The Princess and the Pauper

by Alexandra Benedict

  She crossed the room and took a seat. This time, he joined her at the table, taking the opposite chair.

  “Duck?”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  He filled her plate with an assortment of meats, and she studied his graceful movements with suspicion. As a boy, he’d followed her father’s dictates, never hers. On occasion, he’d even taken the presumptuous position of ordering her about. But his refusal to be her servant had placed them on equal footing, as friends. Now he served her. What was she to think of that?

  “The food is getting cold,” he said in an even voice.

  She picked up the fork and knife, carved the meat, then stilled. “Why aren’t you dining?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Why did you bring up so much food?”

  “I selected a variety of dishes.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what you fancy. You and I have never shared a meal.”

  She shifted in her seat. “I’m not particular.”

  They had always shared what was important as children—their secrets and dreams and music. Did it really matter to him what she preferred on the menu?

  It didn’t matter to her, and she returned to the duck breast, ignoring his watchful gaze.

  “Where is your valet?” she wondered. “Or housekeeper? They’re remiss in their duties. It took me all day to organize this room.”

  “The housekeeper knows better than to clean my bedchamber, and I don’t need a valet.”

  He was dressed without ceremony, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his forearms, his collar unbuttoned, his hair impishly rumpled. He most certainly needed a valet, she thought, and he must have guessed her disapproving thought for his brow arched as if he dared her to voice the sentiment aloud. But she wasn’t in a position to critique his bohemian ways.

  “In truth,” he went on, “I don’t invite anyone inside this room.”

  “Apart from your mistress.”

  “Not even her.”

  She paused. “But . . .”

  “What is it, princess?”

  “You said your mistress transformed the entire house. Bedroom and all.”

  “She didn’t paper the walls herself,” he returned dryly. “There are workers for that.”

  “I just thought . . . never mind.”

  She wasn’t about to ask where he stored his mistress, especially if she lived somewhere else in the house. She certainly didn’t want to know that or that Rees visited her every night or . . .

  Emily wasn’t sure why she’d mentioned the other woman and attacked the duck breast, but then her thoughts changed direction, and she realized what he’d admitted—no one, apart from her, had entered his bedroom, his sanctum, the place where he composed his music. Why had he made an exception for her?

  Why was she different?

  Her heartbeat quickened just as lightning sparked, and she wasn’t sure what had set off her pulse—his admission or the storm.

  “Besides,” he said offhandedly. “She has her reputation to consider.”

  A strumpet with a reputation?

  “A lady cannot visit a bachelor in the dead of night . . . or so I’m told.”

  A lady? His mistress was a real lady?

  And Emily was not.

  She closed her eyes. He would dredge the past and bring to light every sin. But she wasn’t prepared to remember the ill-fated night she had gone to him, tempted him.

  She should have let Rees walk away with Papa’s admiration and his honor intact. She knew that now. But she had risked everything for one kiss. Something a proper lady would never do . . .

  “Are you well, princess?”

  His voice dropped, and the low timbre sent a shiver through her spine. All those years ago, she had yearned for more than his friendship, more than his music.

  She had yearned for him.

  “I am well,” she lied and lifted her lashes. “Why?”

  “You and I must clear the air.”

  “What more is there to say?”

  There was plenty more to say, of course, all of it ugly, and they both knew it. She just couldn’t express any of it, much less hear it from him.

  “You lied to me,” he said.

  She took a measured breath. He would not let the past rest. And she had nowhere to hide. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Your father—”

  “My father?” Chair legs screeched against the hardwood floor as she pushed the furniture back and vacated the seat. “I won’t talk about Papa.”

  He followed her across the room. “And why is that?”

  “I won’t speak of the dead.”

  “You won’t speak ill if the dead, you mean?”

  She whirled around. “How dare you?”

  “How dare I? How dare he leave you penniless, investing in wild schemes?”

  She balled her hands. Had Rees searched the city for gossip about her father? Is that how he’d spent day? Why? Why did it matter to him?

  Because Papa destroyed his violin.

  Her mind returned to the awful moment when Papa had crushed the magical instrument. He had crushed her heart, too, for she would never hear another note from that violin again. She would never hear Rees play again.

  But Rees should be angry with her, and her alone. She had tiptoed from her bedroom to be with him. She had tempted him into a kiss. Her father had only protected her. And he wouldn’t have needed to protect her if she hadn’t been so reckless, so wanton.

  Emily glanced at the door, expecting Papa to explode into the room. Again she remembered he was dead. He never treated her the same after booting Rees from the house. Once his fury had settled, he’d asked her one probing question. How had Rees dragged her from her bed to his room without anyone seeing or hearing the assault? And when she’d failed to deliver a prompt and reasonable response, he’d viewed her with suspicion, right to his dying day.

  “Outrageous speculation in Argentina. Indiscrete investments across America. He was throwing away money,” accused Rees. “Why would he do such a thing?”

  She stiffened. She wouldn’t admit the truth about her father’s declining mind. His solicitor had begged her to have him declared insane and save what was left of his fortune. Her former fiancé, the Earl of Dresmond, had pleaded with her to do the same, but she’d refused. She had already betrayed Papa once with her entanglement with Rees, and she would not do it again.

