He got to his feet, moved the pile of music to the floor, and gestured to the bench. “Come and sit beside me,” he said, “and we will play something together.”
“Without music?” she said.
“I will teach you,” he told her. “You can play the lower notes. They are really quite simple, but they set the tempo, the bass upon which the melody is set.”
She eyed him doubtfully and then eyed the bench before seating herself and sliding along it to make room for him. He had done this at parties in Boston. It had always been good for some light entertainment.
“You are Gabriel,” she said, turning her face toward his. “But the angelic connotation is somewhat marred by your other name. Mr. Gabriel Thorne.”
“A rose is spoiled by the thorn on its stem, then?” he asked, turning his head to look into her eyes.
“Are you indeed an angel, then?” she asked him. “Mr. Thorne?”
And it struck him that they were no longer talking about roses. It occurred to him that she knew, or at least suspected.
“By no means,” he said. “How tedious life would be.”
“The other Gabriel is no angel either,” she said.
“Apparently not,” he said. “If one is to believe Mr. Rochford’s story, that is.”
“And you do not?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Does it matter?”
She shook her head slightly, set down her fan on the bench between them, and rubbed a finger over one of the white keys as though she had spotted a dust mote there. “Let us discover how good an instructor you are, then, Mr. Thorne,” she said. “My guess is that I am about to make an idiot of myself in front of almost my whole family as well as some distinguished guests.”
“Impossible,” he said. “With me as your teacher?”
They turned their heads at the same moment—a massively uncomfortable moment as it turned out. Their faces were only inches apart. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, her eyes wide. He had not really noticed before how thick and dark her eyelashes were or how her upper lip curved slightly upward when her lips were parted, as they were now. Or how pearly white her teeth were. He had not noticed how very kissable a mouth she had.
It was not a thought he cared to pursue at this particular moment. And yet . . . He had promised to romance her. Was that what he was attempting to do now? In full view of a roomful of people? By coaxing her to do something she was reluctant to do?
The flush in her cheeks deepened before she looked back to the keyboard. He was no accomplished lover. How did one romance a woman in a way that would speak to her heart? Unfortunately, it seemed that women thought with their hearts, while men thought with their minds. Or with another part of their anatomy equally distant from the heart. He had feelings. Of course he did. Often they came close to overwhelming him. But they were something he had always carefully guarded. Even the deep affection he had felt for Cyrus had not been fully apparent to him until after the accident, when it was too late to show it.
Agreeing to romance Lady Jessica Archer had been little short of madness.
“We will keep it simple,” he said. “You will need to use just your left hand.”
“Wonderful,” she said. “I am right-handed.”
He showed her how to play a simple rhythm with a pattern of notes that could be repeated endlessly though they could be varied with tempo changes. He did not burden her with that possibility, though. He played the rhythm with her, an octave higher, until she had it, then added a melody above it with his right hand. She turned her head to smile at him, a flashing brightness of an expression that almost made him falter. She did falter and had to search for both the notes and the rhythm again while he adjusted the melody to hide the gaffe. Eventually he stopped parroting her rhythm with his left hand and played a variation on it while he changed the melody with his right hand.
She flashed that smile at him again, and he smiled back at her.
“It is permitted,” he said, “to play at a tempo slightly above that of a tortoise crawling across a beach.”
“Oh, is it, indeed?” she said.
And she changed the tempo so suddenly that he had to scramble to keep up. And then