Music Master

by Barbara Miller

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Music Master

  ISBN 9781419911811

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Music Master Copyright © 2007 Barbara Miller

  Edited by Helen Woodall.

  Cover art by Lissa Waitley.

  Electronic book Publication October 2007

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing Inc., 1056 Home Avenue, Akron, OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Music Master

  Barbara Miller

  Dedication

  For my hero and husband Don. Without him there would be no books.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Madeira: Instituto do Vinho da Madiera.

  Chapter One

  England, June 1814

  Leighton scanned the new green of the hayfield from the back of his cantering horse. Jasper pricked his ears forward at sight of the hedge where they used to jump when hunting foxes or hares with the squire’s son. But that was years ago, before the war in the Peninsula, before Leighton’s father’s death and before these arguments with his mother sent him riding away in frustration. He had been home from London only a few hours and already they had quarreled.

  “What do you think, Jasper? Can you still do it?” He nudged the horse toward the hedge and Jasper turned eagerly. “All right. Hup!”

  The hunter almost leaped from under him in its joyful spring. They covered the distance to the hedgerow in great ground-eating strides, Jasper’s shoes biting into the springy turf and throwing up clods of grass. Leighton felt the horse’s muscles bunch between his thighs, got the soaring elation of flying and heard the swish of greenery under Jasper’s belly. Then he glimpsed a flash of gray that should not have been behind the hedgerow. Jasper saw it too and stopped short on landing, sending Leighton somersaulting over his head to thud breathlessly onto the grassy lane. He found himself staring up into the startled green eyes of Maddie Westlake in her gray cloak.

  “Leighton, are you hurt?” She dropped her basket and pushed the hood back from her brown ringlets to grab for Jasper’s bridle. “Let go of the reins!”

  Leighton gasped for air as he ascertained she was unharmed, then realized Jasper’s feet were dancing nervously near his head. He uncurled his fingers and rolled out of the way. “Maddie, I am so sorry. I nearly landed on top of you.”

  “It is my fault. I surprised him by being too near the hedge.” Maddie stroked Jasper’s muzzle. When the horse bowed its head, she scratched its ears.

  Leighton watched the animal rest its forehead against her breast as though it had missed her as much as he had.

  Maddie looked up at him and smiled. “We are lucky he has better sense than both of us.”

  “Better eyes at any rate.” Leighton stood gingerly and dusted himself off, noting that he would have a bruised shoulder for his carelessness but nothing more serious. Then he stooped to examine Jasper’s legs.

  “You had better walk him,” Maddie advised. “He may take a chill if you keep him standing.”

  “You always were a sensible girl,” Leighton said, beginning to lead the horse and looking behind to observe the animal’s gait and make sure he was not lame.

  “It doesn’t take much sense to care for a horse.”

  She picked up her large basket and began walking beside him, her worn shoes peeking from beneath the dusty edge of her work skirt. Obviously none of the money he had sent her to take care of his older tenants had been squandered on herself. All that would change now that he was able to marry her.

  Leighton thought she had the most delicate feet. She was a head shorter than he, but one word from Maddie was like a command to him. He had always done what she’d said because she was so sensible.

  “I meant that most women would have fallen over in a dead faint or gone into hysterics at almost being run down. Whereas you—”

  “Expect it from you?” she supplied in her low matter-of-fact voice, the corners of her generous mouth turning up in the hint of a smile.

  He studied that mouth, with lips almost the color of strawberries and remembered tasting those lips the last summer things had been normal. That had been six years ago. “I had forgotten how sharp your tongue can be. I have been missing this, I think. Let me carry that basket home for you.” He reached for it and touched her hand on the handle. He had the distinct feeling that she would not have surrendered her burden except to avoid contact with him. She was the same Maddie, yet he felt distanced from her and he didn’t know why.

  “Are you back for good then?” she asked, staring at the ground and clasping her hands together as they walked on.

  “From London? Yes, now that Napoleon has been shipped off to Elba, they do not need me at the Foreign Office. There is the estate to look after.” He swung the basket and wondered at its weight.

  “I never understood what you did there,” she said, then stooped to pick a violet from the middle of the lane.

  He watched her twirl it between her fingers. Here it was early summer, he had just gotten home from London, it was now safe to declare himself but he did not know how to begin. “I did not understand it all myself.” A lie was not a good beginning but secrecy gets to be such a habit that the truth is the last thing you think to tell someone, even someone you love.

  “So you wrote dispatches?”

  “No, not from London. All that happens at the front. I just…clerked.”

  “It must have been important to keep you away three parts of the year.”

  “In war everything is important.”

