Kitty’s hands trembled as she read the line of verse. Si je la haïssais, je ne la fuirais pas. “If I hated her,” she read in a shaky whisper, “I should not fly.”
“How shall we celebrate your birthday tomorrow, Kitty?” Her mother’s voice came close behind her.
Kitty slipped Leam’s card into her sleeve and continued up the stairs, tucking the music under her arm as though it were nothing. As though it weren’t everything.
Well, not precisely everything. Phaedra was still a tragedy no matter what sort of music one put it to. Kitty recalled bodies strewn about the stage at the end of the last act. But she refused to live a tragedy. Tragedies were for foolish girls. Not for her. Not any longer.
“However you wish, Mama.” She willed her voice steady, but her step was light, her breaths short now from something more than nerves, much more than anxiety. She went into the drawing room, set the music on the pianoforte’s stand and folded back the instrument’s cover. Her hands quivered as she slipped onto the bench and put them to the keys.
She still played regularly, and now the notes came easily, rich and sorrowful beneath her fingertips. But under the bars of music the lyrics were beautiful, full of longing and betrayal, hope and the heartbreak of impossible love, and she could not remain silent. She sang, knowing he meant for her to sing, and she sounded awful. Her throat was unaccustomed to it and in any case clogged with emotion. It made her laugh, but she allowed herself the sweet release. She allowed herself to feel.
It was very frightening, and her fingers tripped on the keys.
“Kitty, whatever are you singing? It sounds perfectly dreadful.” Her mother stood at the door.
“Oh, it isn’t the music.” Her hands moved across the ivory and ebony bars. “It is rather me. But I shall get it right eventually. I need practice.” Practice allowing life to live inside her again. Practice leaving behind the past.
“I thought you were going riding.”
“Perhaps later.” She hummed the melancholy melody, her lips irrepressibly curved upward. He was a peculiar man, an impossible man, and she loved him.
Chapter 21
Leam scanned the crowded ballroom, nothing in his hooded gaze to reveal his particular interest in anyone or anything. This time, his façade was more a lie than ever.
He’d found little at the War Office on Cox, only a name in a register and a record of payments, but no address or county of origin. Cox had not lied about sharing James’s regiment. Still, he seemed a ghost. A ghost with a pistol pointed at Kitty Savege and who had not yet shown himself to collect his property. Who, it seemed, was now the one playing games.
“I cannot believe I am standing beside you looking like that,” Constance murmured, taking a glass of ratafia from a passing footman’s tray.
“You’ve done so plenty of times before, my dear, and you needn’t stand beside me a’tall. I am sure there are at least a dozen gentlemen who would be glad of your company.” Dancers pirouetted across the boards accompanied by harpsichord, violins, celli, and flute. Two chandeliers suspended from the high ceiling cast the assembly in a heated glow, the chamber stuffy, overly dark, and full to the brim with high society.
“I wouldn’t,” she said, “but I am afraid you will leave if I step away for a moment.” She glanced at his shabby evening finery.
“I have no plans to depart just yet.” Before Leam had left his house to pick up Constance, a boy had come bearing a note from Grimm. Kitty was to attend this ball tonight. Leam knew not whether to flee or remain and test his fortitude. He had vowed to himself that he would not demand anything of her until he was perfectly assured of her safety. He owed her that.
So he remained. He ached to simply see her.
“And I am not such a rogue as all that to abandon you to your eager admirers without suitable protection,” he muttered to his cousin. “Where is your companion, Mrs. Jacobs?”
“In some corner having a cozy gossip.” Constance smiled.
“I thought my uncle would attend tonight.”
“Papa changed his plans. But perhaps—Oh, there is Wyn. What a pleasant surprise.”
But Leam could not follow her attention. A woman had appeared at the ballroom’s entrance. A clever-tongued woman. A woman of as much pride and warmth as beauty. Through the shifting dancers he glimpsed her rich tresses arranged loosely atop her head with sparkling combs, the gentle curve of her cheek, her silken shoulders and arms left nearly bare by a shimmering gown of ivory. A man parched with thirst, he drank in the sight of her. She smiled at her companion, an elegant gentleman, and a streak of mingled pleasure and possessive heat worked its way from Leam’s chest into his tight throat.
But it lacked the edge of mania he’d felt long ago. Instead, confidence curled around the jealousy.
She wanted him, and she did not wish to play games.
Yale strolled to Constance’s side.
“Evening, cousins.” He bowed, hands folded behind his back. “Haven’t seen you in an age, Blackwood. Where have you been this week?”
“None of your business.”
“Tracking down Scottish rebels, like you said you wouldn’t? Pursuing information on Chamberlayne, I suspect. The director certainly seems to have you in the harness again, doesn’t he?”
“I cannot hit you here, Yale, but I’ll be happy to do so outside. Join me?”
“Charmed, I’m sure. You look like one of your dogs again, whiskers and all.”
Leam turned to his cousin. “Now that you have suitable company, Constance, I will depart. Yale, put yourself to good use and see the lady home when she desires it, why don’t you.”
Constance rested her fingertips on his arm.
“Leam, we must speak with you now. Privately.”
He glanced at the Welshman. The lad lifted a single black brow.
Leam frowned. “‘What a pleasant surprise’? Constance,” he said quietly, “your acting abilities impress even me occasionally.”
She dimpled. “Thank you.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You don’t want to refuse.” The Welshman’s gaze shifted across the crowd. Leam followed it. To Kitty.
Anger rose swiftly. “Am I to assume the two of you are in league with Gray again?” he said with a great deal more control than the hot blood racing in his veins merited.
“Oh, not at all,” Constance demurred. “Quite the opposite. But don’t scowl. You are in costume.
Unfortunately.” Gently she tugged on his sleeve, offering a generous chuckle as though she were vastly diverted.
Leam looked back to Kitty. She lifted her gaze to him. Clear across the ballroom, the thunderclouds invited him in, a smile playing about her lips, and nothing seemed to exist between them but perfectly pure desire and that beauty of understanding in which he still could not quite trust.
Not entirely. But he would. Now he would go to her, take her from the ball, and make love to her.
Then there would be nothing between them but what they both wanted.
Her gaze flickered past his shoulder and her smile faded. She turned away and, slipping through the crowd, disappeared into another room.
“Come, my lord,” Yale said at his shoulder. “It is time we apprise you of certain matters.”
He went.
Kitty approached Lord Chamberlayne, moving through the crowd from friend to acquaintance as she did at all such events, holding her head high and with serene countenance, ignoring the stares and gossip that floated in her wake, renewed since Lambert was exiled.
“My lord,” she said, touching him on the sleeve, like a daughter. “May I have a brief word with you?”