Indiscreet

by Mary Balogh

  “Like thieves in the night,” he said, and was reminded of how he had approached her cottage via the postern door last evening.

  “Children need to be appreciated even at the expense of some lesson time,” Mrs. Winters said, smiling. But she had removed her eyes from his to Daphne and could not thus be accused of smiling at him. “I take it you did come to appreciate? William has done particularly well with his scales this morning. It is the first time he has consistently played them through without stopping. I am so glad you were here to witness his triumph.”

  Will’s chest swelled with pride.

  “I want to play something,” Juliana wailed. “I can play Bach, Aunt Daphne. Listen to me.”

  “I believe,” Daphne said, “it is Will’s lesson time, Julie.”

  “William, being the perfect gentleman,” Mrs. Winters said, addressing herself to Daphne, “will be quite pleased to relinquish his place at the pianoforte to Juliana, I am sure.” She laughed.

  And looked quite dazzlingly beautiful. He had not seen or heard her laugh before, the viscount realized. On the few occasions he had seen her, she had appeared as a woman of quiet dignity. A very quiet and subtle tease. He wondered if the laugh was for his benefit, to tie his stomach in knots. If so, she had failed miserably. His stomach felt only the merest flutter. He was still angry with her for making such an ass of him last night and for failing to present him with a face of blushing confusion this morning.

  They had to stand and listen to Juliana murder Bach, racing through the passages she knew well, stumbling her way through the more difficult parts. To say that she had no real aptitude for music was to be extraordinarily kind to her.

  But Daphne exclaimed with delight when it was over and clapped her hands. And he found himself bowing his head and assuring her that she showed promise. Mrs. Winters, more truthful, praised the child for her effort and for the hard work she had put into learning some of the more difficult parts.

  “And those are the parts you should linger over and enjoy,” she said with consummate tact. “What a pity to rush them and have them over too soon. The other parts are coming along very nicely too. All that is needed is more time and practice. Even the most experienced concert pianist always needs that.”

  She was good with children, he conceded. He found himself wondering how long she had been married to the late Mr. Winters. Had it been just a short time or was she barren? But then, perhaps the fault had been in Winters, not in her.

  “I do apologize for interrupting,” Daphne was saying. “But I can see that you would have a hard time forcing them back to work. Shall we take them up to the nursery for you? On such a lovely day you would doubtless appreciate the chance to leave a little early.”

  Will looked from one to the other of the women with hope naked in his eyes. A few seconds later, at a nod from his music teacher, he was scampering from the room.

  “Thank you,” Catherine Winters said. “I always steal half an hour for myself after the children’s lessons are over. It was Mr. Adams who suggested it. Today I will be able to take thirty-five minutes.”

  Juliana took Daphne’s hand and pulled on it, anxious to follow her brother before anyone could decide to resume the music lesson after all. Daphne looked inquiringly at her brother.

  “I’ll follow you in a short while,” he said.

  She nodded and disappeared with the child. He was left alone with Catherine Winters, who was standing straight-backed and square-chinned close to the pianoforte, glaring at him.

  Now, why the devil had he done that? Why had he not seized the chance to escape when it had presented itself on a golden platter?

  She was challenging him. That was what she was doing. She was not behaving with the distressed modesty he would have expected from a virtuous woman who had been presented with a very improper proposal in her own home just the evening before. He clasped his hands behind him and strolled toward her.

  “Nurseries are not my favorite place,” he said. “I do not enjoy being climbed upon, if you will remember. And the rest of the house is not particularly inviting, either. I suppose you noticed that I am expected to pay court to a young lady I have no wish to court. I shall listen to you play, Mrs. Winters. Continue, if you please, just as if I were not here.”

  He could almost see indignant and even furious words forming in her mind and lining up for escape from her lips. Her lips twitched but did not part. He watched them. Soft, eminently kissable lips, which were going to dry up from lack of use very soon if all she intended to do with gentlemen was turn them away.

  But she did not speak. If the sparks that flashed from her eyes were daggers, he would be stretched dead on the floor already, he decided. But they were not and so he was still standing very much alive as she whirled about and sat on the bench of the pianoforte, composed herself, and began to play.

  Stern stuff indeed. He had expected at the very least that she would flounce out through the French windows and take herself off home without her usual self-indulgence on the pianoforte. He had even been considering whether he would offer his services as an escort and realizing that doing so would be unwise.

  She had played well in Claude’s drawing room two evenings ago. Competently and even with some flair. Viscount Rawleigh pursed his lips now as she started to play Mozart, rushed it rather as Juliana had done, stumbled, played a horrid mischord, and stopped.

  “No,” she muttered, addressing the ivories. “No, you are not going to do this to me. You are not. You were the one entirely in the wrong.”

  The offending keys—or key, since she used the singular form—made no response. He strolled a little closer, staying in her line of vision. He was almost enjoying himself again.

