With her usual energy, Amy chivvied everyone from the Rose Room to the music room, herding Miles back to the group when he showed a tendency to veer off towards the gardens.
"But I was just going to — "
"No," said Richard.
"Oh, all right," muttered Miles with no very good grace.
Henrietta sang an experimental scale, voice skipping lightly over the notes.
Miles turned to Richard, who was gazing moodily out the window. "Are you sure — " he began.
"Sit!" snapped Richard.
"Friend, dog, two different concepts," muttered Miles.
But he sat. He chose, noticed Henrietta, the chair farthest away from the pianoforte. Henrietta's eyes narrowed as she shuffled through a pile of sheet music. For goodness' sake, it wasn't as though she had contracted leprosy since last night! Was he afraid she would fling herself at him in a fit of lovelorn excess?
Of course, she reminded herself for the umpteenth time in as many minutes, she was the one who had sent him away. But she hadn't meant this. Blast it all, he could at least be civil. Was that too much to ask?
Miss Grey cleared her throat with ominous import.
Flushing, Henrietta grabbed a roll of music half at random and thrust it at Miss Grey. "It's 'Caro Mio Ben,'" she informed her.
"I am familiar with the piece," replied Miss Grey emotionlessly, propping the paper against its bracket, and adjusting a pair of pince-nez on the tip of her nose.
"Right," said Henrietta, taking her pose by the piano. "Let's get started, then, shall we?"
It was not the most receptive of audiences. Richard was gazing moodily out the window, as though expecting a spy to run by, wiggling his ears and thumbing his nose at him, at any moment. Amy had her "I'm pretending to listen, but really I'm thinking of ways to thwart the French" face on. Mrs. Cathcart, of course, was looking warm and supportive, because that was the sort of thing Mrs. Cathcart did; Henrietta knew it was no reflection of her own abilities. The Tholmondelay twins were gazing at her from twin settees with the expectant look of puppies who know they are behaving very, very well at the moment, but might bounce up and start chasing their tails at the least provocation. And then there was Miles. Henrietta tried not to look at Miles.
Miss Grey primly asked if she was ready. Nodding in assent, Henrietta closed her eyes, schooled her breathing as Signor Antonio had taught her, and let the opening bars of the music drift through her. Despite her protests about not being in voice, when she opened her mouth, her E flat was crisp and sure, rolling easily into D, C, and B flat. The aria was one of the first she had learnt, and the familiar notes and phrases unrolled easily through her throat.
But the words… why had she never noticed the words before? "Thou all my bliss," she sang, "believe but this: When thou art far, my heart is lorn." She had sung that same phrase a dozen, a hundred times, focusing all her attention on notes and diction, timing and dynamics, blithely oblivious to the plaintive recital of heartache. She had sung them, but never understood them.
Lorn. That was one way to describe the ache of Miles's absence, the utter dejection that had seized her every time they had passed each other in awkward silence. Would it be easier if he were far in more than spirit, if she packed her bags and fled back to London tomorrow? But that wouldn't be any use. London was haunted by a thousand memories of Miles. Miles in the park, teaching her to drive. Miles at Almack's, propping up pillars. Miles sprawled out on the sofa in the morning room, scattering biscuit crumbs all over the carpet. Even her bedroom provided no sanctuary, with Bunny propped reproachfully on her pillows like Banquo's ghost.
Determinedly turning her attention back to the music, Henrietta built up slowly through "thy lover true ever doth sigh." She didn't much feel like sighing. She would far rather throw things. Preferably at Miles. She released her ire into the music, singing out the first reprise of "do but forgo such cruel scorn" rather more forcefully than the score required. The music dwelt on scorn, lingering over the word, trilling it, offering it up again and again, flinging it back at Henrietta.
Despite herself, Henrietta's eyes flew past the sprawled forms of the Tholmondelays, over Mrs. Cathcart's lace cap, to Miles's chair at the back of the room.
He wasn't indifferent anymore.
