before he knew it, his hands at his side clenched into fists. Westbury had been dead for less than a month and already she was lining up a successor? The papers from Bath suddenly came to mind. An Original. The toast of society. He wanted to throw her across his back and take her up to bed, now, without words, their bodies melded into one and for ever joined. He wanted to stay here in this ramshackle house in the little village of High Wycombe, away from everyone and everything.
But he could see in her eyes a misgiving that would need a more careful diplomacy. Changing tack, he came in from another angle.
‘Emerald no doubt sent us on such a wild goose chase for a purpose.’
Eleanor blushed and he stepped back.
‘Not both of us, then?’ He swore beneath his breath at the duplicity.
Eyes the colour of an afternoon summer sky met his. ‘The Duchess had guessed about your relationship with Florencia. When she suggested we should at least talk, I could hardly refuse to do so.’
‘My town house in London would have been a lot closer.’
‘And a lot easier to leave.’
‘My carriage is here.’
‘Actually it isn’t quite where you might think it, though of course I shall ask for it to be returned—’
He didn’t let her finish.
‘For a woman who has an intended groom waiting in the wings, you are astoundingly careless.’
‘A groom?’
‘The man you have just told me you have in mind to marry. Do you not think he would take offence at our being alone here?’
Surprisingly she smiled and the dimples in her cheeks were deep. Lord. The broadsheets of Bath had not understated her beauty one little bit. In London she had been swathed in pastels, caution and sorrow. Here, in the open air with her hair down and the generous spill of her bosom over a simple gown of mourning, she was unforgettable.
Cursing, he looked away, though not before he had seen a flicker of satisfaction on her face. The world spun into another angle as he mulled upon it. Could she have meant him to stay here for more than just talk? The magnitude of the plan hardly indicated fainthearted trepidation after all and any woman must have realised the danger inherent in such a proposition.
Alone, together, with the past between them and the present strewn across a need that had never settled.
He wanted her with a plain and utter hunger. Still, there were questions that he needed answers to; seeing that Florencia was a good distance away playing with Patch, he took his chance.
‘If I am alone with you in the house tonight, Eleanor, I doubt that I would have the temperance to sleep in a separate bed.’
‘Is that a warning, my lord?’
‘No, ma chérie. It’s a certainty.’
Florencia’s cry brought their attention to her.
‘Look, Mama. Patch is chasing his tail.’
‘Just as I am chasing mine,’ he murmured to himself and was again confused by Eleanor’s returning smile as she slipped from his side to view the puppy’s antics with their daughter.
The room the housekeeper showed him to overlooked the front of the house and was larger than any bedchamber he had ever been in. Divided into two separate spaces, he was interested to see the shape of a piano beneath a large dustsheet. Pulling it aside, he ascertained the instrument to be a Broadwood and his curiosity quickened. It had been an age since he had sat at a piano and played. Positioning the stool, he placed his fingers over the chords before letting them sink into the keys.
Like coming home. Almost sacrosanct.
As he closed his eyes the first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ spilled into the room, the waves of tension building and resolving. All the broken cords of his life were in that tune, the hell ship, his father’s distance and the loneliness that had kept him bound in France.
His fingers found notes that had never left him. In Paris he had only ever heard the mistakes, but this afternoon in the sunlight under a clear blue sky he heard the music, peaceful, meditative, the harmony and feelings speaking to him.
Eleanor was in the pulse of the rhythm, in the tension and release as the line he created widened into a broad arch, lilting through the silence, hanging across his heart like a banner.
The muscles in his arms quivered, unused to such an exacting toil, but still he did not stop, could not stop, the stormy third movement taking over from the first. Passion and wild accents reigned now, the ferocity of the sforzando notes and the fortissimo passages unbridled.
Like Heaven and like a home.
Eleanor.
His fingers paused on the keys as her name loosened anger and he knew for certain, in that one small second of silence, that if he ever lost her he would never be found again.
Listening from the hallway outside the room, Eleanor leaned against the wall with an outright astonishment.
He played the piano as skilfully as she had ever heard anyone do so, even without the little finger on his right hand, the flamboyance of his style suiting the piece with an unquestioned exactness. When had he learned? She remembered the piano in his room at the Château Giraudon, but here in England she hadn’t heard even a whisper of his brilliance.
When the last of the notes faded into quiet she walked into the chamber. Cristo sat with his eyes closed and the sun from a wide window on his hair.
‘It is good to play again,’ he began as if he had known she was there outside all along and there was a softness in the tone of his voice that she had not heard before. His glance now took in every part of her.
‘It is a beautiful tune.’
‘Beethoven’s piano Sonata number fourteen in C-sharp minor. Many call it the “Moonlight Sonata” because legend has it he wrote the piece whilst playing for a blind girl at night.’ He hesitated. ‘A compelling anecdote, I would imagine.’
‘In Bath I went to many piano recitals and, even given my untrained ear, yours sounded more skilled than all of them.’
He laughed. ‘Have dinner with me in here and I will play you others.’
Her eyes flickered to the large bed on the far wall, almost on the same proportions as the room, and she blushed.
‘Practice makes perfect,’ he quipped, the edge of a seriousness in his words contradicting humour as he stood.
Eleanor swallowed. When it actually came to it the whole madness of ever imagining she could seduce such a man seemed most unwise. If she had any sense she would scuttle from this room and hide, but the vision of them both on the bed in the moonlight was startling, like the song he played come to life, exotic, unbridled and passionate.
‘I am the father of your daughter …’
And of your son. She almost said it.
‘And a man who would never hurt you! Take a chance, my Eleanor. Take a chance on me and live.’
It was if he had read her mind, the years since she had last truly lived filled with greyness. Only one night five years ago, yet she remembered every second as if it were yesterday.
But seduction was more difficult when words were required and the way he was looking at her indicated a definite need for them. Not yet, she thought. Not yet. Clearing her throat, she began uncertainly.
‘There are towels in the cupboards and