Page 40 of My Devoted Viscount (Brazen Bluestockings #2)

“ Le nozze di Figaro? ” Fairfax said. He set his violin and bow back in their case and rummaged through the music folder again. Within a few moments, the trio launched into a medley of songs from The Marriage of Figaro, with Fairfax at the pianoforte and Huntley singing along with him and Xavier.

After the applause when they finished, Xavier declared himself parched and helped himself to refreshments from the tea tray.

“Why don’t you play one of your impersonations,” he said to Fairfax as he stirred milk into his tea.

“I haven’t heard you play Beethoven like Mozart since Father’s house party last summer. ”

“Oh, I love those!” Mrs. Royston clapped her hands together. “So amusing. The last time you played Mozart in the style of Rossini, I nearly snorted sherry through my nose!”

“I think Lady Castlereach, our next-door neighbor, did exactly that,” Xavier confided to Sophia with a broad grin. “Her reaction was almost as entertaining as Vincent’s performance.”

Fairfax laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles, and tossed a wink at Sophia before he set his hands on the keys.

He began playing Pachelbel’s Canon in D as she’d heard it hundreds of times.

Then, subtly at first, he began adding extra notes, extra runs and flourishes, until she realized that he was somehow playing a Henry Purcell tune mixed in with Pachelbel’s notes.

A naughty tune by Purcell, one that had made her students giggle.

Mrs. Royston was not above giggling, it turned out.

Her mirth was contagious. Sophia found herself chuckling at Fairfax playing a silly song while maintaining the serious mien that befitted the Canon .

Mrs. Digby contentedly petted Henry as she watched her nephew play.

Theo held a teacup but hadn’t taken a sip since Fairfax began playing, her gaze fixed upon the viscount.

When Fairfax finished, the applause had not died down before he launched into another. This time he made Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor sound as though it had been written by Mozart, with a great deal of Rondo Alla Turca sprinkled throughout the extra notes.

As a music instructor and someone who had spent countless hours practicing, perhaps more than anyone else in the room Sophia appreciated the excellent skills required both to execute the complicated performance of this entertaining silliness and to arrange it in the first place.

How many dozens or hundreds of hours had Fairfax invested in perfecting this medley, and the one before?

With each delighted gasp or chuckle from his audience, he allowed himself a small smile before going back to appearing as serious as a church organist.

She envied his large hands, easily stretching to form chords she could only dream about, his nimble fingers moving so effortlessly on the keys.

Free to gaze upon his handsome features, slowly she raised her gaze to study his expression.

She could tell when the notes simply flowed out of him, his expression serene, and when he had to concentrate, a slight furrow to his brow.

He hid any mistakes in the lavish wealth of notes he extracted from the keys, all of them played with the same degree of confidence.

How she longed to sit beside him, to play with him. Across the room, so far from him now, she was just one of several people enjoying his musical prowess. Just another person for whom he was showing off.

He wasn’t just performing for the audience, though.

Like Wallace or Mrs. Royston with their painting, Fairfax’s expression as he coaxed such beautiful sounds from his instrument transformed his already handsome features into angelic, masculine beauty.

She breathed in time with him, almost able to feel the music as he did.

The only thing that could have made the experience more sublime was if he sang, too.

When he sang with that magnificent deep bass or mellow baritone, she didn’t just hear it, she felt it, like a lover’s caress.

Or at least what she imagined a lover’s caress would feel like.

So enthralled in watching Fairfax, it wasn’t until he finished did Sophia realize that Mildred was no longer at her side on the sofa, but stood by the fireplace again, deep in conversation with Mr. Huntley.

Good thing she was not officially the girl’s chaperone, as easily distracted as she was in Fairfax’s presence.

She needed to get the pair betrothed as soon as possible.

“It’s like he was designed expressly as a match for you,” Theo whispered in Sophia’s ear under the guise of refilling her cup, taking Mildred’s spot on the sofa. “Imagine what it would be like if the two of you sat down to compose something together.”

Sophia didn’t dare let herself imagine. Fairfax would soon leave on his trip to Italy, taking his magnificent voice with him, and with any luck she would soon be employed at another academy …

where she would again struggle to balance her duties as music instructor with her desire to play and compose for her own creative satisfaction.

* * *

Up in her bedchamber a few hours later, Sophia opened the window before she prepared for bed. A powerful gust of wind startled her, flinging raindrops into her room. The thick, dark clouds she had seen offshore when they were down on the beach earlier were now letting loose with a torrent.

Mildred had said the folly next door offered shelter, but would it keep her dry and warm in this storm, with the rain coming down sideways from the blustering wind? The girl likely didn’t feel that it was safe to go back to the caves. Sophia certainly wouldn’t.

What could Mildred do instead? Where could she pass the night safely, dry, so that she did not take a chill and become ill?

Before Sophia took the time to find all the flaws in her barely formed plan, she changed into her darkest gown, the one Ruby had carefully washed and repaired from the other night.

She removed the white lace cap pinned atop her braids and wasted precious moments looking for her black silk fichu before she remembered she had used it to hold the bandage in place on Fairfax.

He or his valet had probably disposed of it. She would just have to do without.

Taking one lit candle and tucking a stub in her pocket, she opened the door to the secret passage beside the fireplace and slipped out of her room.