  “Not just in war.” She looked away toward the churchyard and the vicarage.

  “I know. Do you think I do not realize how hard it has been for you? Doing the visits and keeping faith with the old people, when it is my mother who should be taking care of them.”

  “Sometimes your sister comes with me in her gig. Amy feels the same as you.”

  “But with her children to care for, the burden of looking after the old cottagers has fallen on you.”

  “It is no burden and that was not what I meant by everything. You could have broken your neck just a few moments ago. And it doesn’t even concern you.” Maddie’s eyes glistened with belated tears. That was Maddie, always as cool as ice during an emergency but feeling it to the extreme later.

  Leighton watched a flush of embarrassment kiss her cheek and wished he had a free hand to brush her concern away “I was more worried about you.”

  “Why? Do you feel responsible for me because you grant my father his living?” she asked.


  “What? No. There has always been a Westlake in the vicarage at Longbridge. I was concerned because I care about you. I have since we were children.”

  “We are past childish cares, all grown up now. No more picking flowers.” She tossed the bloom away. “Or riding our ponies to the village. No more stealing strawberries from the garden. We are adults now and must not look back.”

  “Why not? My best memories are of you,” Leighton said, thinking of strawberry juice on those ripe lips, remembering bringing Maddie the best berries because she liked them so much. “Everything that was good happened in the past.”

  This brought a frown to her countenance and on Maddie it looked tragic. She turned her face away.

  Now Leighton regretted making her sad. “When I saw you at church last Christmas I got the feeling you are not happy.”

  “Happy?” she asked, directing a confused look at him. “I’ve never thought about it.”

  She said it rapidly, in that way she had when trying to hide something. She increased the pace of her walk but he had no trouble keeping up with her small strides.

  “You have a right to happiness—more right than many I know. You should not be working so hard, carrying heavy things,” he complained, then hefted the large market basket. “What is in here, anyway? It weighs a ton.”

  “A dead cat,” Maddie said briefly.

  “A what?” Leighton dropped the burden and stared at the old rag covering it as though he didn’t believe her. Jasper almost walked into him.

  “Old Mrs. Horwith’s dead cat. She is too old to bury him and could not bear to do it even if she was able. Since I was passing the cemetery on the way home, I promised to get a shovel from the caretaker’s toolshed and inter the beast.”

  Leighton stared at her. “That seems above and beyond the call of even a dutiful vicar’s daughter.”

  “Someone has to. Well, are you bringing it?”

  Leighton shrugged and picked up the loathsome burden. “Your average dewy-eyed miss would have a cabbage and a bunch of carrots in her basket but you are sure to have something like a dead cat.”

  Maddie opened her mouth as if to argue with him but said only, “I am not dewy-eyed.”

  “But Maddie, you are a beautiful woman, whether you are aware if it or not.”

  She shot him an accusing look, almost a scowl, then shook her head as though trying to school her expression into a more polite frame. She succeeded only in freeing some stray tendrils of hair from the ribbon at the back of her head. Leighton watched in fascination as they curled against her cheek.

  “I hear your sister Susan is to go to London to make her debut,” she said as though trying to change the subject.

  “Mother wanted it this year but with the war, things were too uncertain. I preferred to delay Susan’s come-out. Would you like to go to London? You have never been there.” He was thinking that with Maddie as his wife, next season would be enjoyable. To get from here to there he had to propose to her but it was damned difficult to woo a woman when you were carrying a dead cat.

  “What would be the point—I mean, I cannot. I have to take care of the vicarage and the church. Also the cemetery.”

  “But that is not your responsibility, surely.” Leighton looked out over the huddled rows of stones, some so old the carving had been completely worn away by rain.

  “Old Masham scythes it but he doesn’t trim around the stones.”

  They came to the small shed at the edge of the cemetery and Maddie unlocked it, handing a pick and shovel out to Leighton. He dropped Jasper’s reins over the cast-iron fence and took the tools from her.

  “Your sisters are both married now,” Leighton said.

  “Yes, I’m all alone with Papa.”

  “I still say you could use a holiday. If London does not appeal to you, there is Brighton, or—”

  “Leighton, are you mad? There is too much to do. Besides, what purpose would it serve?”

  “You are not making this easy. What I am trying to ask you—”

  “Leighton, please let us bury the cat. Then you can ask me anything you like.”

  He could see the advantage of disposing of the corpse first. “Is this that huge old tabby that used to hiss at us and strike at our legs from under the table?”

  “The very one. He must be nearly as old as I am. Do cats live to be twenty?”

  “Not normally. Allow me the pleasure of digging the hole for you. I can’t count the number of times he’s laid my hand open.”

