We gazed at each other, he on the bed and me by the door, neither of us giving quarter. It seemed to me that the room was growing even more dim, that time was repeating the same ploy it had pulled in Jesse’s cottage, drawing out long and slow. The storm outside railed against the castle walls, drowning the air within. It layered darkness through Armand’s eyes, the once-vivid blue now deep as the ocean at night.
Beyond my window the rain fell and fell, fat clouds weeping as if they’d never stop.
“Nice bracelet,” Armand said softly. “Did you steal it?”
I shook my head. “You gave it to me.”
“Did I?”
“As far as everyone else is concerned, yes. You did.”
“Hmm. And what do I get in return for agreeing to be your … benefactor?”
“The answer to your question.”
“No kiss?” he asked, even softer.
“No.”
His lips quirked. “All right, then, waif. I accept your terms. We’ll try the kiss later.”
I sighed. “I made up the piece at the piano.”
He said nothing, only stared at me.
“Truly,” I said. “I made it up. Right then. It’s …” Now I shrugged. “It’s just something I do.”
Armand cleared his throat. “You’d never heard it before?”
“No.” I took a step closer to him, frowning. There was something odd going on here; the power between us had shifted. I felt it, that danger feeling fading and something new growing in its place.
Something like fear.
“Had you heard it before?” I asked, startled.
“Of course not. How could I have, if you just invented it?”
“Yes,” I murmured, not taking my eyes off him, exploring that odd new energy between us. “How could you have?”
He came to his feet. “It’s only that my mother used to do that sort of thing. Invent songs like that. It was her Steinway, in fact, a wedding gift from my father. Yesterday you—you gave him a start, I suppose. Gave us both a bit of a start. Bent over the keys like that, your hair all tumbling down. You really resembled her.”
“How old were you when she died?”
He pulled on his coat, spattering water on us both. “Around three.”
“Oh,” I said carefully. “But you remember her playing?”
“I s’pose so.” Shoes on, the tie shoved into his pocket—Armand turned to face me and, just like that, I knew I’d lost him. His gaze had gone cool and his smile faint. He was entirely a lord once more.
“It’s been most delightful, Miss Jones. Let’s do it again sometime, shall we?”
I let him walk past me, swing open the door. He peered into the gloom of the stairwell before slipping down the first few steps. At the fourth step he paused, looked back up at me, and lowered his voice.
“Where did you get the bracelet?”
“Good-bye, Lord Armand,” I whispered. “Try not to get caught.”
I closed my door. I pressed my ear to the wood and remained there another whole minute until I heard him moving off, quick footfalls that faded into the more constant patter of the rain.
• • •
Jesse was not at home. I knew that without venturing even an inch into the sodden woods.
After Armand had left, I paused only long enough to remake the bed and blot up the water his coat had left on the floor. It was while I was doing that—on my hands and knees, my hair popped free of the measly two pins to tickle my neck—that I realized I was being surrounded by a new song.
Jesse’s song.
It rose around me in a lilting cadence, became a caress along my body, an invitation, our own secret code that echoed and repeated, and every single note meant come find me.
I stood and pushed the hair from my face. I crossed to my window to gaze down at the rainlit green, searching the fingers of fog that curled against the animal hedges and flower beds. The long, wet span of grass bereft of students or staff or too-early Sunday guests.
He definitely wasn’t down there. He didn’t seem to be outside at all. So … he must be somewhere within the castle.
Come find me.
My heart began a harder beat; I felt tingly, almost anxious.
Come.
Very well. I would.
I put on my oilskin, just in case. Then I went to answer Jesse’s call, sliding as carefully into the stairwell shadows as Armand had done a quarter hour before.
Downstairs, the maids were kindling batches of light, moving from lamp to lamp with their waxed-paper tapers to ward off the day’s dull chill. We’d entered that numbed, dragging stretch of hours