rose and walked with him. As they neared the pianoforte, the Duchess asked Emilie if she would like to play a tune with them. Emilie declined. ‘I fear I’m not musical.’
‘Neither am I,’ the Duchess said, shaking her head. She wrinkled her nose. ‘I try to surround myself with people who are talented, so I don’t have to play, and it makes everyone else happy. And trust me, everyone prefers me to listen.’
Her friends chuckled and she suggested a tune to one of the ladies and the conversation swirled in a different direction.
Marcus stayed at her elbow.
‘You’re accomplished at the piano,’ she told him, recalling the tune he’d played when she’d been in the other room.
He acknowledged her words with a lift of his brows. ‘My father insisted I learn. It was an easy way to make him happy.’
Emilie realised she felt a pocket of silence blanketing her and Marcus, yet she didn’t want to move closer into the circle of women. She would dearly have loved to have asked him a question. Any question. Just to hear his voice again. But the silence between them continued beneath the music.
A woman played a quick, rousing tune, then glanced in their direction. ‘Your favourite song, Grayson.’
Everyone laughed, including Marcus, but Emilie didn’t get the joke—and she realised she wasn’t sure that she liked the sound of his name the way the other woman said it.
‘I fitted words to the music.’ Marcus tilted close to Emilie so their conversation didn’t interrupt the others as they moved on to something else.
‘They recall it.’ And she’d been envious of the rapport they’d all shared.
‘It’s an easy melody to play with.’ He moved his left hand as if playing the piano. ‘Good tempo.’
She forced her gaze away from his fingers. Emilie realised she didn’t have to ask him to pose if she planned to reproduce his hands. That small movement, the fluttering of his fingers, imagining them over piano keys, would stay in her mind, locked there.
Her shoulder touched his. She didn’t know which of them had moved.
‘Bravo.’ He spoke to the woman at the piano when her song ended and Emilie’s shoulder chilled when he moved away.
The other ladies concurred that the last musical piece had been stellar.
He touched her elbow as the next song began. ‘You’ll want to peruse the family’s art collection,’ he said, gently moving her to the room where her mother sat.
Lady Avondale took a platter of biscuits from the servant and was holding it to the ladies nearest her.
‘I would like to show Miss Catesby where you have placed your portrait,’ he spoke to his mother. ‘If neither you nor her mother objects.’
Lady Avondale’s lips turned down, deprecating, as she shooed him away. ‘Oh, please. Do not make the child suffer so.’
Emilie’s mother’s head jerked to assess Marcus and then Emilie’s eyes. Her jaw clenched, but she relented. ‘Of course, if it is fine with Lady Avondale.’
‘Do have some more biscuits, everyone.’ Lady Avondale commanded attention again. ‘The cook adds beetroot juice to these, which gives them a nice colour, and the dried berries add something. We jest that they are goat food because of the oats, but they are tasty.’
While his mother served, Marcus moved to an adjoining door and opened it wide. He ushered Emilie inside.
The room was little more than a sitting room attached to the main one and as she entered, Emilie checked her surroundings. Instead of a portrait of the Lady Avondale, she viewed a life-sized rendition of the Lord Avondale. The other portraits, some little more than miniatures, were scattered here and there about the room. No true design to it—the portrait of the Lady Avondale had been added last and not in an appropriate place beside her husband, or their family portrait, but in a conspicuously inappropriate place to the side and closer to the floor.
Emilie gasped, rushing to it. ‘It should be in a place of honour.’ She waved her hand to the bigger picture of Lord Avondale. ‘By him.’
‘She is happy to have the portrait where it is. She claims she doesn’t particularly care to view herself when she is in here, but her children.’ He looked at the painting. ‘That is what she says.’
Emilie moved to the wall and began to scrutinise the larger likeness of Lord Avondale. When she finished with her viewing of the largest image, she turned, appraising Marcus, as he relaxed against the door jamb, half in the room, half out, lost in his musings.
She returned to her perusal of the collection.
‘Miss Catesby.’ Marcus’s voice jolted her, even though the words were quietly said. She returned to the world at her elbow.
Marcus watched her, smiling.
‘Yes?’ She stumbled over the word.
‘Your mother is telling the Marchioness she’s leaving and she’s asking for you. You’ve been in here nearly half an hour.’
Emilie collected herself. ‘It is the brushstrokes. I have to study them. And the colours. Most of the artists are talented beyond belief.’
Marcus’s gaze turned wistful. ‘I would agree that you adore their skills.’
Their eyes locked. He understood.
‘It’s true.’
His shoulders lifted briefly, in both acknowledgement of her words and somehow telling her again that she loved her craftwork.
‘I can’t help myself.’ She extended her hands, palms upraised.
‘Sometimes beauty does that to us,’ he said.
‘Like with music, to you.’
He shook his head. ‘No. Not music. I learned because I was taught well. I did it to please my father. I have a gift for it and it is a pleasant way to pass a morning or a way to amuse friends. A tool.’ He flicked his words away with a smile. ‘Much like a teapot.’
‘Or a paintbrush,’ she added.
‘Is that truly all you comprehend to be worthwhile?’ he asked.
‘Frequently, it is. I want to stay in my room with a portfolio. I keep getting pushed out to gatherings.’ She checked back over her shoulder at the portraits again. ‘I must appreciate the social events, as they enable me to experience rooms such as this. A grander thought might be if I was shut away in a tower, much like a princess, but I wouldn’t want to be rescued. I would need my portfolios.’ She paused. ‘I would need new subjects to examine and gardens so that I might have the best light, but it would be a haven.’
‘Pardon?’ He bent closer. ‘Did you say heaven?’
‘No.’ She laughed. ‘A haven. I surmise you are right about heaven, also.’
‘That