  She looked him up and down. “You’ll get your boots all muddy.”

  “I do not mind a bit of mud,” he said and slid through a broken part of the fence, then prepared to excavate a grave at the edge of the pauper’s section.

  “Not in consecrated ground, you idiot. Dig out here in the woods a bit.” Maddie took a few steps to a small clearing and scraped away the leaves with one dainty foot, commanding Leighton to dig.

  He loved the endearing way she called him an idiot. Surely they were fated to be together. “I suppose you are right. I do not think this cat was a Christian.” Leighton set the basket down took off his hat and coat and hung them on a limb before he began loosening the earth with the pick.

  Maddie stared out over her domain. Leighton thought it terrible that such a young, vital creature was so tied to the dead. He would change that.

  “My mother’s stone is over there,” she whispered, staring in the direction of the cemetery.

  “Yes, carried off by a fever almost overnight.” Leighton paused in his task. “Then to hear that my father was lost at sea. I wonder why he took a notion to go visit his brother in America. He never even knew she died.”

  “I never even knew you had an uncle.”

  “Neither did I. The letter he left explained that William was a natural son of my grandfather.” Leighton cast the pick aside and began to scoop out the loose earth with the spade, enjoying the satisfying scrape of metal against earth and rock. The dirt smelled wonderfully alive and fecund, as though it were eager to grow something. Ironic that they would be giving it something dead. But irony was part of the cycle too.

  “You were at university,” Maddie said in her wistful voice.

  “Yes, Mother forgot to send for me when your mother died. One would wonder how she could forget something so important,” he said. “But Patience wrote to me.”

  “But your mother knew by then about your father. She could not have been thinking clearly.”

  “Yes, of course. I remember now. She told me as I came in the door, then collapsed in my arms. Odd how you forget the worst of things.”

  “I had been hustled off to my sister Faith in York as soon as fever struck the village. I never got to see my mother again. They said the chance of infection was too great. I wasn’t even here for the funeral.”

  “Losing them changed everything,” he said. His spade hit a rock and he pulled it out of his way with his hands. “You expect things to change but you always think it will be for the better.”

  “He was very proud of you.” Maddie came to stand over the nearly finished hole. Her voice was softer now. “A few weeks before that he had come by with a sack of winter apples for us. It was a Saturday and Papa was already locked in his study composing his sermon. Your father looked chilled and Mother asked me to make him a cup of tea.”

  Leighton stopped digging and stared at her. He had not mistaken the milkiness of her voice. She was on the point of tears again.

  Maddie blinked. “He stayed and talked for a while about his plans for you. He was…happy.” She sniffed, compressed her lips and smiled then, that watery smile that said she had shut her tears away, again.

  “Thank you for telling me. Did he say anything about my music?”

  She cleared her throat. “Your playing the pianoforte?”

  He noticed Maddie looked worried, as though the question made her uncomfortable.

  “I’m sure he touched on it, along with your talents for farm management and designing
buildings.”

  Leighton grinned. “But he didn’t approve of it. He always thought I could spend my time better, though he never said that. I took it that he thought every man was entitled to one vice and playing the pianoforte was not the worst I could have chosen.”

  “No, it wasn’t that way at all.”

  A stray wisp of hair danced in front of Maddie’s right eye and Leighton found himself thinking about how much he loved her, how he had always pictured them together. Why had he waited so long? But he knew why. As long as there was a chance the war would drag him away from her, perhaps permanently, he did not want Maddie’s hurt to be greater than his.

  A noble thought, perhaps but that had given Maddie nothing to look forward to, nothing to hang onto. And if he had been killed, she would never have known how much he loved her.

  Chapter Two

  Maddie stared at Leighton’s worried face and thought he doubted her, so she came and touched his shoulder. It was an automatic attempt to reassure him.

  Leighton covered her fingers with his strong, warm hand. “You are cold.”

  She withdrew her hand, wondering what she had meant by touching him, what he thought of her. “Your father was proud of all your accomplishments. It’s just—he was tone deaf. I probably should not tell you that. Now that I think on it, I’m sure he asked me not to.” She blinked and sniffed but kept her hands under her cloak so he would think it was only the cold making her eyes water.

  Leighton leaned his forehead on the shovel handle and chuckled. “All those holiday programs we prepared so laboriously with your papa. My father sat through them and pretended to listen when it must have been agony for him.” Leighton shook his head as the laughter took him.

  Maddie regarded his close-cropped chestnut hair, so much like his father’s, his straight nose and strong chin. She chuckled too, spilling a tear down one cheek but she did not care now. “He pretended as best he could. Was I wrong to tell you?”