The Beguilement of Lady Eustacia Cavanagh: The Cavanaughs Volume 3

by Stephanie Laurens

  Stacie frowned. “How is that a tragedy? It all sounds rather lovely.”

  “Oh, the tragedy lay in what came after. Unsurprisingly, the entire ton was agog, knocked cock-a-hoop, then the hostesses and the matchmaking mamas descended on him, all wanting him to compose a piece for them or for their daughters. And then came the cruelest cut of all. The young lady for whom he’d written the piece—to whom he had, in musical terms, openly offered his heart—accepted an offer from an earl’s son and turned her back on him.”

  Stacie frowned more definitely, even more puzzled. “But he wasn’t even twenty. He couldn’t possibly have expected her to marry him.”

  “I don’t know about that, my dear. Who knows what goes on in the minds of men—young men, especially? Regardless, by all accounts, his lordship took her public rejection badly—he fled London and has never composed anything since.”

  “Oh.” Silently aghast, Stacie felt something inside her twist as the knowledge sank in that, when it came to performing before the ton, Frederick had, indeed, had a real, sound, and rather painful reason for refusing her request. His reluctance had been based on rather more than a simple wish to avoid ton events—a tendency shared to a greater or lesser extent by many gentlemen of his class. “When I spoke with his mother about my notion of having Frederick play at my events, she didn’t mention any of that.”

  Her head bent over her stitching, Ernestine murmured, “I daresay she’s hoping he’s got over the whole episode—it was more than a decade ago, after all.”

  No one knew better than Stacie that experiences from one’s childhood could cast a long shadow—let alone deeply emotional negative experiences suffered before twenty years of age. “I wish I’d known about this before.”

  Ernestine glanced up. “Why? If he’s agreed to perform at your events, presumably he’s consigned what happened to his past. You should be happy to have drawn him back into society. I assure you that everyone who hears him play will be grateful to you for returning him to the ton, as it were.”

  Stacie didn’t reply. She suddenly felt very uncertain. She didn’t really care what the rest of the ton thought, but she did care what Frederick thought, and the idea that she’d manipulated him into doing something that might cause him emotional pain…

  Oh, dear.

  From the murky morass of her whirling thoughts, one unarguable conclusion rose, sharp and clear. Having metaphorically dragged Frederick back into the bosom of the ton, any adverse outcome from his playing at her events would be on her head. She’d manipulated him into performing for her without once considering what it might cost him; it was, therefore, her responsibility to protect him from any threat that arose through him being a part of her scheme.

  She was mentally staring at that unnerving conclusion when the doorbell rang, the peal chiming through the house.

  Ernestine looked up expectantly, then started to pack up her embroidery. “I expect that’ll be him, don’t you think?”

  Stacie glanced at the clock and numbly nodded. He was right on time.

  She heard their parlormaid Hettie’s light footsteps patter across the tiles of the front hall, then the rumble of Frederick’s voice reached her, and she rose as Hettie opened the drawing room door and announced, “Lord Albury to see you, my lady.”

  “Thank you, Hettie.” Stacie thrust aside her troubling thoughts and plastered on a smile. “Lord Albury.” She went forward to meet him. “Welcome to my home.”

  Frederick took the hand she offered and bowed over it. “Lady Eustacia.” His gaze went past her to Ernestine, who had risen and now hovered expectantly.

  Retrieving her hand, Stacie turned to her cousin. “Lord Albury, allow me to present my cousin, Mrs. Ernestine Thwaites. Ernestine resides here, keeping me company.”

  Ernestine smiled in obvious delight and curtsied. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, my lord.”

  Frederick nodded, polite yet aloof. “Mrs. Thwaites.”

  “I’ve heard so much about you and your wonderful gift, my lord,” Ernestine all but gushed. “I was utterly thrilled to hear that you will be playing for us again.”

  Frederick’s expression grew even more distant. “Indeed.” With a curt, clearly-intended-to-be-dismissive nod for Ernestine, he turned to Stacie. “Your piano?”

