear pushed anger aside. “Don’t come near me.” She bumped against the windowsill. “Leave me be.” She turned to climb out.

“Annie, no!” he called.

The worst fear took hold, and she tipped her head back and shouted, “Please don’t tell my uncle. I beg you.”

She scrambled over and ran into the night, running from the footsteps she heard following her across the room. She slipped through the hedge before she heard his cry from the window, a desperate sound as if it were pulled from his very center. “Lucia!”

She ran as if for her life, and swallowed the sob that threatened to choke her. Lucia? Lucia is dead.

*

“Annie, no!” Owen froze at the sight of her disappearing again. He shook his shock off and ran to the window. He had one leg over the sill when his robe fell open and he realized he displayed himself in all his newborn glory. Common sense said stop. He didn’t.

The hesitation, however, gave the girl the time she needed to escape. Once again, he felt along the hedge for an opening. Once again, he failed. The thin sliver of moon did not help.

Now you’ve lost your mind completely . His obsession had led him to act like a lunatic.

He crawled back in carefully, wrapped his robe tightly, and heaved a sigh.

I need to get some sleep, leave in the morning, as I decided. And find a wife.

His resolution to leave evaporated quickly as the music crowded his memory—the woman playing that night and the first night.

It pushed all sense aside. He picked up the pages of the nocturne, straightened them, and put them away.

It didn’t take him long to pull out a Mozart piece, the one he heard the first night he saw Lucia. He laid it on the piano’s music stand.

“Let’s see her play that one quietly,” he said to the empty room, with a grin.

His candle lay where he had dropped it by the window. He picked it up and lit it from the brace of candles on the piano before blowing the others out. He wondered fleetingly if his mysterious musician would return. He thought not.

When he got to the kitchen, he found Marshall heating milk.

The steward grunted. “You up again?”

“I heard music.”

Marshall’s brows shot up. “She must have thought you were gone, or she’d have stayed away.” He slipped whisky into mugs of warm milk and sat at the table.

Owen took a sip and stared morosely down at the mug.

“From yer face I’m guessing she escaped cleanly.”

Owen glared up at the man. “I’m not some villain trying to…”

“What are you trying to do? She wants to be alone, and you should leave her.”

“I mean no harm. That talent shouldn’t be buried in Nether Abbas. I could connect her with teachers, agents, people who could help her!”

“And if she don’t want it?” Marshall asked.

Owen shrugged. “I can try to convince her, but I can’t force her.”

Marshall nodded. He studied the man across the table until Owen squirmed under his scrutiny.

“Is that all you want from the girl?” Marshall asked at last.

Owen’s face burned. “Of course, it is. I’m not a reprobate!”

“Annie is a good woman. Don’t go making problems for her. She has it bad enough.”

“The uncle?”

Marshall nodded. “Hard man, is the vicar. You start sniffing around, and he’ll take it out on her.”

“Perhaps if I talk with him.”

“Did you hear what I just said? If you try to talk to him about music, he’ll take it badly. He’ll assume Annie has been sneaking around.” Marshall frowned at him.

“She is, though. She steals in through windows like a cat burglar. Just for music. Obviously, she loves it enough to be desperate. She deserves better.”

Marshall heaved a sigh and pushed himself up. “She does. I’ll give you that. She isn’t yours to fix, though.” He picked up the mugs.

Owen rose with him.

“The thing is, Pritchard, her mother was some kind of opera singer. The uncle lets it be known he thinks she was a trull of Satan, and Annie is in danger of being snatched by the hounds of hell.” He shook his head. “Leave her be, Pritchard.”

He went out the door on that note and left Owen stunned.

Her mother was an opera singer? As was Lucia’s. Could it be?

If Owen had any doubts, that last bit of information clarified his choices. He couldn’t leave until he spoke to Annie Potter, until he got a good look at her.

As he made his way upstairs, plans fell into place.

In the morning he would inspect the garden hedges and look for footsteps to prepare for the night.

He would pack up and ride through Nether Abbas, making his departure obvious to everyone in the shire.

Then he would circle back and wait for darkness.

He would wait a month if he had to, but he doubted it would take that long.

He went to bed with a trill of arpeggios, the music of hope, running through his heart.