He looked directly at her, and then smiled.
It wasn’t a pleasant smile. He tilted his knobby chin up and flashed his dirty, crooked teeth—one missing from the front—like a challenge to her.
And this time she was with her sister.
She made the mistake of glancing at Lucy, who hadn’t seen him, and then back at the man.
He smiled wider, his eyes narrowing.
No. She wouldn’t let him intimidate her.
Alethea turned her back and grasped hold of Lucy’s elbow in a firm but casual grip. “Tell me, to what heights has Mrs. Ramsland attained in selfish bitterness this week?” She was surprised her voice sounded almost normal, and since a cart rolled past them, Lucy didn’t notice the slight tremor.
Lucy shook her head. “Speaking of Mrs. Ramsland would only upset me, and I must be calm when I return to her today.”
“Oh, Lucy, surely there is another position to be had in Bath.”
“The winter season is starting, so I am hopeful there will be some gentlewoman in need of a new lady’s maid. I only wonder how I shall hear of any positions available since I am with Mrs. Ramsland and catering to her complaints all day.”
Lucy had told Alethea about those complaints. Things like being quick to accuse Lucy of taking things that she herself had misplaced, and deliberately demanding hip baths late the night before she knew Lucy would need to rise early in order to do her duties before taking her half day off. “I shall keep my ears open,” Alethea said.
“And Mrs. Ramsland at least allows me a half day off a week. Some employers conveniently forget.”
As her sister rambled on about other employers she had heard about, Alethea walked beside her, her back straight as a fireplace poker and her head held high, while in her chest, her heart thundered.
For the first time, she was glad Lord Dommick was calling this afternoon. The sooner she discovered who was after her violin and why, the sooner she could stop them, and stop the threat to her family.
Bayard had a raging headache. Between the irritation of Mr. Morrish’s excessive solicitude toward Clare last night and the dread of his eminent meeting with a woman as prickly as a hedgehog, he felt as if a coach-and-four had run over him.
Lord Ian found it all vastly entertaining.
Ian leaned back against the squabs of the carriage and gave Bayard a wide grin that made his dimples stand out even through the dark gold shadow on his cheeks. “You look like you’re heading to a funeral, old man.”
Bayard scowled at him. “I look nothing of the sort.”
Ian shrugged, raised a hand to flip a lock of hair out of his eyes, and stared out the carriage. Still grinning.
Bayard cleared his throat and said, “Last night, when you went to the ladies’ withdrawing room to find Clare, Morrish was waiting for her?”
“When he saw me, Morrish looked as if he’d swallowed a fork,” Ian said gleefully. “He told me that I needn’t wait for Clare, that he’d knocked on the door and inquired of the maid, but Clare’s hem wasn’t finished yet.”
Bayard frowned. “She could have sewn an entire dress in the time I was speaking to Lady Alethea.”
“I said something along those lines—although with much more elegance and wit.”
Bayard rolled his eyes.
“I knocked on the door and spoke to the maid, and Clare was out in a trice. When I escorted her back to the ballroom, I must say, Bay, you needn’t have been rushing toward us as if she’d been abducted.”
“Clare’s dowry is seventy-five thousand pounds,” Bayard said. “I dare you to walk calmly when that rackety fortune hunter had deliberately arranged to remove her from the room.”
“Well, when you put it in those terms . . .”
Bayard suddenly felt the damp coldness of the winter in his bones. He was in Bath for the sake of his mother and sister—he could not fail to protect them. Lord God, help me to protect them. He cleared his throat and studied the shine on his Hessian boots. “Thank you for going to her, Ian.”
“Wouldn’t want the brat getting lost,” Ian answered casually, “not with her debut this spring.”
At mention of Clare’s season, tension squeezed the back of Bayard’s neck and shoulders. He needed to repair his reputation after being ruined by his former betrothed, Miss Church-Pratton. While Lady Whittlesby’s concert would accomplish that, if he were to be seen associating too often with a woman who played the violin, would people think him an oddity and cast doubts on his sanity, fueled by the old rumours?
