Always the Rival (Never the Bride #7) - Emily E K Murdoch Page 0,54
How had he managed to get himself into this mess?
“I am not good enough for you,” he said urgently, desperate to wipe away her tears but knowing that would do more harm than good. “Priscilla, you deserve someone…someone far better than me.”
Something in his words seemed to affect her. The tears stopped, and she pulled herself from his arms. “You know, I believe you are correct,” she said, sniffing. “I love you, Charles, but I will not… I do deserve better. Good night, Charles.”
The door closed behind her, and Charles leaned against it. It was done. Now he had to face the rest of his life with a woman he did not love, but whose purse would save the Orrinshire name.
Chapter Fourteen
Priscilla felt her finger slip. The jarring note echoed in the music room. Her fingers left the keys.
She had never liked playing the piano. As a child, she had been forced to practice at least an hour a day, ending with a compromise when she was eight that she would be permitted double the portion of pudding if she did.
It had not been worth it. Aged twelve, she had thrown her last tantrum, and her mother had finally agreed that her lessons, and the dreaded practice, would end.
Priscilla’s hands fell into her lap as she gazed at the music on the stand. How strange that since that day, she had felt drawn to the piano on occasion when words were simply insufficient. The once dreaded instrument conveyed emotions in a way she simply could not.
She breathed in slowly, lifted her hands, and placed them on the keys. She started to play but did not even reach halfway down the page before her treacherous fingers slipped again.
Priscilla glared at them. They simply would not do what she instructed them. It was no good. She could not play this morning.
Priscilla looked listlessly through the sheets of music. Mozart, Bach, Salieri…none of them seemed right for this morning.
“Scales, then,” she said under her breath. “Something to refresh the mind. C major.”
The easiest scale, no sharps or flats, but even that did not seem to come outright. Her left hand moved slower than her right, the difference slight but excruciating to a musical ear.
Frustration poured down her fingers, and she slammed them down on the keys, creating a horrendous discord that echoed around the room.
Priscilla stared at the piano, unseeing.
“Why are you hurting me, Charles? Did you get what you wanted from me, and then decide Miss Lloyd was a better dancer? A better lover? Have you bedded her, too?”
Slowly, without allowing the pain in her heart to tempt her to slam it, she closed the lid of the piano and put the music away. It took only ten or so steps before she had left the piano, stepped into the drawing room, and flopped onto the settee.
She closed her eyes. There was not a sound in the house. Mrs. Busby and Annabelle, their lady’s maid, were both out. Her mother was in town, enjoying a better social life than she had ever had. Mrs. Seton, charming, beautiful, witty, was always in demand.
She was completely alone in the house. Alone, and likely to remain that way for a long time.
Priscilla opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. An elegant pastel pattern had been painted onto it a few years ago, Mrs. Seton following the fashion that had swept across the continent and into English homes.
The sun moved behind a cloud, and the blues and greens darkened. Priscilla blinked. The cloud moved, and the room was filled with light again.
Try as she might, she could not prevent the conversation she had shared with Charles only last night from creeping into her memory.
“I know what you must think of me. I know how this must look, and I –”
“That is because that’s exactly what it is – you lied to me! You, Charles. You lied to me.”
Priscilla sighed, her fingers twisting together. She knew Charles, or at least had thought she had known him, and he would never act like this. What was he hiding? What hadn’t he told her?
Or perhaps she was not asking the right questions. Perhaps the question should be, who was he protecting?
Perhaps, and the very thought made her stomach curl with pain as it crossed her mind, he was not only charming and devilishly handsome with her.
Perhaps Charles was a natural seducer. If he had bedded Miss Lloyd, and they had been thoughtless, she could be with child.