Swan's Grace

by Linda Francis Lee

  Shaking her head ruefully, she wondered who the poor woman was whom Grayson had chosen to be his bride.

  “Why don’t you include Bach in the pieces you play now?”

  With a start, she forced a laugh and stepped closer in a rustle of satin and lace. “Bach is so boring, Herr Wilhelm. A waltz is much more provocative, and sometimes it is nice to hear a passionate minuet. But the cello suites? Everyone plays Bach.” Which, of course, wasn’t true, since the pieces were undeniably difficult.

  She placed her hand boldly on his forearm and smiled. “Don’t you agree?”

  She could tell the second he forgot about Bach.

  “You have a point,” he said, his eyes drifting low to her décolletage. “Perhaps we could talk more about that over a glass of cognac at my hotel.”

  “Perhaps,” she teased, knowing she never would. “First, however, I must see to my other guests.”

  But just when she stepped away in a sweep of satin and shimmering lace, the door pushed open and in raced the primly dressed Margaret.

  “You’ve received a letter,” she said, her eyes brimming with excitement. “From Boston.”

  Sophie’s smile froze on her lips.

  “Look” Margaret said, showing the return address, “there’s no mistake.”

  With her heart in her throat, but a casual laugh for the crowd, Sophie took the letter, then walked out the door into the narrow backstage hallway. The dignitaries were left behind, but her entourage followed.

  Forcing her hands not to tremble as she broke the seal, Sophie read once, then twice.

  “Who is it from?” Margaret finally demanded.

  “My father,” she whispered.

  “Good Lord. What does he want?” Deandra demanded.

  “He wants me to come home.” She looked up.

  That was the surprise. The minute she stopped waiting for him to ask her to return, he did.

  Deandra raised a brow. “Did he tell that new wife of his he was writing?”

  “She is not new, Deandra,” Henry drawled. “They’ve been married five years, for God’s sake. Regardless, we can’t go.” He rubbed his hands together and licked his lips. “Now that the tour is finally over, we are going to have a grand time in Monaco. Gambling. Sea bathing. People watching.” He looked directly at Sophie. “We discussed this.”

  They had, but no promises had been made. And suddenly the thought of late nights and endless parties lost its appeal. Besides, what her entourage didn’t know was that just then she couldn’t afford the expense of staying in Monaco. She had put every penny she had earned into her new concerts. The gowns. The trains and hotels for four adults.

  She shuddered to think that she had borrowed money to pay for the jewels. But flash was important. And it had all paid off. She was booked for the next season—this time with concert halls paying her exorbitant fees, not to mention her expenses. But she had to survive until then. And the new concert season didn’t start for months. Her father’s invitation to come home couldn’t have been better timed.

  When she didn’t answer, the little man grew childlike. “Sophie,” he stated, his tone petulant.

  “I know, I know.”

  She started down the dimly lit hallway, the swish of her long gown echoing against the barren walls. The entourage followed.

  “Don’t tell me you are considering it?” Deandra demanded as they walked.

  Sophie didn’t answer. She searched for the back door, needing some air, needing to be alone. Had her father seen the article?

  Even though there had been no mention of how provocatively she played, she still knew that to be written about at all was scandalous by Boston’s standards. If he had read it, was he dismayed? Or was he the tiniest bit proud?

  But more than that, did she care?

  Margaret hurried a few steps to catch up. “I think we should go to Boston. I’ve been to Monaco. You would hate it, Sophie. It is so boring there.”

  “Maybe for a plain little mouse like you,” Henry said with a huff.

  Margaret gasped.

  “Henry.” Sophie shot him a censorious glare.

  He glared back. “It’s true.”

  “Enough!”

  They continued on, their footsteps echoing as they took a left, then another quick right down a long hall that led to the stagehands’ exit.

  “Don’t even consider it, Sophie,” Deandra instructed. “How many times have you told me how much you hate Boston?”