Did he have a choice? Lady Whittlesby’s concert came with the price of interacting with the brash Lady Alethea Sutherton.
“It’s a pity a woman so beautiful is so aggressive and unconventional,” Bayard said.
Ian’s eyebrows completely disappeared behind that lock of hair over his forehead. “I take it we’re no longer speaking about Clare?”
“What?”
Ian gave him a sly smile. “Lady Alethea, eh? Now that’s interesting.”
“What are you prattling on about?”
“I’m not the one babbling about beautiful women, for once.”
Bayard looked out the window. His cravat seemed a trifle tight. With relief he saw Alethea’s aunt’s home in Queen Square. “Ah, here we are. Thank you for the lift, Ian. I’ll walk home later.”
“No, we’ll both walk back.” Ian gave him a wicked grin. “I have a burning desire to further my acquaintance with the fair Lady Alethea now that you’ve described her as ‘aggressive and unconventional.’ ”
Bayard glowered at him. “What of your call to your mother’s friend today?”
“I will visit her tomorrow.” Ian exited the carriage. “You don’t intend to spend all day in there, do you, old chap?”
Bayard stepped down in front of Mrs. Garen’s house. “Lady Alethea may not appreciate your presence. This is a sensitive matter for her.”
“I have never had a woman object to my presence. Unlike you.”
Ian instructed his coachman, and Bayard rapped upon the front door.
Suddenly a sound blasted out of the house, putting Bayard in mind of a screeching cat clinging to the back of a runaway horse.
“What was that?” Ian had clapped his hands over his ears.
“Regret joining me?” Bayard said. Accomplished violin player, indeed! Lady Whittlesby was getting on in age to describe Lady Alethea’s skill in such lofty terms. The screeching seemed to make the wood of the door rattle against its hinges.
The butler opened the door, cotton stuffed in his ears. “You are expected, gentlemen,” he said in a loud voice.
“I am Lord Dommick, and this is Lord Ian Wynnman.”
“Very good. If you would follow me?” The butler led them up a carpeted staircase while yet another screech from the floor above echoed off the walls of the high-ceilinged foyer and the marble floor. The butler’s shoulders visibly twitched at the cacophony. Then the sound stopped.
However, just as they reached the landing, Bayard heard a new violin sound, a low, throbbing note that seemed to grow from the foundation of the house, soft at first and rising in volume until it hovered in the air like an autumn leaf fallen from a tree and kept aloft by a breeze. Then the note broke into a series of triplets, each sound as delicate as a flower.
Bayard stopped. The player was . . . exquisite. Even more, the instrument had an unusual tone he couldn’t quite describe, mellow and smooth like the softest leather, the downy coat of a puppy, the velvety petals of a rose.
Ian had stopped also, his mouth open.
The music transitioned up an octave, and suddenly the sound became brighter than a sunlit day, more brilliant than a jeweled necklace. The sweet, high notes reminded him of his sister’s smile, his mother’s laughter, the aching joy in his heart as he rode neck-or-nothing across the fields at Terralton Abbey.
The butler’s discreet cough brought him back to his senses. He shook off the spell of the music with difficulty and hurried up the stairs to t
he drawing room, Ian hot on his heels.
The music stopped like an indrawn breath as soon as the butler opened the door. “Lord Dommick and Lord Ian Wynnman, my lady.”
Lady Alethea stood in front of the window, the fitful afternoon light glowing cool and white behind her. Her violin was propped under her chin, her bow poised above the strings. It made Bayard uncomfortable to see her elbow extended so high and the fabric underarm of her sleeve exposed, although she wore a high-necked, long-sleeved blue dress that covered her modestly.
She dropped her arms and set the violin on the table within a moment of their entering the drawing room. Bayard then noticed that a young girl sat in a chair at the round table, her light brown curls a wild riot down her back.
Lady Alethea curtseyed, then gestured to the girl, who promptly stood. “Lord Dommick, Lord Ian, this is my aunt’s niece, Miss Garen.”