  Shy? Or merely made uncomfortable by praise?

  Whichever it was, Stacie smiled and waved toward the double doors in the middle of the drawing room’s interior side wall. “It’s in the music room—through here.”

  She walked to the doors, opened them wide, then led the way into the large music room. She glanced back and saw Frederick looking around, taking note of the room’s arching ceiling and the overall dimensions.

  Stacie glimpsed Ernestine, back in the drawing room, shifting to sit in a chair close by the open doors; thankfully, her cousin would be screened from anyone on the piano stool.

  Frederick’s and her footsteps echoed as they crossed the polished wooden floor.

  “The acoustics are good,” he murmured, a tinge of surprise in his voice.

  “Indeed, they are.” She smiled and admitted, “I bought the house for this room.”

  A brief smile chased the cool reserve from his face. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  They reached the grand piano, angled in one corner of the room, with the light from the long bow windows falling over the keyboard and music stand.

  As he moved to claim the piano stool, Frederick resurveyed the room. He sat and announced, “This is placed almost perfectly—let’s see how it sounds.”

  He raised the lid and swept aside the felt strip covering the keys, then spread his fingers over the ivory and played a rapid succession of scales.

  Stacie held her breath, hoping for any piece of music, however short. She’d heard him play at the school, and that had only whetted her appetite. To hear him play here, in a room and on an instrument she knew, suddenly escalated to a burning desire.

  He frowned, then embarked on another, longer set of scales, one that used every section of the keyboard.

  Even that, somehow, sounded special; there was something in his touch, in his mastery of the keys, that invested each note with strength and clarity… She couldn’t explain it, but she knew what she heard.

  On reaching the end of the exercise, he lifted his hands from the keys, and to Stacie’s disappointment—and she was sure Ernestine’s as well—he picked up the discarded felt and spread it back over the keys. “If it had been just one or two strings, I would have tuned them myself, but most of the notes are just a fraction out. We’ll need an expert tuner to restore it to perfection.”

  He rose, lowered the piano’s lid, and met her eyes. “Unless you have someone else you prefer, I’ll arrange for my tuner to call.”

  “By all means.” Of course, he had a preferred expert. “It would be best, I suspect, were it tuned to your specifications.”

  “Indeed.” He looked up the room toward the door to the hall. “If at all possible, I’ll bring him around tomorrow—most likely in the early afternoon.”

  “That will suit admirably.” She waved toward the second set of double doors, opposite the still-open pair that joined the music room to the drawing room. “While you’re here, perhaps I should show you how I believe we’ll accommodate our guests at our…we haven’t yet decided what to call them. Musical events? Musical soirées? They aren’t quite recitals, are they?”

  She saw his lips twitch. He rounded the piano and joined her as she walked to the second set of doors. “No—it would be misleading to call such a function a recital. I’ve always wondered why hostesses don’t simply call such events a musical evening.”

  She arched her brows, then nodded. “Let’s call them that, then—musical evenings. That sounds more inviting—more intimate.”

  “As our aim is to entice the ton’s ladies to attend, then such a label is more likely to be successful.”

  She didn’t miss the cynicism in his tone.

  Th
ey reached the double doors, and he opened them, and she glided through. “This is the morning room.” Filling the rear corner of the house, the room boasted long windows that gave onto a small paved terrace, beyond which rolled the manicured rear lawn, bordered by richly planted flower beds. The garden was enclosed by high brick walls.

  She halted and, spreading her arms, turned in a circle. “We’ll open all three rooms—having both sets of doors open doesn’t appreciably alter the acoustics in the music room.”

  He shot her an approving glance. “You’ve tried it?”

  She nodded. “Again, one of the reasons I settled on this house. I’d already formed the notion of hosting musical events.” She tipped her head his way. “Musical evenings.”

  He glanced back, across the music room to the drawing room. “You’ll be able to accommodate quite a crowd in acceptable comfort.”