  Sophie stopped abruptly at the back door and whirled around to face them. “But my father has asked me to come home.” She looked at the three people who had come into her life and become a family in place of her own. “He has never asked before,” she whispered, more to herself than to the others.

  Henry cursed; Deandra sighed and shook her head.

  “You go to Monaco,” she offered, searching her mind for a way to pay for their trip. She took care of them. They stayed with her because of money. She understood that, but as far as she was concerned, it was a fair trade. She hated the thought of being alone. “You will have a grand time. Then we will meet up again in May to prepare for the summer tour.” She hesitated, her mind racing. Was she crazy to be considering Boston? Surely she could find a place to stay in Europe until spring, when money started coming in again.

  But then she thought of her father. Money concerns or not, she loved him, had desperately wanted to be a part of his new life. But there hadn’t been a place for her. Until now.

  “I am going to Boston.” To her father and to her home, Swan’s Grace. And perhaps, she thought with a rush of anticipation, just once she would see Grayson before he married.

  “This is grand, simply grand,” Margaret practically sang, pulling out a tablet from her pocket to start making lists. Then she stopped and glanced up. “In fact, to make it even better, why don’t we arrange for a concert at the Music Hall?”

  Deandra laughed harshly. “Our dear Sophie, play for Boston’s old guard? She’d curl their hair with her show. Those pilgrims would be shocked silly.”

  Sophie forced a smile, hating the sting the words caused. “It hardly matters. I won’t be playing there.”

  “Why not?” Margaret demanded. “You could buy new gowns. Play different music. You could—”

  “No, Margaret. It’s not going to happen. I’m not going to change my concert.”

  She turned away and pushed open the door, breathing in the cold, biting air. “Besides, even if I wanted to, the conductor of the Music Hall has never asked me to play.” Despite his promise to her mother long ago. Or perhaps because of it.

  But none of that mattered now. Her father had asked her to come home. The only question that remained was, Why had he asked?

  Chapter Two

  Three months later they arrived in Boston. Early. A week early, to be exact.

  In the end, Deandra and Henry had been unwilling to go to Monaco without Sophie. And Margaret, hoping her Boston relatives would welcome her home, was anxious to send off a note to announce her return. As a result, all four of them stood on the walkway in front of Swan’s Grace—a tall town house made of red brick and limestone.

  The sun had set and gas lanterns burned golden along the length of Commonwealth Avenue in Boston’s prestigious Back Bay. Henry peered up from the street through the darkness. “It doesn’t look like they waited up for us.”

  Sophie glanced at him with a mischievous smile. She couldn’t believe how excited she was to be home. “That’s because no one knows we’re here. I’m going to surprise Father,” she explained, before her smile quirked wryly at the thought of the very dark house. “At the time it seemed like a good idea.”

  Deandra rolled her eyes. “We’ll surprise him, all right,” she said, using her Lyons Mignon parasol to bat some unfortunate lantern boy who accidentally brushed against her skirt on his way down the street. “Once he gets a look at us, we will be heading to the nearest hotel. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Your father w
ill not want a man and two women he doesn’t even know staying at his house.”

  “My father is not like that,” Sophie insisted. “Besides, what most people don’t know is that Swan’s Grace is not my father’s house.”

  “Really?” Deandra mused. “To whom does it belong?”

  Sophie laughed with delight. “Me.”

  The landscape was covered with winter snow and ice, but that didn’t put Sophie off. She reveled in the barren rosebushes she had planted with her mother as a child, which peeked out from beneath the winter pack. She marveled at the matching swans carved from granite that were mounted on either side of the steps that led to the front door.

  Swan’s Grace. Dignified and refined. And for half a second, time spun backward and Sophie expected her mother to step out onto the terrace, her arms held wide.

  Sophie drew a deep, poignant breath. Her mother had been dead five years. But Genevieve Wentworth was still here in so many ways—in her daughter’s music, in the flowers and garden trellises. She was in everything that made up this house, the one material possession in Sophie’s life besides her cello that meant something to her.

