The opening was brilliant, the rest was shit. Dylan groaned in creative agony and scratched out what he had just written. These chords should make the feminine theme richer, deeper, more sensuous, but they didn’t. Something was wrong.
Exasperated, he dropped the quill onto the sheet of music that rested atop the piano, a sheet already marred by many ink blots and scratches—the pitiful result of this afternoon’s efforts. He studied the paper before him, looking at something which could not by any stretch of the imagination be considered musical exposition. He wanted to tear it into pieces and throw it in the dustbin.
Instead, he reached for the bottle of brandy at his elbow. Staring at the blotched, stained screed on his piano, he downed swallows of brandy, and his thoughts drifted past the music itself to his muse. Three weeks now she had been in his home. That first afternoon with her had brought a wave of inspiration that had lasted him a week, taking him through the first half of the opening exposition, the masculine theme. The night after they had eaten brandy snaps with Isabel, he had begun the second half of the exposition, trying to create the feminine theme based on the vague bit of melody he had first heard that night at the Palladium.
He had spent countless hours at his piano during the past fortnight, yet he had nothing to show for his efforts but a great deal of frustration and a handful of half-formed ideas in his folio. The feminine theme was simply not coming to him. What little he did have felt so forced, pulled out of him by sheer will.
He glanced at the mantel clock and realized he’d been sitting here for nine straight hours. He looked around and noticed that daylight had come and gone, a servant had been in the room to light lamps and draw the draperies closed. Obsessed with his work, he hadn’t noticed the time passing, and now it was almost eleven o’clock. By this time, he was usually out enjoying some of London’s pleasurable diversions.
His preoccupation with this symphony had not diminished his need for distractions. He still spent his nights at gaming tables, parties, and his club. During the past two weeks, he had visited some of his more disreputable haunts, including two or three of his favorite seraglios and cock-and-hens, dallying and flirting with the courtesans, but never going upstairs with any of them. And why not? Because none of them were Grace.
Friends. Still an unappealing idea.
Dylan picked up the sheet of composition paper on the piano and studied it for a moment. Somehow, having his muse be merely a friend was not very inspiring. He crumpled the page into a ball and tossed it behind him onto the chaise longue, where it joined the dozen or so already there.
He could go out. Dylan downed another swallow of brandy. He didn’t want a distraction, he told himself, not right now. He wanted to try again. Taking a deep breath, he put his hands on the keys, fighting to get past the noise in his brain and concentrate. He played chords over and over, tinkering with them dozens of different ways, trying to find a way to make them work in the theme, but they did not work. No matter how many ways he tried to improvise on them, they just did not work.
“Damn, damn, damn.” Dylan plunked his elbows down on the keys, a discordant sound that matched his state of mind but was of little use to his composition. He rubbed his eyelids with the tips of his fingers, listening as the clock chimed midnight. Another hour gone, and still not a decent note to show for it. Five years of nothing but noise, then regained hope and a half-formed first movement, then nothing but noise again.
Perhaps he was fooling himself. Perhaps Grace was right and muses didn’t exist. Perhaps he had been right five years ago, and what he heard now was only whispers, shadows of what had once been sonatas and symphonies.
With each passing moment, fear gripped him tighter and tighter, until it clawed at his insides like the talons of desperate birds. He wanted…oh, God, what he wanted…to be himself again, to be the man who could sit down and write a flawless sonata as if he were writing a letter, to be the man who never struggled to bring out what he saw and heard and felt, the man who could say anything with notes and melody. To be again the man who had never needed to worry about failure and who had never known the meaning of self-doubt.
After the accident, he had sat here many, many times, just like this, trying for hour upon hour when it did no good, saying that if only he sat here long enough, something would happen, some key would unlock and everything would be right again. So many times he had walked away in despair, until one day, he had just not sat down, had just not hit the keys. He had stopped trying. That was the day his soul had begun to die.
From his earliest memory, he had always known what he was meant to do—to take all the turbulence of his soul and turn it into something finite, something of form and shape and substance that could be written down in notes and clefs on staffs of five and not be lost.
He was an egoist, no doubt, to believe with absolute conviction that what was in his soul was worth recording for mankind, but it had always been like breathing to him. He’d never had a choice. If he did not give voice to what was inside him, he would eventually cease to exist, not by putting a bullet in his head but by the death of his soul.
The clock struck quarter past midnight.
His hands ached, the whine was a searing pain through his head, and here he sat, staring at a row of black and ivory stripes. He had to finish the theme. Without theme, there was no exposition. Without exposition, there was no music. Without music, he had nothing. He was nothing.