Ian bowed to her. “Miss Garen,” he said in a mock-solemn tone that made the girl giggle.
Bayard also bowed, and a smile spread across his lips at the girl’s stately curtsey.
“Margaret, go to Aunt Ebena and tell her the gentlemen are here. She’ll need to join us.”
Bayard usually sighed at the necessity of unmarried women needing a chaperone when receiving gentlemen callers, but in this case, he realized it might be better not to be alone with Lady Alethea, considering their arguing last night.
Ian murmured for Bayard’s ears alone, “Shall I make sure you and Lady Alethea don’t come to blows?”
Bayard glared at him, and Ian gave him an innocent smile.
Luckily, Lady Alethea didn’t notice their interaction because Margaret said to her, “Could I take the violin to practice on?”
So, the child had been the cause of the dying cat sounds. Bayard should have known Lady Whittlesby wouldn’t have overstated a person’s musical skill quite that much.
“No, Lord Dommick is here to see my violin. You can practice more afterward.”
Margaret ran out of the drawing room in a swirl of skirts and brown curls flying behind her. The sound of her feet pounding up the stairs made the walls vibrate, but Lady Alethea didn’t seem to notice as she gestured to the sofa. “Will you be seated, gentlemen?”
“So, you are teaching Margaret to play violin?” Ian flashed his dimples at Lady Alethea.
Dommick frowned. Could the man ever not flirt with a woman?
“Yes, she prefers it to the pianoforte or the harp.”
Clare had also, once. When she was twelve and Bayard had been home briefly on leave, she had begged him to teach her to play the violin, so he’d taught her a few light airs that she picked up with ease. But then she had played the violin after a dinner party when their father was not there. The local women had reduced Clare to tears with their shock and scorn that she played so unfeminine an instrument, and when her father returned home, he forbade her to play again.
“You should teach her the pianoforte or the harp instead,” Bayard said in a voice harsher than he had intended.
Lady Alethea’s dark brows, so delicately arched, rose in a look of such challenge that it made her seem even taller.
He really should have kept his mouth shut.
“There have been professional female violin players in the last century,” she said in a voice that could have frozen the Thames.
“On the continent. In England, women who play the violin would fall under social disdain . . .” He wanted to explain about Clare’s painful experience but didn’t know how without mentioning specifics that he could not relate in public. In fact, he had never spoken of the incident again with Clare.
And Mrs. Garen chose that moment to enter the drawing room, so he lost the opportunity to soothe Lady Alethea’s ruffled feathers.
“Gentlemen.” Mrs. Garen greeted them as they rose to their feet. “Pray, be seated. Would you care for tea?”
“No, thank you,” Bayard said. “I am anxious to see the violin.”
Lady Alethea brought the violin to him and laid it in his hands, although she seemed reluctant to let it out of her possession. The look she shot him clearly said, “Take care, because if you somehow damage this instrument, I shall cause you extreme pain,” although she spoke not a word to him.
He studied the shape a moment. “Is this a Stradivarius?”
“Since she bought it from a peddler, Lady Arkright was not certain, but she thought it might be. The shape of the outline, the F-holes and the bridge . . .”
“Yes, and the varnish has this reddish tinge that is very characteristic of his work.” Bayard ran his hand over the wood. “What type of wood is this?”
“I don’t know.” Lady Alethea’s dry tone indicated that this was the reason she’d needed his help.
“Bay, I do believe you are at a loss,” Ian said. “The wonder of it.”
Bayard ignored him and said to Lady Alethea, “The wood is unusual for a Stradivarius. Most are made with spruce and maple, but this one looks like the same wood for both.”
“I’ve always thought it a very ugly wood. Other violins are much more beautiful.”
“It doesn’t have the distinct, dark vertical graining of normal spruce wood and none of the ‘flame,’ or the light and dark effect of maple wood. This graining is tight and narrow, the lines muddy and almost indiscernible.”