  In the years since she had left Boston, having Swan’s Grace had somehow always made her feel safe. If she lost everything, she would always have her home. How many times had she wrapped the thought of every sturdy brick and hardwood door around her like a fortress against the cold?

  Lifting the hem of her brilliant blue velvet traveling ensemble, Sophie mounted the steps. At the door she knocked once, then twice. Anticipation mixed with trepidation at the thought of seeing her father. Would he hug her, kiss her, or be distant and reserved? How would her stepmother, Patrice, act? Would she smile and welcome her friends?

  But no one answered the door.

  After a moment Sophie tried the knob, only to find it was locked.

  “That’s odd,” she remarked.

  Deandra made herself comfortable on the back of one of the swans, pulling out a cigarette and attaching it to an overlong holder. The flare of the match hissed in the cold.

  Margaret paced, waving aside smoke every time it drifted her way.

  Henry tried the door handle himself, even went to the windows and gave each a tug. “The house is locked tight,” he announced, taking the cigarette holder from Deandra. “Clearly no one’s home.”

  “How could that be?” Sophie murmured. “Even if the family is out, the servants would be here.”

  The Back Bay consisted of a long, narrow, orderly grid of streets, with Commonwealth Avenue running down its center as a sort of manicured, statue-lined pièce de résistance. Swan’s Grace stood on the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Berkeley Street, with a walkway, neatly cleared, that veered off through the expansive side yard which ran along the house. And that walkway hadn’t cleared itself. Someone had to be there.

  “Maybe your father and his new family have moved.”

  Sophie studied the darkened windows, ice framing the panes like lace. There had been an awful lot of talk the last time she was in town about Patrice being desperate for a new house on The Fens, a posh part of town where the infamous though hugely wealthy Isabella Gardner had built her stunningly opulent palace. Was it possible that they had moved and her father hadn’t told her?

  Sophie’s heart surged with the all too familiar feeling of being left alone. Then she scoffed into the nighttime air. Her father had asked her to return. She was early. No doubt if she had arrived as planned he would have been at the harbor to greet her.

  “They must be on holiday,” she mused. “Which could explain why the servants aren’t here.” But then who had cleared the path?

  “What are we going to do if we can’t get in?” Margaret asked.

  Henry smiled, exhaling a breath of smoke and handing the holder back to Deandra. “Not to worry, ladies,” he said with a flourish of cracking knuckles. “Stand back.”

  “You can’t break the window!”

  “Pshaw. I would never be so crass.” He pulled out a small, flat metal file and applied it to the door lock with the expertise of a backstreet hoodlum. In seconds there was a click, but also a suspicious crack, before the door swung open.

  Sophie groaned, but Henry gave her little notice. With a grand sweep of his hand, he gestured for the women to enter. “Come on, hurry. It’s freezing out here.”

  Inside, all was quiet. Their footsteps echoed on the black-and-white marble floor, the sound carrying up into the high-ceilinged foyer.

  The house was elegant, if understated, with a wide sweep of stairs, fluted archways, and a crystal chandelier.

  Walking farther inside, Sophie turned up the gaslights. But still no one appeared.

  “This makes no sense,” Sophie whispered.

  She made her way through the first floor, pulling off her kid gloves one by one, then her cape and waist-length traveling jacket, tossing them aside as she went. It felt good to be home. Everything looked the same, only somehow newer, she realized suddenly. She wrote the changes off to time having passed, not to mention the dark.

  But it was the room off the front study that finally stopped her, a sitting room of sorts, and her brow knitted.

  Her mind tumbled back to her mother and their plans to make this very space into a music room. But since Sophie was last there, her father had turned it into a library with a desk and bookshelves. Fine hunting prints took up every inch not covered with books.

  Her homecoming was not going as she had hoped—the house was not warm and welcoming, her father wasn’t there to offer her a joyous smile, and her stepsisters weren’t circling around with happy cheers of excitement. Sophie’s pleasure started to fade. But stubbornly she held on. A library could be undone.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden commotion of booted steps on marble tiles and Margaret’s gasp from the foyer.