Henrietta's heart rose in her throat, lending force to her voice as her eyes locked with Miles's. He sat bolt upright, no longer sprawled at leisure, his hands locked in a stranglehold on the arms of the chair, pressing the gilded wood so tightly that it was a wonder it didn't splinter in his hands. She read shock and consternation in his face… and something more.
Henrietta's third reprise of "cruel scorn" had a depth of feeling that made Mrs. Cathcart blink rapidly, and even Richard, gazing with furrowed brow out the window, paused in his search for Frenchmen to absently reflect that his sister's new voice teacher clearly knew what he was about.
The music gentled, sliding like a caress back into "thou all my bliss, believe but this." Henrietta couldn't take her eyes away from Miles. No one else mattered. No one else was there. She sang only for him, the liquid Italian phrases a plea, a promise, a present.
The thunder of clapping that followed snapped the invisible thread that bound them together. Blinking a few times, Henrietta glanced around the room. Both the Tholmondelays were on their feet, and even Richard had glanced away from the window to gaze at her with the sort of startled admiration bestowed by elder siblings when whacked in the face with a show of extreme excellence.
"Good Gad, Hen," he said sincerely. "I had no idea you could sing like that."
"Capital performance!" applauded Fred Tholmondelay.
"Smashing!" seconded Ned. "Never knew that Italian whatnot could be quite so, er — "
"Smashing!" supplied his brother for him. Ned beamed in thanks.
Henrietta barely noticed her triumph. Miles was gone. His seat in the back of the room was empty. It sat slightly at an angle on the parquet floor, as though pushed back in haste. Behind it, the thin, gilded doors stood ajar, still quavering with the force of recent passage.
"Would you sing us another air, my dear?" asked Mrs. Cathcart with an encouraging smile. "It is so seldom that one is treated to a performance of such virtuosity."
"I had no idea you could sing like that," repeated Richard bemusedly.
Amy, who was, if not quite tone deaf, then less than musically inclined, contented herself with beaming in wholehearted delight at her sister-in-law's success.
Indeed, the only one who wasn't beaming wholeheartedly (aside from Miss Grey, for whom beaming would have been an entirely alien action, unsettling facial muscles too long in disuse) was Henrietta. Ordinarily, Henrietta would have basked in their compliments for days, clasping them to her like a bouquet of red roses.
Right now, Henrietta had something else on her mind.
That had not been indifference. She might not be as wise in the ways of the world as Penelope — or at least as wise as Penelope believed Penelope to be — but she knew enough to recognize misery when she saw it. After the past week, she should know.
That did not mean, Henrietta cautioned herself, that Miles necessarily felt anything of a tender nature for her. He might merely regret their rift for the sake of her friendship. Henrietta took a deep breath. And if that was what he wanted, well, friendship was better than nothing; the past day had proved that, if nothing else.
But there had been that something in his eyes…
"Another song?" prompted Amy, delighted at the success of her plan for distracting the restless agents-in-training.
Henrietta shook her head, coming to a rapid decision. What was it that Hamlet had said? Something about action sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, which Henrietta took to mean that if she was going to sort things out with Miles, she ought to do it right away, before she managed to think herself out of it.
"No," she said to Amy. "No. I need… I'll just…"
Amy, thinking Henrietta was referring to a need o
f another kind entirely, nodded understandingly, and turned quickly to Miss Grey, imploring her to play something else.
The Tholmondelay twins shifted restlessly, exchanging martyred glances. Listening to the lovely Lady Henrietta sing was one thing, being subjected to the tuneless strummings of Miss Grey quite another.
"I say, Selwick, what about a more lively form of entertainment?" called out Fred.
Through the window, Henrietta could see a familiar pair of shoulders striding down the garden path, disappearing deep into the carefully contrived wilderness. She knew that walk, she knew that trick of flinging back the head, she knew every least gesture as well as she knew the image in her own glass. Henrietta paused for a moment by the window, watching Miles's dark coat blend with the hedges until there was nothing to be seen. But there was no need to squint into the dark shrubbery; she knew exactly where he was going. Whenever Miles was in disgrace (quite frequently, given his adventurous habits) or needed a place to think deeply (rather less frequently), he always went straight to the same place, the Roman ruin tucked away at the westernmost corner of the gardens. He liked to pitch rocks at the bust of Marcus Aurelius — especially when his classical studies were going poorly. Henrietta bit her lip on a smile at the memory.