  Besides, she would never bring him down in such an inglorious manner. He’d established a formidable reputation as a man of business prowess. Let the world believe he’d made a series of ill-timed investments, that fortune hadn’t been kind to him, but never let the world think Augustus Wright hadn’t a sharp and brilliant mind.

  Her fingers shaking, she walked over to the stack of violin cases. She had piled the instruments in the corner of the room earlier in the day.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Rees.

  She opened a case and pulled out a violin. “I’m going to play for you.”

  “I’ve not asked you to play for me.”

  “But you will.”

  And the sooner the better. Already disturbing memories of her father’s failing health crowded her mind. His physical pains and violent mood shifts. His memory loss and eventually delusions. And it had all started soon after he’d found her with Rees.

  She had pushed him into madness.

  Rees took the violin from her unsure hands. “What are you hiding, princess?”

  “Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “I’m not your princess.”

  Not anymore.

  “Who are you, then?” he asked quietly.

  She had wondered that for most of her life. As a child, the answer had been simple. She was her father’s daughter, a lady. But as she matured, the simple things in her life developed thorny branches. Her behavior grew more unladylike, especially her behavior toward Rees.

  Oh, why had she taunted fate so foolishly, selfishly, the night she’d gone to him? She had
betrayed the two most important men in her life that day. And she’d lost them both.

  “I don’t know who I am,” she answered truthfully. That much she wouldn’t hide.

  “You are my guest.” He set down the violin. “I’ve advised the staff to do your bidding in all matters. If you’d like to go shopping, take a maid with you and charge all accounts to my name. If you’d like to go riding, take a groomsman with you and enjoy the air in Green Park. But I want you here every night.”

  “To play for you.”

  “That is our arrangement.”

  He had finally figured out what to do with the “unexpected expense” of her—make her a songbird in a gilded cage.

  “I am to stay here, then? In this room?”

  “No.” His eyes darkened. “You will have your own suite of rooms down the hall, just as soon as they are furnished according to your taste.”

  Emily didn’t know why their business arrangement disturbed her so much. What more could she want under the circumstances? And yet she wanted more, craved more.

  She paced from the window back to the table. The awful reality of being physically bound to him without shared tenderness made her increasingly restive, desperate for escape. But a storm raged outdoors, leaving her with one option.

  “I’d like to take a walk through the house.”

  “You are free to go where you please.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do not thank me, prin—” He paused, then, “Our arrangement is a business deal, and I will uphold my end of the bargain by taking care of your needs.”

  And she would do her part by looking after his, though there’d be no affection between them. He’d made that perfectly clear.

  Oh, she was a fool! She wanted too much. She had always wanted too much. And her selfish needs had never done her any good in the past.

  “I’m going to take that walk now.”

  She couldn’t leave the room fast enough.

  CHAPTER 5

  Emily explored the majestic brownstone mansion. She toured the morning room, smoking room, ballroom, even the music room, but with the exception of the study and kitchen, there was not a block of furniture in sight.

  She couldn’t imagine why Rees would purchase a palatial house and leave it empty. He had plenty of money. He had paid a small fortune for her. So why cocoon himself in just one room with his music?

  According to the few servants, who had little instruction from Rees and were like sheep without a shepherd, their master had one regular visitor, a male friend, and no other guests. Gifts and invitations poured through the door, but Rees ignored them all.

  He wanted to focus on his music, she assumed, but still, why maintain a vacant house? And one so large? A small manor in the country would be more suitable for a recluse.

  Her footfalls echoed through the lonely passages. She shivered and rubbed her arms, feeling like a ghost. She would live as one in the unfurnished house, visit Rees every night, like a haunting, and perform. But why? What did he want from her? The music?

  Her walk had failed to cure her restless heart. If anything, she was even more perturbed than when she’d first left his room.

  Emily mounted the stairs and explored the remaining bedrooms. At the end of her search, she discovered a chamber with an en-suite and balcony, papered in more gaudy patterns. She envisioned the space without the ornamental trappings, the walls stripped of paisleys and papered instead in a warm butter yellow, the bed alcove draped in rose fabric. This, she supposed, would be her own room.

  She wouldn’t have an apartment of her own. She couldn’t press for a flat in a respectable part of town when the mansion was so spacious and she hadn’t a reputation to protect anymore. Still, she could fulfill her strange duty and play for Rees every night if she had her own abode. She could visit him. Or he could visit her. She needn’t live underfoot when he so obviously wanted a sequestered life . . . unless he sheltered her for more intimate reasons.

  Her breath hitched and her heart swelled with longing, and perhaps a bit of hope, dangerous as that might be. She yearned for his camaraderie again. She didn’t want to live with him in the deserted house, like two lost souls. She wanted to believe he still cared for her, that she wasn’t just a “guest” in his house, even if he denied it. But how to be sure? A small voice whispered—music.