  “I’d assume you were Conrad Wentworth,” she heard Henry state in his favorite sarcastic lilt. “But you’re a little young to have a full-grown daughter. Which begs the question, who are you?”

  “A better question is, who are you?”

  A man’s voice, deep and low.

  Sophie’s head tilted and her mind raced. There was something familiar about the sound, and a shiver of awareness raced through her body. Her palms began to tingle at the thought that only one man had ever filled her with such feelings.

  With her heart in her throat, she headed back to the foyer. And saw him.

  Grayson Hawthorne.

  Her pulse slowed and her breath grew shallow. It was always that way when she saw him. The astonishment that any man could be so striking, sensual in a hard-chiseled way.

  With his challenging glare pinning Henry to the spot, he stood in the flickering gaslight. He was a tall, commanding man with dark hair, longer than she remembered, swept back from his forehead. His jaw was strong, his shoulders sculpted beneath his four-button cutaway jacket that revealed fine woolen, hard-creased trousers molded to his thighs in a way that made her heartbeat quicken.

  Tilting her head, Sophie remembered how as a child she had followed him around, she always in trouble, while he had always been patient in a shaking-head, rolling-eyes sort of way. Indulgent of that odd duck Sophie Wentworth.

  A fond smile pulled at her lips in memory of the child she had been. Had she really been so obvious and devoted?

  “If you don’t explain yourself,” Grayson stated in hard, cold syllables, his gaze never wavering from little Henry, “I am going to send for the police.”

  “What is all this talk about the police?” Sophie asked, her smile growing wider as she strolled into the foyer in a swish of velvet.

  Grayson turned at the sound, and stopped.

  Their eyes met and held, and she knew he was as surprised to see her as she was to see him. For a moment the entourage faded from her mind. There was only Grayson. For one startling second time was lost and they were young again. He was her hero, she his shadow. Her heart filled with a surge of warmth and rememb
ered devotion, and she nearly ran across the room to him.

  But then he contained his astonishment behind a fathomless mask. Suddenly his eyes regarded her with a bold, speculative gleam that she found unsettling. Time righted itself, and it was clear Grayson was no longer a boy, rather a man.

  At her father’s birthday party she had learned that Grayson was no longer patient or indulgent. He was ruthlessly contained, controlled. In the years she had been gone, he had gained an uncompromising authority and a predatory grace, the lines of his body hard and well defined.

  She crushed her schoolgirl urge to dash over and hug him tight. She was a woman now, not a child. Long past the age where she followed Grayson around or twined her fingers impulsively with his.

  A flash of regret raced through her that things had changed. But she was mature now, and independent, as successful as he was—that is, if a person was willing to turn a blind eye to those pesky little money problems she had. Soon she’d be as successful as he was, she amended with a nod and a smile.

  “Did you hear that, Sophie?” Henry barked, incensed. “This brute has threatened to summon the police.”

  Margaret wrung her hands. “You can’t call for the authorities for being in one’s own house, surely.”

  Deandra scoffed, crushing her cigarette in an antique bowl. “I can see it now. ‘Prodigal Daughter Tossed Out of Home.’ On the front page of every newspaper in town. It would be all over this rustic backwater by morning.” Her green eyes narrowed in thought and she tapped her fingernail against the table. “No question everyone would talk.” Her finger stilled and she glanced at Sophie. “If you play your cards right, you just might get arrested. We couldn’t pay for publicity like that.”

  Grayson’s expression turned glacial, locking on Deandra as if he didn’t recognize what she was, much less who.

  Sophie covered her burst of laughter with a cough. “Deandra, you are so bad.”

  “Isn’t that what you pay me for?”

  Sophie watched as Grayson slowly looked from person to person, finally fixing on her. Her heart gave a lurch and she felt an unaccustomed rush of heat as his dark eyes drifted over her in a way that had nothing to do with the past. Or propriety.