Music Master

by Barbara Miller

  “It was not something I could ask anyone else to do.” He could see emotions at war in her face. Regret, anger and finally resignation. “Maddie, what are you thinking?”

  “That there isn’t a lot of difference between being a hero and an idiot.”

  “A hero? For what?”

  “For doing what no one else would do.” She stood and came to him. “Is it odd that I should be both angry and proud of you at the same time?” Her arms snaked around his neck and she rested them on his shoulders.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never been in love before.”

  He captured her waist in his hands, which fit almost the whole way around it. “I have often wondered how someone as delicate as you can do all the visits, nurse all the sick and carry food to them, probably without your father’s knowledge or consent.”

  “It is my job. Perhaps it’s not as spectacular as the insane tasks you set for yourself.”

  He leaned slowly forward and kissed her, swaying slightly with the giddiness of the moment. She let him take a breath and he said. “But yours are the more necessary tasks. As you said, my stupidity could have waited. It was only—”

  “Only what?”

  “After being driven away by your father, I felt so defeated I had to do something.”

  “Coming for me would have been more to the point.”

  “I know that now. I swear that is the last time I will put duty before your welfare.”

  Maddie laughed and kissed him again.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe you mean it when you say it. At least I will be with you from now on to moderate your insanity.”

  “So you are not angry with me this time?”

  “Yes, of course I am but I am not letting that get in the way anymore.”

  “Does Amy say anything useful in your letter that does not upset the applecart?”

  “Only how much you are loved by your people and how angry your mother is.”

  “I don’t suppose she had the chimneys cleaned.”

  “No, new hangings for her bedroom.”

  “Well, that’s harmless enough.” He pressed his mouth to her ripe lips again and felt another delightful spin of dizziness. When she finally drew back to look at him, he said, “Much as I would like to go on kissing you all day, there is something to discuss where we can work together.”

  “Something to do with Longbridge?”

  “Not yet. Maddie, could you hand me that stack of papers again?”

  She looked at him as though humoring an invalid. “I think you should rest now instead.”

  He waited while she arranged his pillows and drew up the covers as though she were his wife taking care of him after an accident. She made him forget the urgency of everything except being with her. Perhaps the code could wait until Maddie was done torturing him. He must be getting better, for he scarcely thought about his injuries when she was in the room.

  He wanted so much to project them into that happy future where Maddie was safely his and nothing could come between them. He took it as a matter of course that he would from time to time come to grief with a horse and be laid up. That was part of his job. He hoped that caring for him would be part of hers.

  “Why are you staring at me like that?” Maddie asked.

  “Merely admiring how well you do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Take care of people.”

  “I have had more than enough practice. And they are your tenants. Taking care of you puts me in mind of something I have been meaning to ask you.”

  “I am afraid to know what that is.”

  “I am happy that you were able to rescue Lucy but did you have to leap off a cliff to do it?” Her voice rose near the end, not in anger but fear.

  “I am sorry, Maddie, if I worried you but I had to get her off that horse. If she had hung on when that mare tumbled down the hill, she would have been killed.”

  Maddie sighed. “I know that. Too bad she couldn’t jump off.”

  “You know how hard it is to extricate yourself from a sidesaddle.”

  “I would have managed it.”

  “I know I could have relied on you leaping off yourself.”

  Her gaze took on a more martial glare. “I see, so you would risk your life for Lucy but not for me? I’m just not the sort of girl who needs a desperate rescue.”

  “You would never have done anything so crackbrained to begin with.” He had boosted himself up again and was regarding her from a sitting position, unable to argue lying down. “You shouldn’t be jealous of Lucy because you are more capable than she is.”

  Maddie stared at him in puzzlement. “You didn’t answer my question. Did you have to ride your horse straight at the cliff?”

  He could see now it was worry and not jealousy that motivated her. “It wasn’t a cliff, just a very steep hill. I had to aim for the right side of her horse to make sure I could snatch her off the sidesaddle easily. She would have hung up on the horns if I had tried to get her off the other side. Any more questions? For I have something important to discuss with you.”

  Maddie paced the small room. “I see. You calculated just how to save her and were in no danger at all.”

  “You are making my head spin. Come here and sit down.” Once she was on the bed, Leighton took her hand and tried to compose something reassuring to say without lying to her. “I promise I will never go to war again, I will not swim any more swollen rivers and I will not go riding with any young ladies likely to need rescuing. But if I see you in danger, or one of our children, don’t expect me to value my own skin.”

  “Our children?”

  “I think we would make good parents.”

  Maddie nodded, her green eyes merry. “Yes, my constancy coupled with your idiocy. They should come out quite normal by the standards of the day.”

  Leighton burst into laughter and started to cough.

  “What did you want to discuss?”

  “That pile of paper I have been working at. Do you remember me saying my room had been ransacked?”

  She got up and brought him the papers. “Yes, you said they had stolen your music.”

  He sorted through them, pushing the garden plans aside and drawing the code work onto his lap.