What had he been thinking? He couldn’t write a symphony. He didn’t even have enough for a sonata. Those thoughts whispered to him, slithered through his mind like serpents, threatening to extinguish his hope. He would not let it happen. He rose to his feet with such force that he sent the piano bench toppling backward, feeling only the overpowering desire to get away, to replace pain, fear, and desperation with something else, something pretty or amusing or mind-numbing that would get him through yet another night.
He opened one of the doors leading out of the music room and started toward the stairs to go up and change clothes, but then he heard a faint, mournful sound that got past the noise and fear, a melody coming from down the corridor to his left. He paused, listening to Grace’s violin.
Since that afternoon with the brandy snaps a fortnight ago, she had been avoiding him, and he had let her do it. He had no intention of leaving their relationship a platonic one, but she was not ready for more than that, and he was not ready for less. They had been at an impasse these past two weeks. Perhaps he could end that impasse tonight.
Dylan turned and headed down the long corridor to the library, and the music became louder as he approached. It was the poignant melody of Pathétique. He paused outside the closed door for a moment, then turned the handle and went inside.
She was sitting on the settee of ivory brocade under the window, her eyes closed, so absorbed in her music that she did not hear him come in.
She had retrieved her instrument from the music room a day or two after their dinner together, when she had played for him. He had noticed its absence, and he realized now that she must be using this room to practice in the evenings after Isabel was in bed.
The polished wood of her instrument gleamed in the candlelight, and her hair shone like gold against the aubergine velvet draperies behind her. Without making a sound, he closed the door and leaned back against it, then he shut his eyes and listened.
He remembered how afraid she had been to play for him that night they had dined together, and how unjustified her fear had been. She lacked the rare touch of brilliance and the driving egoism to be a true virtuoso, but she was a very good violinist, and it was a pleasure to listen to her.
The music stopped.
He opened his eyes to find her studying him, her violin tucked under her cheek, and her bow poised above the strings.
“Don’t stop,” he said as she lowered her instrument and bow to her lap. “Not on my account. I am thoroughly enjoying myself.”
Somehow, without even smiling, her face lit up like a candle. Giving women compliments was second nature to him, and yet the pleasurable glow in her face at his words made him feel deuced awkward all of a sudden, and unexpectedly touched. “Please go on.”
To his disappointment, she shook her head. “I have been practicing for some hours, and now that I have stopped, I appreciate just how long I have been playing, for my hands are beginning to ache.”
“I know that feeling well.” He clenched his fists and relaxed them with a grimace. “Especially today.”
“Have you been composing since this afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“And how is it coming?”
“It’s not,” he answered lightly. “I am quite put out that my muse has not given me any assistance.”
“Hasn’t she?” Grace set her violin and bow in the open case that lay on the floor beside her feet. “Most ungenerous of her.”
“Indeed, it is, for during the past two weeks she has not come in once to see how I’m getting on, much less given me inspiration.” He crossed the room and sat down in the chair opposite her with a long-suffering sigh.
She pretended not to notice the reference to their impasse. Instead, she closed her violin case, sat up, and brushed at her skirt as if removing a speck of dust. “Horrid muse.”
He watched the movement and noticed she was wearing a new dress. It was periwinkle blue, with the fashionable dropped shoulders and sleeves that puffed out just above the elbows. The large, tiered collar around her shoulders was made of white lace, with gauntlet cuffs to match. “Grace,” he said in surprise, “you are not wearing a scullery maid’s dishrag.”
She made a face at his teasing. “I ordered some gowns from the modiste when I took Isabel shopping. They arrived this morning. I must admit, it is nice to have some new and pretty things.”
“They do you justice. I see that, unlike my daughter, lace does not bother you.”
Grace laughed. “Perhaps Isabel will find lace to be like German. An acquired taste.”
“Is she cooperating, then, with lessons in German?”
“Very reluctantly. She finds it an ugly language.”
“But she is obeying you and doing her lessons?”
“She obeys me most of the time, but not willingly. She rails against things for no earthly reason except to be contrary. She is not accustomed to being gainsaid, and she doesn’t like it when I do it. But I am taking this one day at a time.” She smiled a little. “Rather in the nature of a long siege.”
“If you need me to step in and discipline her, I will at any time.”
“I would rather you gave her more of your attention,” she said quietly.
Dylan looked away. “I am working on a symphony, and it is taking a great deal of my time,” he said, and leaned back in his chair. It was an excuse, he knew it, but damn it, his work was important. It was everything. He looked at Grace, who was watching him with those eyes. “I’ll try to make more time for her,” he found himself saying.
“I am sorry to hear the composing is not going well.”
He tried to make light of it. “I came to see my muse, yet when I seek her out, desperate for help, I find her playing Beethoven.”
“It could be worse,” she said, smiling a little. “You could have caught me playing Mozart.”
“I have never been envious of Mozart, so that would not bother me quite so much.”