  “Indeed. We’ll have rows of chairs in the music room, of course, but those who might prefer to remain in the armchairs here and in the drawing room will still be able to hear the performance reasonably well.”

  He nodded.

  “And through here”—she pointed at another door, then walked to it—“is the dining room, where we’ll serve supper.”

  He followed her through that door, idly glanced at the dining table, chairs, and sideboards, then trailed after her through the main dining room door, and so into the rear of the front hall.

  When they reached the main body of the hall, she halted in the space before the stairs and arched her brows at him. “What do you think?”

  He met her eyes and nodded. “This will do very well—with one addition. We need a room—it doesn’t have to be large, but preferably on this level—where our musicians can wait prior to their performances and to which they can retreat afterward.”

  She widened her eyes. “I hadn’t thought of that, but”—she waved him to the corridor leading away from the hall, opposite the music room—“my private parlor might suit.”

  She led him down the short corridor to the room at the end—an elegant yet comfortable space at the side of the house. She regarded the long, narrow room as her personal retreat.

  He paused beside her just inside the room, looked around, and nodded. “This will be perfect. We’ll only have at most five musicians, some with instruments, but there’s space enough.” He glanced up the corridor to the hall and the reception rooms beyond. “And it’s sufficiently distant to give nervous musicians some peace.”

  He turned to her. “I can see our musical evenings will not fail for want of location and amenities. I’ll return tomorrow with the tuner—Hellier. He’s Swiss and a stickler for exactness.”

  She smiled. “Excellent.”

  She fell in beside him as they walked back toward the hall. What she’d learned about him from Ernestine replayed in her mind. They reached the hall, and she halted in its center and, when he paused beside her, swung to face him and raised her eyes to his. “I haven’t yet thanked you for agreeing to my request, and I wanted to assure you that I do most sincerely appreciate your willingness to support my scheme and lend your talents and, indeed, your imprimatur to what I hope you will henceforth regard as our musical evenings.”

  His lips twitched slightly, and he gave an acknowledging dip of his head.

  She drew a suddenly tight breath and ventured, “I only very recently learned that you might have real cause to eschew the ton—certainly to avoid playing at events in the manner I’ve proposed—which only increases my indebtedness to you for being willing to overcome your understandable reticence and lend your support to my scheme.”

  The instant she’d alluded to his past, he’d lowered his eyes; now, he raised them and met her gaze. “Thank you.” His eyes narrowed faintly as they searched hers, his gaze significantly more penetrating than it normally appeared. “As I suspect you’ve already guessed, I abhor the ton’s over-avid attention.” His lips curved in a smile that held a definite edge. “I therefore have every intention of hiding behind your skirts—I give you fair warning, I will rely on you to act as guard in keeping the importuning hostesses, the matchmaking mamas, and their swooning daughters at bay.”

  She managed to keep her smile in place and incline her head in easy acceptance—as if he hadn’t meant every word.

  His gaze still locked with hers, he straightened. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” With that, he tipped her a salute and strode for the door, where Hettie stood waiting to hand him his hat and see him out.

  Stacie stood in her front hall and watched him go, watched the door close behind him while she replayed what he’d said—not just the words that had fallen from his lips but also what his eyes, his expression, had said.

  He hadn’t been joking, not at all.

  She frowned, not entirely certain how she felt about that. On the one hand, now that she’d manipulated him into performing for the ton again, even if, at the time, she hadn’t known of his earlier difficulty, it could be argued—he could argue—that she owed him that degree of social protection. However…the damned man was more than capable of taking care of himself. She’d seen him react to others he wished to keep at a distance—admittedly by erecting a wall of reserve, yet still, she’d never seen him at a loss or even seriously challenged.

  Her eyes, fixed unseeing on the closed door, narrowed. She rather suspected she’d just been warned. He would, if pressed, hide behind her—but she was convinced his motive wouldn’t be self-preservation but, far more likely, a wish to discombobulate her.