  “But they did not get this, for I was carrying it with me. It was part of the packet that was taken.”

  He held up the paper. She scanned it, then turned it upside down. “This is the most awful piece of music I have ever seen.”

  “I don’t think it is—music, I mean. I think it is a coded message. I have worked out several possible ways to do a simple substitution code with musical notes and symbols.”

  He could see she was gaping at him. Then she rested her hand on his forehead.

  He laughed. “No, I am not running a fever. I am serious.”

  “But why, Leighton? You just said you were done with this business. Why would someone be sending you coded messages here in Bath? It makes no sense.”

  “I didn’t think so either, unless the message was not meant for me. That would explain why my room was searched.”

  “But they delivered the package to your room. What did it say?”

  “Mr. Stone, Prad’s Hotel. Perhaps I am not the only Stone there.”

  “Perhaps you have rocks in your head.”

  “Just do me a favor and take a look at my work. See if you think it is a possibility. You said you wanted me to confide in you.”

  When Maddie leaned over to reach for the sheaf of papers, one lock of hair trailed along his collarbone, drawing a sigh of need from him.

  She glanced skeptically at him. “I begin to think you are not as injured as we had supposed.”

  He grasped the lock and used it to tug her down for another kiss. “I begin to think you are not safe alone with me. How many days until your birthday?”

  “Ten. Not so long to wait. It should give you time to search your conscience a
nd make sure there is nothing else you have omitted to tell me.” She took the sheaf of papers with an interested pucker between her delicate eyebrows.

  “Don’t let anything happen to that scrap of music. I never got it copied out.”

  “Very well. We will discuss this after you have slept and, I hope, come to your senses.

  “That is all I ask. He lay back and decided he could sleep again with a quiet mind. Maddie had forgiven him. They were working together and had an interesting puzzle to solve. What more could he ask of life?

  Chapter Sixteen

  While Leighton slept, Maddie went over his notes. Though they made sense to her, none of the possible codes he had created resulted in anything but gibberish. He would be disappointed but she thought this was a false start. He had been using the lines and spaces on the staff for positions to represent the letters A through M and the change from sharp to flat to indicate switching over to the letters N to Z. But that gave her nothing. What if she turned the idea around and made the notes the letters and their position on either a line of a space the factor that flopped from the first half of the alphabet to the second? She was busy with this when a knock came on her door and Lady Haddon stepped in.

  “You promised to go with Lucy to the lending library this afternoon.”

  “Yes, of course. Is she well enough?”

  “I think so. I know you are devoted to Leighton but you must not neglect the rest of us or fail to take the air yourself. You have not set foot outside the house since the accident.”

  “Sorry. I will be down as soon as I change my dress.”

  When the woman left, Maddie gathered up the papers. She was about to stuff them under the blotter but Leighton would laugh at that, so she pushed all of them into a pillow cover and pinned them between the lining of her old gray cloak and the outside wool. There. He would not ridicule her for that hiding place.

  Lucy could talk of nothing but Leighton and the rescue the whole way to the library. Maddie mentioned Gifford’s part in it and Lucy decried his cowardice. That was good and Maddie pointed out, she had weight now for her argument not to marry her cousin. Lucy agreed but this was mostly because her heart was now set on Leighton. And he was an earl. Was there ever anything to equal it? Maddie had to agree there was not but she couldn’t help wondering how Lucy would feel when Leighton did not propose. She tried pointing out how vital Lieutenant Reid had been to saving her horse. Lucy was most grateful to him but not in love with him.

  The breaking of dreams was something that happened to everyone. Lucy would have to get used to it, as she had. After all they had been through, nothing could possibly go wrong for her and Leighton now. They had only to wait for her birthday.

  On her return, Maddie met Tibbs in the hall, carrying Leighton’s boots newly shined and a just-pressed set of clothes. The man looked even worse than he had the afternoon before, when he’d appeared out of breath at Marsden House with the packet of tea Leighton had requested.

  “Tibbs, does he mean to get up already?”

  “Aye, Miss Westlake. He’s had a bath and means to go down for dinner. He don’t take proper care of himself. Never did. Always coming home burnt to the socket. But he hates to have anyone fuss over him, so it hasn’t been easy looking after him. That cough I don’t like. My sister died of the consumption and…”

  “No worries on that score. Leighton only gets this once in a while but it takes weeks for him to get clear of it. He says he never had it the whole time he lived in London.”

  Tibbs averted his eyes. “No, Miss, never in London.”

  She felt a tickle of suspicion. “What about in Spain or Portugal?” she prodded.

  “Not as far as I know, nor France neither. You know about that?”

  “Yes. But when was Leighton in France?”

  “Not above twice to visit someone in prison. He was forever coming to grief with one horse or another but that’s only to be expected in his line of work.”

  Maddie nodded, trying to assimilate everything Tibbs was telling her and wondering if it was ethical to use her wedge of familiarity to find out the extent of Leighton’s activities. Of course it was. So, he still had not told her the whole truth.

