Page 49 of Echoes of the Sea (Storm Tide #2)

Tentative music floated out of the drawing room as Kip approached it.

A week had passed since Mr. Winthrop’s forcible removal from Guilford Island.

Mr. Stirling had remained until that morning but had finally made his departure as well.

The house was likely to be peaceful now.

It would, Kip hoped, begin feeling more like home.

Mrs. Finch stepped out of the drawing room just as he reached the door.

“I think I’ll retire early tonight,” she said, winking a little too pointedly. “Now that us is rid of Mr. Stirling, I’m wanting a spot of peace and quiet.”

“And you don’t think you’d find that in the drawing room with Amelia and me?”

“I’d hate to risk it.”

He smiled; he couldn’t help himself. “In the ... theatrical production I participated in before the tides brought me here, chaperones were constantly abandoning their duties. I didn’t think that was permitted in this time.”

Mrs. Finch shrugged. “It’s not.”

“You do things your own way, don’t you?”

“Always have.”

“We’re going to make a very interesting pair, you and me. Eccentric aunt, subtly odd nephew.”

“England might never recover.” Her smile was a laughing one as she made her way down the corridor, away from the drawing room.

Kip was in good spirits as he stepped inside. He left the door open as a nod to the rules they’d broken over and over on The Beau . Mrs. Finch was willing to bend things marginally to give them some time together, but Kip wasn’t willing to get into the habit of fracturing those rules.

Amelia was at the pianoforte, a sheet of old-fashioned music in front of her. Except, unlike his first time in this room, he now knew it wasn’t actually old-fashioned. It was now-fashioned, for want of a better descriptor.

“It is good to hear you playing again, Amelia.”

Kip pulled a chair over and set it beside the stool she sat on. He slipped his arm around her waist.

“I do have a complaint to lodge against you, Kipling Summerfield.” The laugh in her tone took out any sting.

Indeed, he found himself grinning as he tucked her even closer. “What’s your complaint, my dear?”

“You said you would teach me ‘Heart and Soul,’ but you haven’t so much as played it again.”

He tipped her a crooked smile. “Teaching you to play a tune would require that I stop hugging you.”

“I’m betting on you being willing to do it again in the future.”

“A safe bet.” Making a show of doing so under duress, he pulled his arm back again. “The best thing about ‘Heart and Soul’ is that it is most enjoyable when played as a duet.”

“Truly?”

He nodded. “I’ll teach you one part, then I’ll play the other. You’ll enjoy it.”

“As much as you enjoy hugging me?” There was unmistakable mischief in her eyes.

So he offered his most roguish grin and was rewarded with a fierce blush.

Amelia proved a quick study. She had her part of “Heart and Soul” learned in no time. Once he felt certain she had the rhythm of it, he played the other bit. The two merged perfectly, creating the iconic tune. Well, what would, in a hundred fifty years or so, be an iconic tune.

“Oh, that is diverting. The two parts sound so wonderful together.”

“Many people in the future know how to play one of these two parts on the pianoforte but literally can’t play anything else.”

“Little wonder, then, that you were so shocked that I hadn’t heard of it.”

He smiled at her. “But we probably need to never play it in front of anyone else since it’s a future thing. We’d hate to accidentally erase the Beatles or something.”

“Would erasing bugs be such a terrible thing?” she asked with a laugh.

“According to a movie I saw, yes.”

She mouthed the word movie with mingled confusion and amusement.

“You might very well decide, Amelia Archibald, that being in my company is not worth the constant bewilderment.”

Amelia looked at him with so much tenderness that it stole his breath for a moment. “There’s something else I’ve wondered about you, Kipling.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ve told me that you are speaking with an assumed accent so that you won’t stand out so much.”

He laughed. “An accent, which I was told often when I first arrived is very strange.”

“How did you speak in your own time, when you weren’t portraying someone else?”

She wanted to hear his American accent? Why did he find that so touching?

He had to think for a moment to let go of the accent he’d been using. It had become so ingrained after weeks and weeks of only ever speaking with that accent that it was now his default.

Finally wrapping his mind around the shift, he spoke in his American accent. “Not everyone in America talks like this, but a lot of them do. I grew up in the western part of the United States and a lot of us out there sound similar.”

Her eyes pulled wide. Her mouth pulled into a tight O .

“Don’t like it?” he guessed.

“You sound almost like you’re from Cornwall. Not exactly—no one would ever think you actually were—there’s just some similarities.”

“You still haven’t said if you like it or not.”

“It would take growing accustomed to, but I don’t dislike it.”

“And I don’t dislike the way I’ve been talking since arriving here. That would probably be easier in the long-term, as fewer people would ask us potentially precarious questions.”

Amelia leaned nearer. “I do like hearing you say ‘us’ in any accent, Kipling.” She lightly brushed her lips over his.

He slipped his hand behind her neck and wove his fingers into her luscious auburn hair. “And I like saying it.” He kissed her softly, lingeringly.

Her fingers slid along the tip of his collar, sending shivers over his neck. His heart thrummed.

“Oh, Amelia. We might need to ask Mrs. Finch not to make an early evening of it again, lest I forget there are rules now.”

He could feel her laugh softly, and it eased some of his tension.

She leaned against him, and he set his arms around her, breathing and grinning and silently thanking the mysterious tides for the havoc they’d wreaked on a life he’d not intended to leave behind but which he’d traded for a life he meant to treasure.