Page 43 of My Devoted Viscount (Brazen Bluestockings #2)

“Perhaps you can help. As a music teacher, I’m sure you have a good ear.” He couldn’t help a glance at the delicate shell of her ear. Last night in the passageway he’d come within a hair’s breadth of kissing her. He still wanted to whisper in her ear. Make her shiver.

She stood at the corner of the pianoforte, leaning over to look at the sheet, squinting. “I left my spectacles in the library. I’ll just go get them.”

He reached for her hand. “Sit. Listen.”

They both stared at their conjoined hands, her delicate hand engulfed by his much larger one. She lightly squeezed his fingers, then sat down beside him on the bench, her hands primly folded on her lap. “Play.”

He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, inadvertently inhaling her delicate scent. Rose? Lilac? Shaking his head, he arranged the sheets of music, and played.

“Again.”

He obeyed, and started over.

“Stop.” Her eyes were closed. “Go back about six measures and play that section again.”

He did as commanded.

“Again.”

After he did, she reached for a pencil and held the paper close to her face to read it.

“What if you changed this section from four-four time to three-four? And change the chromatic progression here. Play the chord another octave lower before bringing it up over here…” She laid the sheet on top of the pianoforte and began penciling in her changes.

He grabbed another pencil and made similar changes in the next phrase.

She paused to stare at him. “I thought you were left-handed. You bowed the violin with your left hand.”

He tucked the pencil behind his right ear. “I can bow or write with either hand. Gives me double the chances of getting in trouble, as Aunt Gert says.” With a slight grin lifting one corner of his mouth, he arranged the sheets to his satisfaction and played the new variation.

They made several more changes, getting closer but none of them quite right.

He wanted to growl in frustration. “My friend Ravencroft does this so easily. I can’t tell you how many times he’s composed some ditty or other in one afternoon just for fun, and it sounded as polished as if he’d worked on it for months.

Yet my original compositions are utterly lacking in … originality.”

“I enjoyed the piece you played the other night,” she offered, clearly as a sop to his ego. “Though I did notice it seemed familiar. Perhaps if I had not just heard you play Vivaldi minutes before, it would not have seemed … derivative.”

He tried to hide his wince.

At least she did not pat his knee, as Agnes had once done when she tried to console him. “Everyone has different skills. Ravencroft probably cannot sing in four octaves like you.”

Vincent looked at her sideways. “He can. The judges were quite right to award him the medal in this year’s Catch Club competition.”

The look of surprise on her face was almost comical, though he had witnessed too many women have the same reaction upon hearing Ravencroft to take exception. Vincent had put his share of women into delighted shock upon showing off his vocal skills … just with other people’s compositions.

Miss Walden bit the corner of her bottom lip while she thought. “Is he ambidextrous like you?”

Vincent shook his head.

“Can he combine all the best parts of an opera into one medley?”

He thought back to the many classes he and Ravencroft had taken together, the month-long parties at the home of their music teacher, Mr. Barrett, and the number of times they had competed against each other. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him tackle such a project.”

“There you go. Each of you has different skills. Some of the girls in my classes could sing like angels but could not play pianoforte to save their life. Others could play an instrument with great skill but their vocal efforts sounded like cats being tortured. One girl was hoping I could continue her lessons on the lute when she came to the Academy, but I—”

“There is a limit to your musical skills?” Vincent held his hand to his heart in mock astonishment. “Never say it’s so!”

She laughed, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “We were discussing your shortcomings, my lord, not mine.” She tapped her finger on the sheet music. “What are you trying to convey here, in this passage? What emotion are you trying to evoke in the listener?”

They tried more variations. Starting at a lower note, rising and falling before rising higher, like waves rolling ashore.

Sitting so close on the bench, occasionally their knees touched or arms crossed as they both played, stretching under or over each other to reach the keys, making music together.

Exchanging ideas to create a musical journey.

Collaborating. Vincent would gladly spend the rest of the day like this with her.

Eventually when he played it all the way through, it sounded so much better than he had imagined it could. “Yes! That’s it!” In his excitement, he cupped her cheeks and kissed her.

He pulled back, not regretting the kiss but suddenly worried that he had gone too far in his enthusiasm.

She stared back at him, her eyes wide in shock, her lips slightly parted. A smile began to spread across her face, lighting her brown eyes to sherry, with tiny flecks of gold. Her touching the tip of her pink tongue to lick her lips was his undoing.

He cupped her downy soft cheek with one hand and rested the other on the creamy, bare strip of skin on her shoulder, and leaned in for another kiss. Slowly, to give her a chance to avoid him if he had indeed gone too far.

She met him halfway, resting her palm on his chest. Not to push him away but to caress him, perhaps feeling his pounding heart.

He thought it would pound right out of his chest as she sweetly responded to him.

Tentatively at first but she quickly relaxed and gave herself to the kiss, to him, wholeheartedly.

With his thumb he stroked the naked skin on her neck above her scarf, feeling her madly racing pulse.

He felt the instant she recalled that someone could walk in on them at any moment, a fraction of an instant before he came to his own senses.

With regret, he let her pull away. It would be so easy to simply lift her onto his lap and wrap his arms around her.

He could happily spend all afternoon holding her, kissing her, playing together.

He already knew what it felt like to hold her on his lap, and he fervently wanted to do so again.

“I should, um…” She rose from the bench, a slight tremble in her hands.

“Yes, you, um…” He couldn’t complete a coherent thought. He watched her walk out of the room, stunned at his intense response to a simple kiss, and enjoying the view of her retreating figure almost as much as though she were walking toward him.

He put his music away. He couldn’t possibly concentrate on composing anymore, or even practicing Rossini. Perhaps Matthew had the right of it. A gallop was what he needed to clear his head.

As he entered the hall, Miss Walden was handing Kendall letters to mail.

“I was about to go for a ride,” Vincent said, striding toward them. “I would be happy to take your letters to town and post them.”

She gifted him with a soft smile and handed over two letters. “Thank you, my lord.”

He stopped watching her walk down the hall only when he heard Kendall smother a chuckle. Vincent lifted his chin and pulled his shoulders back. “Something you want to say, Kendall?”

The butler stood at attention, his expression carefully blank. “I’ll have the grooms saddle your horse right away, my lord.”

Less than an hour later, Vincent slowed his horse to a walk as he approached the outskirts of Sidmouth proper.

He pulled the two letters out of his coat pocket and read the address of the recipients for the tenth time.

One was an academy for young ladies in Falmouth, the other in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Opposite ends of the country. Much too far away.

And why did it matter to him? Of course Miss Walden would need employment after her project with Aunt Gert ended. She was wise to plan ahead for her future.

He tucked the letters back into his pocket and rode through town until he found the shops he wanted.