  “Yes, assisting Captain Scoville with the codes. Leighton told you all this?”

  “Goodness no, miss. He’d never have been at liberty to do that. But my brother and I had a pint with a fella from the ninety-first and he told us all about Leighton.”

  Somehow Maddie managed to control her emotions. “I am glad the war is over. Though I’ve no doubt I will still lose sleep over him.”

  “Me too, miss. Well, he means to get up. I’d best go to him.”

  Maddie went on to her room, intent on changing her dress to the dark green silk appropriate for a family dinner. How odd that Leighton would inspire such devotion in a servant he treated so casually. But then he had her absolute devotion, though she would be damned if she would let him know it. He was going to have to think of her for a change rather than his music, his codes, or anyone else. Still, she ran her hand up under the cloak to make sure the packet was safe before she changed for dinner.

  When she went down the stairs, someone was picking out a hideous tune on the pianoforte in the drawing room. She went to see who it was.

  “Leighton, has your cold affected your hearing? That is awful.”

  “I know. It’s what I remember of that scrap of music I gave you. You have it safe?”

  “Of course and I must agree that as music, it falls far short of the mark.”

  “It is not playable. Have you given any thought to its being a code?”

  “I have done some work on it but first things first. Just to clear the air, you might want to offer me some explanations for your other trips, than to Spain.”

  “Other?” His eyes widened, then his face looked shot with guilt.

  “France?”

  She watched the full import of what she said dawn on Leighton and his face turn sheepish. “You’ve been gossiping with Tibbs.”

  “Do you know he was worried to death over you?”

  “No. I had always thought him nicely detached from my welfare, not at all likely to try to wrap me in cotton wool. I see now he is as bad as all the others.”

  “Be serious, Leighton. What were you doing there?”

  “I had a safe conduct. I was picking up a letter from a captured officer to be sent to his family.”

  Maddie sighed. “No, I mean what were you really doing?” She sat beside him on the piano bench.

  “It was in code, of course.”

  He went back to picking out some notes on the pianoforte. If not for his cracked rib she would have cuffed him.

  “I knew it. You must have courted death a hundred times.”

  “That is all in the past. Maddie, what did that composition call to mind for you?”

  She put her frustration aside to answer him. “Nothing. I have one idea I want to try but I have not had time to work on it yet.”

  “Does it remind you of those puzzles Father used to set for us?”

  Maddie thought back to when they had spent so much time solving Lord Longbridge’s acrostics and ciphers. “I suppose but your father has been dead for six years. Is there anyone else who would be sending you such a thing now that the war is over?”

  “But it is not over, as you said. We are still at war with America. I keep wondering if this is some sort of joke.”

  “I would rather hope someone sent it to you by mistake, thinking you were someone else.”

  “Possibly. Now that I think about it, Tibbs said the man who delivered it sounded like an American. But I don’t know anyone in America.”

  “They may know you and think you are here for some reason you know nothing about. If they did intend it for you, even by mistake, then you are not out of the war. You are in danger still.”

  He took his hands off the keys and smiled at her. “I don’t know how much danger there is.”

  “Well
, that is the point. You don’t know. You are excited because you like danger but I do not.”

  He reached toward her with his good arm and caressed her cheek. “I am sorry. You are right again. Throw the paper away and all the decoding. We are better off out of it.” He was leaning over to kiss her but she was feeling far from loving at the moment. Throw it away? Was he mad? That would not make him safe.

  The door to the drawing room opened and she slid away from him as the family gathered for dinner. Dr. Murray was with them this evening. Perhaps he would scotch Leighton’s intention to resume his normal activities.

  “Leighton, dear boy,” Lady Haddon said on their way to the dining room. “But I should call you Longbridge, though it is hard now that we have been using your common name. I hope you are feeling better. We owe you everything for saving Lucy.”

  So Haddon had told his wife he had a title. Leighton had liked her better as an enemy. “All in a day’s work,” he said, then pulled out her chair. “I appreciate your hospitality but I shall be moving back to my hotel. I don’t want to lose that excellent room.”

  Gifford grunted his approval but said nothing more under Sir Phillip’s menacing stare.

  In fact, except for the noise he made eating, which was considerable, Gifford was strangely silent throughout dinner. Dr. Murray carried the flag of conversation, imparting all the latest gossip in an amusing fashion.

  Lady Haddon cast Gifford a look of disgust at the end of the second course of dishes and turned her smile on Leighton “You will still play for my musical evening, won’t you, Leighton?”

  He swallowed and glanced toward Mrs. Marsden, wondering how it had become Lady Haddon’s musicale. The older woman shrugged and smiled.

  “Of course,” Leighton said, “if Maddie and Lucy will also play.”

  “I am not ready,” Lucy said.

  “You will be,” Leighton assured her. He realized he should say something just as reassuring and charming to Maddie but he could not think what. “Maddie, will you play? You have more skill at the pianoforte than I. You just never get credit for it.”

  She looked surprised but smiled at him. “I shall play.”