But this was different. The room fell still. Conversations died on the lips of matrons and debutantes alike. Even Lady Maria’s lapdog ceased its continuous yipping, silenced by something it could not understand.
She played as though the room had been emptied and she had been transported to another realm. Unlike some of the nervous performers he had seen at such events, Abigail showed no outward signs of discomfort. It was as if she had entirely forgotten any of them were there at all.
There was no affectation in her performance. No preening, no performative glance at the gentlemen seated nearest the dais. Her expression was not impassive, but quietly intent—as if the music passed through her rather than from her, and she was merely the instrument through which it chose to speak.
Arthur could not look away.
He had not expected to be so unbelievably moved. He had not expectedanything, save perhaps a few minutes of polite boredom. But what rose from her violin was not simply sound—it was longing, it was memory, it was the ache of a question that had never been answered. Each note reached toward something unnamed at the peak of emotion, and in its reach, it stirred something dormant in him, something he had pressed flat with years of habit and distance.
Oh Heavens, compose yourself. You’ll be reciting poetry next.
For a brief, disconcerting moment, he saw her not as the woman he jested with careless remarks or studied from across ballrooms, but as someoneunreachable. An untouchable being. Someone who did not need him, or anyone, to complete her. And yet, he could not help but wish he might be permitted to stand beside her in that still, unknowable place the music had created. To be that violin and feel her soft caresses.
He had seen beauty before. He had been charmed, tempted, even briefly in love. But this—this was different. This was the silent awe of witnessing something one could not possess. She was one with the instrument and creating a sound that he had never heard from a violin before. It was hauntingly melodic, sad and full of longing, but incredibly poignant and memorable in a way that he had not anticipated.
When the final note faded, he felt a keen sense of something almost akin to disappointment. The hush that followed felt as profound as a prayer. Then came the applause, rising swiftly, fervently—yet Arthur did not join them at once. He stood motionless, his hands at his sides, his heart unaccountably loud in his chest.
Only when Abigail lowered her bow and offered a small, graceful curtsey did he permit himself to breathe.
It was then that she looked up—only for a heartbeat—but it was enough. Her eyes met his.
And in that glance, he felt seen. Not by society, not by the room, but byher—as though she had known all along what he was thinking, that he had been watching, that something within him had shifted. It was not triumph in her gaze, nor invitation. It was something quieter. Recognition, perhaps.
He looked away first.
Not because he was disinterested. But because the feeling was too much. Too sudden. Too dangerous.
***
Abigail returned to her seat, her cheeks flushed with the weight of the eyes on her, and the rapturous applause.
“I told you she was a wonderful performer,” Lady Maria asserted to the lady next to her and pointing to her little dog who had ceased its barking and finally curled up and gone to sleep.
Edward leaned toward Abigail almost immediately, his voice pitched low enough to seem intimate but loud enough to be heard by those nearby. “Exquisite,” he murmured, the word delivered with a touch of self-satisfaction, as though he were personally responsible for her performance.
Abigail gave a small, measured nod but did not meet his eye. She folded her hands neatly in her lap and turned her gaze toward the far end of the room, pretending to focus on the next performer preparing to take the stage. The music, she thought absently, would be another polite display. Another exercise in social choreography. She doubted she would remember a note of it.
In the row just behind, Arthur Beaumont shifted slightly in his chair. She turned her head, just enough to glance back toward him.
Their eyes met once again that evening.
There was no obvious expression on his face—no smile, no smirk, no teasing glint of amusement. Yet his gaze held something steady and curious, something that made her feel, for the first time that night, as though someone in the room wasn’t simply watching her but actually seeing her.
There was no gesture, no dramatic pause or deepening of breath, just the quiet acknowledgment of a truth neither of them had voiced. They did not belong here. Not fully. Not comfortably.
He looked away a moment later, and the moment passed as quietly as it had come.
Abigail sat back in her seat, the violin resting once again at her side. Around her, the hum of conversation resumed and the next performance began. Her mother leaned in to offer a rare word of praise, and Edward began to speak again—something about how the violin revealed refinement in a lady. She heard none of it.
Instead, she looked toward the far end of the room and focused on the flicker of candlelight reflected in the window glass.
The evening would continue, just as it always did. But something in her had shifted, and though she couldn’t yet name it, she knew it had little to do with the violin.
And even less to do with Lord Edward Colton.
And in that small, silent exchange, Abigail felt—for the first time that evening—a flicker of breath. Of air.
Of something real.