  But it seemed that she meant what she had just said. She started again, playing correctly and flawlessly—and after a minute or two with considerable talent and feeling. She closed her eyes and dipped her head forward as if she was lost in the music. And it was no act, he could see.

  He could also see why she had not played like this in the drawing room. She would have shown up the other ladies. She would have drawn everyone’s attention and silenced all conversation. It would not have been the sociable thing to do to play like this. Or the wise thing—Clarissa, he suspected, would have been annoyed, to say the least.

  She kept her eyes closed and her head bowed after she had finished. Who was she? he wondered suddenly. She lived in a small country cottage with no instrument, yet she could play like this? What had happened to bring her down in the world? Who had Mr. Winters been? Why had she moved after his death to a strange place to live among strangers? She was something of a mystery.

  “You have talent,” he said, realizing as he spoke the understatement of his words.

  Her head came up and he knew she was back in Claude’s music room—with him. “Thank you,” she said coolly.

  “I wonder,” he said as her finger dusted a key that did not need dusting.

  He thought she was going to play again without asking the obvious question. Her fingers spread on the keys. But she looked up at him, her expression impassive. Except that she looked slightly square-jawed again. Ah, she was angry. Good.

  “You wonder why I refused such a very flattering and advantageous offer as the one you made me last evening?” she said. “I suppose you are not often rejected, are you? You have so many assets both of person and property. Perhaps, my lord, those of us with far fewer assets like to keep those we do have.”

  “How dull your life must be, Mrs. Winters,” he said. He liked to see her angry.

  “It is my life,” she said. “If I choose to make it dull, then that is my concern. Not that it is dull.”

  “I daresay,” he said, “you draw amusement from being a tease.” His eyes moved unhurriedly down her figure, outlined quite alluringly against the wool of her dress as she sat on the bench, leaning slightly forward
over the keys. “Do you enjoy issuing invitations with your eyes and with your body and then slamming the door in the face of those gullible enough to accept them?”

  Her jaw hardened and her eyes started to shoot sparks again. “I have issued no invitations to you, my lord,” she said. “If it is a curtsy and two smiles to which you refer, one when you passed my house on your arrival and one at this house the evening before last at dinner, then perhaps you need to be reminded that you have an identical twin with whom I am familiar.”

  Damn! He gazed at her for a few moments, arrested. She had mistaken him for Claude? It was such a very credible explanation that he could not understand why he had not thought of it for himself.

  “You took me for Claude?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She looked at him in some triumph. “For a moment. Until I remembered that Mr. Adams is a courteous and an amiable gentleman.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “By Jove, a hit,” he said. “You have a barbed tongue, ma’am. It seems I owe you an apology—again.”

  “Yes, thank you,” she said.

  At which moment, just when he was thinking of bowing himself out of her presence and licking at this new humiliation, the door opened and Clarissa sailed in.

  5

  ALL that had been able to sustain her was the determination not to show any discomposure. Not to blush. Not to appear embarrassed. Not to lower her eyes before his. Not to allow him the last word.

  None of what had happened had been her fault. She had to believe that. She had not issued any invitations and he might have guessed that at first she had mistaken him for Mr. Adams. Surely it was not the first time that had happened.

  She had been alarmed when she had started to play the pianoforte only to find that her fingers were all thumbs and that her brain was humming with all sorts of thoughts that had nothing to do with music. With an enormous effort of will, she had pulled herself together and played more to her usual standard. Indeed, she had forgotten all else but the music once she had got started.

  She had done rather well after that, she believed. Even so, it was an enormous relief when the door opened. Except that it was Mrs. Adams, and she stopped abruptly and looked sharply from one to the other of them. It was obvious she was not at all pleased with what she saw. Catherine realized the impropriety of being alone with Viscount Rawleigh. But again it was not her fault.

  “Mrs. Winters.” The tone was icy, that of mistress to servant. “I believed you were using this time to teach my children music?” Just as if she were being paid a vast fortune to do so, Catherine thought.

  “Their lessons are over, ma’am,” she said. She would not add more details to try to exonerate herself from whatever crime she was being suspected of. She always treated Mrs. Adams with courteous respect, but she never groveled. She would never be obsequious as the Reverend Lovering was. But then, his living depended upon the patronage of Mr. Adams.

  “Daphne and I disturbed them before they were quite finished, Clarissa,” Lord Rawleigh said, sounding enormously toplofty and bored. “They played their party pieces for us—at least Juliana did. I am not sure William has a party piece yet or ever will have. Daphne took them up to the nursery. I remained to discuss the weather with Mrs. Winters. But it was very wicked of me. I believe Claude has encouraged her to play for a while after she has finished teaching. I have been interfering with that. My apologies, ma’am.” He made Catherine an elegant bow.

  Catherine could see the steely glint in Mrs. Adams’s eyes, though she smiled graciously and linked arms with her brother-in-law.

  “I am sure Mrs. Winters is gratified by your attentions, Rawleigh,” she said. “Ellen wishes to see the new puppies out in the stable block. Most of the other men are occupied in the billiard room and I do not like her going out alone among the grooms. You will give her your escort?”