“But surely you are not envious of Beethoven?”
“No, not at all. He only created the most brilliant piece of music ever written.” Dylan paused, then with rueful admiration, added, “The bastard.”
She laughed at that, taking it in the proper spirit. “So what is the most brilliant piece of music ever written?” she asked. “The Ninth?”
“Of course. Sonata form turned on its ear. Funeral marches, timpani crashes, adagio duets. It ought to be the most incoherent mess one ever heard, but no, it is exactly right and beautiful. Flawless, in fact, for one could not imagine it any other way. That is brilliance, Grace. I envy him like hell.”
Her smile faded away at his last few words, which had been spoken with such vehemence. “You forgot to mention that he was deaf when he wrote it,” she said gently. “Surely there is nothing to envy in that.”
The irony of it almost amused him. He was not deaf, no. Instead he heard too much. One of God’s little jests. “No,” he said, “there is nothing to envy in that.”
She did not reply. Those eyes studied him with compassion and a strange sort of understanding. He did not like it, and he shifted in his chair, uneasy all of a sudden. “Why do you look at me like that?” he demanded. “What are you thinking?”
Her gaze shifted past his shoulder, almost as if someone else had entered the room. “I am thinking,” she said, “of my husband.”
He tensed, and he had to resist the urge to turn around. It was almost as if the other man were standing there.
My past is a painful subject for me.
He remembered those words, and he wanted to know why. “Where is your husband?”
Grace returned her gaze to his. “He is dead. He died two years ago.”
That must be the reason for her pain, but she imparted the news with such detachment that she might have been talking of a stranger. There was no discernible feeling in her face or her voice. That in itself was an odd thing. Dylan had never cared one way or the other if she had a husband, and since the man was dead, there was no reason for him to be curious now, but he was.
The obvious question hung in the air, and he asked it. “Why were you looking at me and thinking of your husband?”
“In some ways, you remind me of him. That is all.”
“Is that a good thing?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know. “Or a bad thing?”
“Neither. I was simply making an observation to myself.”
She had asked that he not inquire into her past, but there was something he needed to know. Dylan relaxed his grip on the arms of his chair and leaned forward. He reached out and took her hand in his, then pulled it toward him, his thumb brushing back and forth across her knuckles. “And after two years, do you grieve for him?”
“Grieve?” she repeated, drawing out the word as if trying to determine whether or not that was quite the right way to put it. “I—” She drew a deep, shuddering breath, the only hint he had that she felt any emotion at all. “I stopped grieving a long time ago.”
“Your hand is like ice.” He could have been chivalrous and built up the fire, but there were better ways to warm her than that, and he wasn’t chivalrous. He cupped her hand and lifted it in both of his, feeling it curl into a fist as he bent his head. “Relax, and let me warm you.”
“I don’t want you to,” she said, but there was a breathless sort of uncertainty in her voice that his mind and his body recognized as a sign things were looking up. His curiosity vanished in the wake of more exciting possibilities. She tried to pull her hand free, but he held it fast.
He looked up. “What is it you fear?”
“Being hurt.” The admission was simple, straightforward, and unassailable.
“I won’t hurt you.”
She closed her eyes. “No, you won’t. I won’t let you.”
“Did your husband hurt you?”
“He—” She swallowed hard and opened her eyes, but she did not look at him. Instead, she stared past him again, into space. “My husband gave me some of the happiest moments of my life.”
How queer her voice sounded as she talked about powerful emotions with such reflective detachment, yet she was not detached. Dylan hated that she was looking past his shoulder as if seeing another man’s ghost. Still, she was letting him touch her, and that was enough.
He moved to sit beside her, and he put his arm around her shoulders, still clasping her hand in one of his. She did not turn toward him, or away; instead, she stared straight ahead and did not move. There was nothing in her stiff pose that could honestly be called encouragement, but he would take what he could get.
“I would like to make you happy.” Dylan bent his head over her hand, grazing the back of her fist with a kiss, then he opened his lips over the knuckle of her middle finger to taste her skin. He felt her fist unfold, and he turned her palm upward to kiss it. “I could do it, Grace. I could make you happy.”
“Yes, I think you could,” she murmured, a hint of surprise coming into her voice, as if she were admitting it to herself, as well as to him. “For a while.”
He looked up from the hand he held in her lap. “Isn’t that enough? God knows, there is little happiness in life. Can we not seize it where we find it, enjoy it while it lasts?”
“And find pleasure in the memories when it is over?” she countered, her voice suddenly hard. If that bitter tinge was due to her thinking about her husband, he intended to drive the other man out of her thoughts right now.
He straightened and let go of her hand, then lifted his own to cup her cheek. He turned her face toward him and tilted his head to kiss her. She closed her eyes, but her mouth did not open at the touch of his. He ran his tongue back and forth over the closed seam of her lips, trying to coax her to part them.
