“What is it, Mina?” he asked gently.
I set a bowl next to his teacup, and I picked up my spoon. “Would it cause you too much pain to talk about your teacher? You told me that ... you said she was ...” Sighing in frustration, I put down my spoon.
“You have a right to hear it,” he said.
My hand trembled as I lifted my teacup. Why should this woman frighten me so?
Because he loved her. And because he might have killed her.
“Mrs. Rowe,” he said. “Ruby Rowe. I don’t think it was her real name. My father first brought her into our home when I was ten years old, and for a decade I saw her once a week. I knew little of her history, only that she’d worked in a traveling theater company.”
Frowning, I said, “Da took us to see theater on the green at midsummer sometimes. Is that the kind of thing you mean?”
“Very likely. Though this was many years before you were born. She left the company to work for our family.” He folded his arms and rested them on the table. “It would have been a far better life for her. I wish she’d kept to it.”
I took a bite of porridge, not tasting it, as he continued, “Ruby was sometimes ill. I didn’t think anything about it at the time. My mother had died young, and so had my father’s mother, so I supposeI had gotten the idea it was normal for women to be unwell. But as I approached my change, my father told me what I was. What I wouldbecome. And it was around that time I also learned Ruby was being paid for more than teaching me the violin.”
His eyes came to my face, and my breath hitched as I saw that they shone with tears.
“One day after my lesson, I had left Ruby and gone out to skip stones on the pool on the heath. I had behaved foolishly that day, taking advantage of an opportunity to steal a kiss.”
He hesitated, studying me, and how my heart raced. “Ruby played the violin with passion. Lost herself in it completely sometimes. She was beautiful, and although before my change I was sometimes allowed off the estate, she was the only woman I’d ever been alone with. I believed I was in love with her. That day she had thoroughly rebuffed me, and I stalked off humiliated and ashamed.” He took a deep breath. “So I threw stones, and I watched columns of dark clouds massing on the horizon. When my emotions had cooled, I ran back to the chapel so I might watch the approaching storm from the battlements.”
His jaw clenched and released. He finished his tea and continued, “I found them there together. My father held her in his arms, pressed up against the parapet, his lips at her throat.”
Maybe I should have seen where this was leading, but I hadn’t. “Oh, Harker. What a shock that must have been.”
He nodded slowly. “Though by then I was nearly twenty-one, my isolation had stunted me in some ways. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. It seemed ...” He rubbed his lips together. “I thought it was lovemaking. And that was bad enough, after her rejection of me. But there was blood, too. It confused me.Shatteredme. I fled back down to the heath.”
He was quiet for a while, and I waited, unwilling to push him. Even after decades, his hurt was still so raw.It’s the not knowing what happened to her.
Finally, he looked up, his expression flat but for a thin smile. “That same day, I smashed my violin as if I were a jilted lover. Soon after that the change took me, and I never saw her again.”
Carefully I asked, “Your father told you he sent her away to protect her from you?”
“He did.”
I knew his doubts. I knew his fears. But after so many years, he would likely never know the truth of what had happened. Dwelling on it would only deepen his hurt. Gently I said, “It would make sense for him to do so.”
He looked down. “I think the worst of it is that our eyes met on the parapet. RubyknewI’d seen them. I was too angry to take any notice of this at the time, but it was clear from her expression how it pained her.”
“I’m so sorry, Harker.”
“You are kind to be sorry for me, but it’s not why I told you. So many of my regrets about who and what I am, as well as my anger about the life I’ve had to live, are tied up in Ruby’s story.”
“I can see why. I’m grateful to you for telling me.”
He ran a hand through his dark hair and let out a sigh. “I’m sick to death of my own melancholy and self-loathing, but I don’t know how to leave them behind. And I fear they may make me very hard to live with.”
I folded my arms on the table, leaning toward him. “For your own sake, I hope youmayleave them behind. But you are dear to me as you are, Harker.”
His brow smoothed as his gaze lifted. There was something soft and wondering in his eyes.
Afraid I’d said too much, I looked away, my gaze coming to rest on Da’s fiddle. “Will you tell me what you were playing last night? I’ve never heard music like that.”
“A sonata by a German composer named Bach,” he said quietly. “I imagine it’s more formal than what your father played. Bach was a composer at court.”
I smiled. “You are very good at talking about the differences in our backgrounds without making me feel small and poor.”