  “It would be my pleasure, Clarissa,” he said, his lips twitching, but whether with amusement or annoyance Catherine could not tell. But she remembered his saying just a short while ago that he was expected to pay court to someone he did not wish to court.

  Good. She was glad he was being forced into doing something he did not want to do. Let him enjoy the feeling of being trapped and helpless.

  “Good day, Mrs. Winters.” Mrs. Adams nodded at her with gracious dismissal.

  “We will leave you to your playing, ma’am,” Lord Rawleigh said with another bow—and a look that swept her from the crown of her head to the soles of her shoes—before turning to leave the room.

  It was impossible to continue playing. Her hands were shaking and her heart was pounding just as if she had been caught in the performance of some dreadful indiscretion. She deeply resented the fact that he had caused that feeling. And that he had caused Mrs. Adams to become suspicious. He could leave within the next few weeks. She had to live on here.

  But as she got to her feet and buttoned her cloak and tied the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her chin, she was not feeling altogether upset. At least she had seen him again after last evening. More than that, she had talked with him. It was over now, that first awkward meeting after the embarrassment and humiliation of the night before. From now on it would be easier.

  How dull your life must be, Mrs. Winters.

  She could hear his voice again, bored, insolent, telling her what her life was like. Just as if he knew. Or thought he knew. He knew nothing about her. And that was the way it would remain.

  She hurried through the French windows and was soon striding down the driveway in the direction of the village and home.

  How dared he presume to judge her life.

  Did he know anything of her life? Anything of the struggles and pain and heartache? The agony? Just so that she could achieve the peace of the life she had now? And the dullness.

  It had been a hard-won dullness.

  A dullness that was infinitely preferable to what had gone before.

  And yet he had spoken it as an accusation. With contempt. How dull your life must be, Mrs. Winters.

  She turned her mind determinedly to home—her precious little cottage—and to Toby, who would be bursting with energy after his morning alone. She would take him for a long walk this afternoon. Perhaps it was a dull life she led, but it was hers, as she had told him, and she would continue with it.

  And she would be thankful that it was only dull.

  • • •

  HE had spent what remained of the morning ruining Ellen Hudson’s enjoyment of the puppies. Not that he had intended any such thing. He had escorted her to the stable block and had hovered in the background while she bent over the puppies, picking them up and cuddling them and cooing over them one by one. But he had felt her self-consciousness, her conviction that he was bored, that he was laughing at her raptures.

  They were terrier pups. It was easy to guess where the fierce Toby had come from.

  He had no objection to puppies. He could even concede that they were pretty little things with their fat little bodies and stubby legs and little snub noses. He had even been known on occasion to pick up a pup and cradle it on his palm while smoothing a finger between its ears.

  But it had irritated him to know that Ellen would have been far happier and more relaxed without his presence but that courtesy kept him hovering so that he might beat off ardent grooms with lascivious intents and give her an arm to lean on during the return journey to the house.

  By the time they all sat down for luncheon, he felt that he had suffered enough for one day as a victim of a determined matchmaker. Clarissa was arranging a walk for the afternoon, the weather being too fine to waste. Fortunately—very fortunately—Claude could not participate since there was a distant tenant he felt obliged to call upon.

  Viscount Rawleigh decided that he must accompany his brother.

  “We see each other so rarely these days,” he explained with a smile to a clearly disapp
ointed Clarissa. “But the bond between us continues to be unusually close. It has something to do with the fact that we are twins, you know.”

  “That was not quite the wise thing to say to Clarissa,” his brother said later when they were riding away from the stables, blessedly alone together. “She has always been a little jealous of you, Rex. When you were in Spain and then in Belgium, I worried so much that I sometimes made myself ill. And it always seemed to come on me just at a time we would learn later something unpleasant really had been happening to you. That time you were carried from the field unconscious from loss of blood, for example. I knew it, I swear, a few months before we received any confirmation by letter. Clarissa still swears it was all nonsense.”

  “There was my sudden attack of anxiety in the Peninsula,” the viscount said. “It works both ways, you see. I thought something must have happened to the baby or to Clarissa. It was only a month or so before Juliana was born, was it not?”

  “My hunting accident?” his brother said. “Almost to the day. I was still on crutches when she was born.”

  It felt good to be alone together again. Their business with the tenant did not take long, but the ride was a lengthy one. They talked about anything and everything as they always had done. Sometimes they were silent together without the necessity of talk. Lord Rawleigh could feel his brother’s contentment with being back home. He could feel, without the need of words, that the extended winter visits away from home were a concession to Clarissa but that she by no means ruled the roost. Somehow they had built a relationship of give-and-take, Claude and his wife.

  “You are restless,” his brother told him when they were riding back to the house. “Anything you wish to talk about?”

  “Restless? Me?” the viscount said in some surprise. “I am enjoying the ride. And the visit.”

  “Are you going to town for the Season?” his brother asked.