How could she have contemplated remaining at odds with Miles? It just couldn't be done.
Unnoticed, Henrietta eased quietly out of the room. She just needed to talk to Miles, and put everything back to rights. When she found him…
"Charades, anyone?" demanded Fred Tholmondelay.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Indiscretion: a fatal miscalculation in judgment by an agent of the War Office; the inevitable prologue to discovery, disgrace, and death
— from the Personal Code Book of the Pink Carnation
Who ever knew that Hen could sing like that? A pebble ricocheted off Marcus Aurelius's head, landing with a gurgle in the water below. An affronted goldfish swished his tail reproachfully at Miles and swam off beneath a fallen bit of statuary. The Roman emperor stared superciliously at Miles down his long nose, taunting him to try again.
His aim was off tonight.
Miles gave the gravel at his feet a vicious kick that did more harm to the finish of his boots than it did the ground. Forget aim, it was his judgment that was fatally flawed. Hell, after this past week, Miles rather doubted that he possessed any of that commodity. There was a dangerous French spy on the loose, and what was Miles doing? Nothing useful, that was bloody certain. Quite the contrary, in fact. The history of the past week had been one of blunder after blunder. Were his life a novel, the chapter heading for this latest installment would undoubtedly read, "In which our hero contrives to endanger his valet and alienate his closest friend."
It took Miles a moment to realize he didn't mean Richard.
Miles sank down onto a little marble bench and buried his head in his hands. When had that happened? Of course, Richard was his closest friend, always had been. It was a matter of institutional record, like the method for calling Parliament. Yet, somehow, without Miles even realizing it, Henrietta had wiggled her way in there. Miles forced himself to cast his mind back over the past few years for the source of this decidedly disturbing development. Miles wasn't generally a proponent of retrospection, preferring to let sleeping dogs lie, live in the moment, seize the day, and any other optimistic twaddle that involved turning a blind eye to anything that might involve serious thought, or, even worse, implicate the emotions. However, even a blind man could see that his visits to Uppington House hadn't abated in the slightest despite the fact that his putative best friend had been off in France for the greater part of the past few years, not counting the odd holiday. He could blame it on Cook's superlative ginger biscuits, or humoring Lady Uppington, or any other number of innocuous excuses. But that was all they were, excuses.
When had he started relying on Hen to such a horrifying extent? He had promised Richard, years ago, that he would keep an eye on her (Richard took his protective function as elder brother deuced seriously), but somehow, keeping an eye had turned into hundreds of teas in the morning room, thousands of drives in the park, and more lemonades than Miles cared to count, much of it spilled on his boots in crowded ballrooms. Downey waxed positively vituperative about the effects of lemonade on fine leather. Today… Miles couldn't count the number of times he had automatically turned to exchange a quip or comment with Henrietta, before remembering that they weren't supposed to be speaking.
It was sheer misery.
Over the course of the long, miserable day, he had almost managed to convince himself that it would all blow over. Of course, Henrietta was angry — she had every right to be after he had kissed her at Vaughn's ball — but she would come around sooner or later, and they could go back to the way they were. And he hadn't been about to kiss her last night. Really, he hadn't. That had just been an, er, affectionate handclasp. Henrietta would calm down and life could revert to normal.
It had all seemed like such a good idea. Until she started singing.
Her first trill ripped the protective coating of habit from Miles's eyes. By the second, he was in distinct agony. This wasn't just Richard's little sister, anymore. It wasn't even Miles's companion of a thousand dull society balls. At the front of the room stood a woman with a formidable talent, a woman to be reckoned with. As a longtime connoisseur of the opera and its denizens, Miles knew that there were voices, and there were Voices. Henrietta had a Voice. Her clear tones reverberated through Miles's memory like the lingering savor of her lavender perfume, haunting in its purity.