After a moment, she did, opening them with a wordless sound, and shards of pleasure fissured his body, threatening to break apart his control in an instant. He slid his hand to the back of her head, and her hair felt like silk against his palm as he deepened the kiss, exploring the softness of her lips, the hard line of her teeth, her sweet taste.
As he kissed her, he moved his free hand down, grazing her with his fingertips in a light exploration along her throat, over her collarbone, and between her breasts. She had gained some weight during the three weeks she had lived in his home, he noticed as he continued down along her ribs to her waist, and he was glad of it.
He curved his palm over her hip and felt her body tense. He stopped, leaving his hand there, waiting. She did not push it away. He took advantage of that tacit agreement, curling his hand beneath her thigh. She stirred in his arms and turned her face away with a little gasp, breaking the kiss. An inarticulate sound came from her throat.
Was that a no? He decided it wasn’t. He slid his hand down her thigh and eased his other arm around her shoulders again. He ran his lips along her cheek, then kissed the velvety skin of her ear and caressed the back of her knee through her dress.
Her breath was coming faster now, and he could feel fluttering shivers in her body, but she would not touch him, and that restraint was more erotic than he could have imagined. He lifted her legs across his own and eased her down until her head rested against the arm of the settee. He leaned over her and nuzzled her ear as he slid his hand back up her body to her breast. He embraced the shape of it, small and perfect in his hand. He could not feel her nipple against his palm through her clothing, but he could imagine it, and that alone was enough to inflame him. He made a rough sound, a groan in his throat smothered against her ear as he shaped her breast against his hand.
She touched the side of his neck, a light, tentative move, and the lust inside him ignited like brandy on fire. “Grace,” he groaned, his hand reaching for the button of her lace collar. “Grace, you are so lovely. So sweet.”
The button came free, and her hand curled over his wrist as the lace fell away.
Don’t say it, for God’s sake. His body was heavy, aching for her. Not now, not yet. Her fingers still curved around his hand as he unfastened the top button of her dress at her clavicle. “Let me do this,” he murmured against her ear. The button came free and he moved to the next one. “Just let me love you.”
She froze in his embrace, as if he had just thrown icy water over her. “Love, love!” she cried, and before he could gather his wits, she pressed her palms to his shoulders and pushed at him, succeeding just enough to roll off the settee and onto the floor. Scrambling to her feet, she was out of his reach before he could even begin to come to his senses.
Dylan sat up, his body thick with desire, his mind unable to quite comprehend her sudden withdrawal.
“How lightly you talk of love!” She was still panting, but there was no soft warmth in her now. Those green eyes were as cold as any arctic glacier could be. “You do not even know what love is.”
He forced his body out of chaos and into some semblance of control. He leaned back against the settee, and he did not care that his erection was flagrantly obvious through his tight trousers. “You know far more about love than I, of course.”
“Yes, I think I do.” She looked above his head, as if she could see through the velvet draperies and past the darkness outside. She went somewhere else, somewhere he could not follow her, somewhere that made her face soften in the fire’s glow with a wistful sort of tenderness he had never seen before. He hated that look because it wasn’t for him.
He stood up. “Forgive me. I did not know you had buried your heart along with your husband.”
“What do you know of my heart!” she demanded. “I loved my husband, loved him in a way you could not possibly understand. You do not know what it feels like to love another more than yourself. I doubt you know what love really is or what it means.”
He stood up, his body burning, anger growing hotter as desire grew cooler. “Now it is you who presumes to know what is in another’s heart. I was in love once, Grace, as hard as that may be for you to believe.”
There was a heaviness in his chest, a weight that made it hard for him to breathe. “I had been in love with the same girl since I was seven years old, a girl who was all the things I have never been, the only girl I ever wanted. I was twenty-one the summer after Cambridge when I came home and asked her to marry me. But I was the wild, younger son of the squire, marked with the tar brush even then. It was quite understandable, everyone thought, when she refused me. Over a decade has passed since then, and my romantic illusions about what love is may be gone, but I remember with painful clarity how it felt—every glorious, shining, agonizing moment of it.”
Dylan took a deep breath, feeling as if he were sinking in quicksand, smothering in memories of a pretty, auburn-haired girl, a village green, kisses stolen and a proposal offered in the shadows of horse chestnut trees on a warm summer night. “Her name was Michaela Gordon. Yes,” he added as her eyes widened in surprise, “the vicar’s daughter.”
He gave Grace a grin of self-mockery. “Shameless libertine that I have become, it seems I still possess a special weakness for virtuous women. What would people say?”
He bowed, then walked away, slamming the door of the library behind him. There was no satisfaction in the loud, resounding bang.