“Calandra nearly didn’t buy the violin. Sir William wanted to buy a more beautiful instrument for her. But Calandra said that the peddler slashed the price since he was desperate to get it off his hands, and she liked the weight and feel of it. And although it only had two intact strings, she could discern it was worth much more than the peddler valued it.”
“Since the wood is unusual, but it is clearly a Stradivarius, it must have been a custom order,” Bayard said. “Likely a nobleman commissioned it.”
“I didn’t think of that. Will that be easy to track down?”
“Much easier than a violin not custom built, and I have some contacts in Italy, but mail to and from the continent now is slow because of the war. I also will write to a few Italian noblemen in London with whom I am acquainted.”
For the first time since he had entered the room, Lady Alethea smiled at him. It transformed her, in her plain, blue gown and her straight, dark hair scraped back from her oval face, to a woman of unearthly radiance and beauty. And even though she only smiled at him because of the contacts he had, the warmth of her gaze seemed to cause a similar warmth in his chest.
Mrs. Garen’s words interrupted the look between them. “An Italian noble might know fairly quickly whose initials those are.”
“Initials?”
“On the neck,” Lady Alethea said.
Bayard was itching to play it, but forced himself to finish his observations first. He turned his attention to the neck and scroll at the end of the violin. “This symbol was on the violin when she bought it?”
“Yes. Calandra and I speculated it might be intertwined initials, but we were in disagreement as to what those initials were.”
“It looks like a large elaborate S in the middle and then C or G? And M on the left of the S, and A and G or C on the right. GMSAG?”
“May I?” Ian asked, and Bayard handed the violin to him.
“I do believe it is a C.” Ian squinted at it. “And the last one is a G. CMSAG.”
When Bayard received the violin back, he noticed a tuning peg had been replaced, a very good job.
Lady Alethea had followed his gaze. “Lady Arkright had that tuning peg replaced several years ago.”
“Where did she send it?”
“I only know she went to London.”
“There are only three shops that could replace the tuning peg as well as this was done. I have patronized all three and can write to inquire if any remember this violin.”
“How would that help you?” Mrs. Garen asked.
“If they remember this violin, likely they spoke to Lady Arkright about it, and asked questions that might have been different from what m
usicians would ask. As a consequence, she might have told them information she didn’t share even with Lady Alethea.”
Mrs. Garen looked suitably impressed. “Unconventional thinking. Now, when are you going to play it?”
He could make more observations later. Bayard shot to his feet as if he were an eager schoolboy, and Lady Alethea handed him her bow. Now that he held it against his shoulder, his chin atop the smoothly varnished wood, he was struck by the fine balance of the instrument. It moulded to him as if an extension of his body.
He paused, considering what to play, and chose a violin concerto in the key of G minor by Vivaldi, in honour of the composer’s association with Lady Arkright’s former school at the Ospedale della Pietà.
The lush notes almost took him off guard. If he had not heard Lady Alethea playing it earlier, he might have been startled by the smooth, mellow tones of the lower notes, the glittering resonance of the higher ones. The thrumming vibrations of the violin seemed to shake emotions loose from his core, bringing out more fire and warmth from the piece than he had ever played before. He was almost breathless, closing his eyes and letting the music grip his heart, overshadowing his intellect in favour of pure inspiration, pure joy, pure awe.
This was how he felt when kneeling alone at the chapel at Terralton Abbey, when he could almost feel the touch of God upon his head.
When the piece ended, he realized his hands were shaking, his heart beating a frantic tempo. It contrasted with Mrs. Garen, who held a polite expression of pleasure.
Ian, who had heard him play that piece dozens of times, sat with eyes wide and mouth open, for once with no sarcasm or mischief.
But it was Lady Alethea’s face that captured Bayard’s attention. Her eyes were shining star sapphires, dark against the golden cream of her skin and the rose blush of her parted lips. She stared at him, and the rest of the room fell away. All he saw was her. The beauty of the music didn’t compare with the beauty in her expression. She understood how he felt, how the violin had made him feel when he played. She understood perfectly.
Prelude for a Lord Page 7