  “Huh! If so, the laugh will be on him.” She’d cut her eyeteeth dealing with and managing the ladies of the ton; to act as his guard held no terrors for her. She returned to her parlor, opened the door, swanned inside, and declared to the empty room, “It won’t be me who’ll end flustered.”

  Chapter 4

  As promised, Frederick returned to Stacie’s house with Hellier, his expert piano tuner, at half past two the next day.

  While standing by the piano and watching Hellier delving beneath the propped-up lid, tightening pins and tensioning strings, he found his mind reviewing the happenings during his visit the day before, the insights he’d garnered, and his reactions to those.

  The eagerness that had lit Stacie’s cousin’s eyes had forcibly reminded him of the smothering adoration that had, long ago, driven him from the ton. Luckily, Stacie was blessedly free of any tendency to near-worship; she’d always viewed him as a means to an end, and for that, he was grateful. He had never wanted to be placed on a pedestal and would resist as far as he could.

  Indeed, seeing her in her home, in the space she’d made her own, and learning that something as fundamental as which house she’d chosen to buy had been dictated by her scheme, the goal of which was to help local musicians, had been…humbling.

  As for her gratitude and her careful allusion to his past experience playing for the ton, he wasn’t entirely sure what she’d made him feel—cowardly and selfish?

  Hellier grunted and straightened.

  Frederick thrust his uncertainties to the back of his mind as the elderly tuner turned to him and tipped his head toward the piano’s keyboard. “Try it.”

  Aware of Stacie rising from the chair by the wall where she’d been sitting, out of the way, and drawing nearer, Frederick sat, flexed his fingers, then set them to the ivory keys.

  He dutifully played the extensive series of scales he knew Hellier used to judge tone and tuning.

  Hellier waved. “Wait.” When Frederick lifted his hands, Hellier dived beneath the lid, fiddled with something, then retreated and nodded to Frederick. “Again.”

  Frederick started from the beginning and rolled through the lengthy series. As he finished the final set, he looked at Hellier to see the old Swiss tuner with a beatific smile on his face.

  Hellier caught his eye and nodded. “Aye—that is now perfect. The tone is very good, and the tuning could not be better. You think the same?”

  Frederick nodded. “I do.” He looked at the
keys. “Let’s see.”

  He launched into Chopin’s “Ballade Number 3.” Within seconds, the music caught him, and he gave himself up to the flow.

  Stacie stood behind and to the side of the piano stool and watched Frederick make her piano sing. His hands traveled over the keys with confidence and a mastery all the more notable for its effortlessness.

  He coaxed, and the piano answered; he demanded, and the music swelled.

  Her music room had never heard the like, and despite her years of concerts and performances, she hadn’t, either. He possessed the ability to make the music manifest, to transform it into a palpable living, pulsing entity that could reach into people’s minds, into their hearts and souls.

  She managed to spare a glance for the tuner, Hellier, and discovered that he looked as enraptured as she felt, with a dazed smile on his face and his head nodding in time.

  She glimpsed Ernestine peeking around the door from the drawing room, the expression on her face one of utter reverence.

  Looking back at Frederick, feeling the power of his music surge and swell around her, Stacie had to admit that, when it came to the quality of his playing, every whisper of gossip had been true.

  Indeed, the truth—the reality—was utterly stunning. Utterly confounding. Not even hearing him play at the music school had prepared her for this—for the precision of his touch, his mastery of tone, and the evocative totality of his performance.

  He truly was a maestro.

  Small wonder the other scholars treated him with respect. He didn’t just study music, he could bring it to life.

  When the final chord sounded and he rested his hands on his thighs as silence reclaimed them, she felt almost bereft.

  In that instant, she realized that, courtesy of his talent, having him play at her musical evenings and introducing young musicians, on his coattails as it were, was guaranteed to work.

  Frederick drew in a breath and swung to face Hellier. “I can’t fault it. You?”