A Voice wasn't all she had. Miles refused to even allow himself to dwell upon the way her bosom had swelled above the bodice of her dress as she drew in a deep breath before she built to the crescendo on the third reprise of tanto rigor. Miles groaned in memory, finding his breeches as uncomfortably tight now as they had been then. It wasn't the tailoring.
Looking away hadn't done any good, either. When he glanced down, there were her arms, curving gracefully towards the hands clasped at her waist, like the arms of a Raphael Venus rising from the sea, gently rounded and impossibly fair, ending in pale, delicate hands, with long, tapering fingers and smooth pink nails. Miles had never known there could be such agony in a fingernail before.
Forcing his eyes to her face had been an even bigger mistake. Her cheeks were flushed with the effort of singing, that rare wild tint he had only ever seen on Henrietta's cheeks, like rose petals beneath a fine film of snow; her skin was so translucent one could practically see the blood pounding beneath the surface. Her lips were as flushed as her cheeks, her eyes misty with music. With her lips parted in song, her head tilted slightly back, he could see her arising from a tangle of sheets, eyes dreamy, lips red from his kisses.
Miles contemplated leaping into the fishpond, but it was too shallow to do any good. Besides, he doubted any waters this side of the North Sea would be quite cold enough to dull his ardor, with the image of Hen…
Right. Enough was enough. Miles dusted his hands off against his breeches in a determined fashion. He would do what he should have done in his first place, and order his curricle to be brought round first thing tomorrow morning. He would return to London, meet with Wickham at the War Office, wring every last drop of information he could out of his taciturn superior, and then set himself seriously to the task of tracking down Downey's attacker.
Miles glanced wistfully at the lit windows of the hall, visible over the shoulder-high shrubbery. Inside, the members of the house party were filtering back into the Rose Room for tea and coffee; gaily dressed forms moved past the windowpanes singly and in groups. It was too far away to make out individuals, but all Miles could think about was…
Shooting Frenchmen, he told himself abruptly, levering himself up off the bench. Shooting lots and lots of Frenchmen. "Don't even say it," Miles warned Marcus Aurelius.
"Don't say what?"
Miles started, swerved, and nearly toppled over the bench. It wa
sn't the Roman emperor come to life. That, Miles could have dealt with. Long-dead historical personages, spies, phantom monks… all of those, Miles could have faced with equanimity.
The figure approaching him along the alley of beech trees might easily have been a statue stepped off her pedestal, Pygmalion's mythical lady come to life. Henrietta crossed the final few yards of the path, her white muslin gown luminous in the moonlight. The thin fabric molded itself against her legs as she walked, increasing the resemblance to the statuary of classical antiquity, but no statue had ever had that sort of effect on Miles.
"Shouldn't you be inside?" asked Miles darkly.
Henrietta checked slightly at his inhospitable tone. "I needed to speak to you. About last night — "
"You were right," Miles interrupted tersely, "we can't go back."
Henrietta squinted at him. The moonlight that illuminated the shimmering tails of the fish in the pond and picked out strange patterns in the shrubbery did nothing to illuminate Miles's expression. All she could make out was his stance, leaning against a hedge, hands in his pockets. But there was something about the tense set of his shoulders that belied the casual pose.
"That's just what I wanted to talk to you about," she announced. "I've changed my mind."
Miles' reaction wasn't quite what Henrietta had hoped. Instead of exclaiming with joy, he crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, so have I."
Henrietta frowned at him through the moonlight. "You can't."
"Why not?"
"Because — oh, for heaven's sake, Miles, I'm trying to apologize to you!"
Miles sidled away. "Don't."
"Don't?"
"Don't apologize and don't come any closer."
As if to lend force to his words, Miles resolutely turned away from her, scooped up a handful of pebbles, and began pitching them into the pond with exaggerated attention to aim.
Henrietta's eyes narrowed in sudden comprehension. She plunked her hands on her hips and glowered at Miles. "If you're trying to drive me away so I don't get in your way while you stalk the spy, I don't appreciate it."
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