  Of course, music. A musician had to open his heart to play, but an audience had to open its heart to hear. And she knew just the melody to play to open Rees’s heart, to learn the truth about his feelings for her . . . and if there was a second chance for friendship.

  ~ * ~

  Rain pattered against the window like fingertips tapping glass. The worst of the storm had washed over the city and breaks in the clouds had allowed the moon’s light to cast its glow—a greenish glow over a festering metropolis.

  Grey looked away from his reflection in the pane of glass and removed the letter from his trouser pocket. A chronological summary of Wright’s activities during the last year of his life had been itemized and delivered by Mr. Smith, who, it seemed, had brain as well as brawn.

  More fastidious details were to follow in a day or two, but the rundown revealed a troubling turn of events eight months after Grey had left the household. Emily had been engaged at the time, and all seemed well, until a blundered business deal marked the rapid decline of Wright’s fortune.

  Grey walked across the room and turned down the gas lights, leaving only the oil lamp burning on the bedside table. He approached the bed and stretched out over the mattress, tucking an arm under his head.

  An unbidden memory came to mind—a small hand in his, slipping away. He could still hear Emily’s bare toes frantically scraping the roof tiles. He could still see the terror in her wide brown eyes as she nearly plummeted to her death. Ten years later, that “nearly” still spurred his pulse.

  He never imagined it would be her mighty father who’d fall in the end. But the unthinkable had occurred, and Grey studied the handwritten lines for the sinister secret. The evidence was too vague, though, and since Emily refused to confess what had really happened to her doting papa, Grey would have to keep digging for the truth.

  A rap at the door.

  He crushed the paper and stuffed it under his pillow just as Emily entered the room. Her warm eyes, uncertain and searching, met his, and his chest tightened. Would a time ever come when she wouldn’t steal his breath?

  She shut the door and stepped nearer to the bed. “Am I disturbing you?”

  “No.” He forced a deep, drawn breath into his starved lungs, then gradually exhaled. “How was your walk?”

  She curled her slender fingers around the bedpost. “Unusual.”

  Her skirt brushed the foot of the bed. His toes almost grazed her skirt. What was she doing so close to him? Earlier in the day, she’d backed away from him in obvious mistrust. Her fear had twisted his innards, for she’d never treated him with suspicion, and he was unfamiliar with the unnatural feeling. But he now found her inexplicable courage equally disarming.

  “Unusual?” His pulse quickened under her probing stare. “How so?”

  “The house is empty. Why?”

  “I have yet to fill it with useless things.”

  When he’d purchased the property six months ago, Lady Hickox had papered the walls and draped the windows in anticipation of rollicking gatherings, where she would act as hostess to celebrated artists, politicians and other demigods. Grey wanted no intrusion into his private world, however, and had refused to furnish the mansion, much to her displeasure.

  “I suppose that will change,” he considered in a low voice, “now that you’re here.”

  She cocked her head. “Why would it change because of me?”

  “What will you do in an empty house?”

  “What will I do in a furnished one?”

  Rule it, he thought, then frowned. What game was she playing?

  Their dance had to end. If he wanted to be free of her and the pas
t, he had to regain control of his impulses, and there was only one way to do that—to confront her and everything she had ever meant to him, to stand before it all, and then to turn away from it.

  He whispered, “Will you play for me, princess?”

  There was a bright, unexpected light in her eyes—a passionate flame—not borne of anger, as he’d assumed when he’d called her “princess,” but borne of . . . hope.

  The hairs on his arms bristled. Hope for what? he wondered. What did she believe would come of her music play?

  He sensed the change in her, in himself, and his heart thudded, low and fierce . . .

  Emily flexed her fingers.

  Rees studied her with unmistakable heat in his eyes, and her every pore burst with gooseflesh. She thought she’d buried her sensual feelings for him, that they might not even exist after so much time. But as she wondered how it would feel to hear such soft words whispered against her skin, her blood simmered.

  An unfinished kiss still lived in her memory. She watched him on the bed, under the glow of lamplight, with his mussed hair and partially unbuttoned shirt, and the smoldering longing returned, burned hotter.

  She hadn’t fully understood the fire between them five years ago, but she understood it now. Desire. It had almost ruined her. But that danger was now gone.

  She was already ruined.

  Emily grabbed the bedpost again, needing support. Suddenly, there was so much more at stake than their friendship. There was forgiveness. And the possibility of a life. Together.

  But if music failed to rouse him? Then he hadn’t dormant affections for her. What would she do then? Live with him in misery? Pray for indifference?

  She trembled as she retrieved a violin. She had never played with such a sense of urgency or fear. And if she couldn’t play?

  With a deep breath, she sat on the edge of the winged chair. Her heartbeat sounded in her ears. She couldn’t fit the instrument comfortably under her chin or raise her arms high enough, the shoulder seams so low, they pinched her muscles when she tried to lift them.

  “You cannot play in that dress.” His voice dropped to a throaty timbre. “It gives you no freedom of movement.”

  The roughness in his words made her skin prickle even more. He was right, of course. She couldn’t play in the restrictive garment. And her first instinct was to run to the dressing room to disrobe in private. But then another thought came to mind.