“We will take it home in my carriage.”
“What? Monsieur le Comte, there is no need.”
“Yes, there is! It needs restringing. Obviously, too, it is a precious thing. I saw how you looked at it.” His gaze grew so fierce, Inès believed he really wanted to discuss just how she had looked at the cello.
“Mama,” he said, but did not look away from Inès, “do you mind if you and Jessica and Fee go home first, then send the carriage back here? I would like to see Mademoiselle Bechard and her man home with this piece in a timely and safe manner.”
“Of course, my dear. Lovely to meet you, Mademoiselle Bechard. I hope you will invite us all to your first salon. Now that we have dug out your cello from the depths, I feel we must see its rebirth, eh?”
Inès was used to powerful men and women who pushed their way into her life and her plans. But this episode, this afternoon, had a new quality to it and she was off her norm in reacting to it. To Halsey and his firm direction of her every wish, she was thrilled and terrified she’d be obligated to him.
“Say yes, mademoiselle,” Halsey urged in a tone that brooked no argument.
She smiled at his mother and two sisters. “Yes, I would be delighted, my lady, to invite all of you for the event.” She truly did want them to come. It would improve her status to be known to have them in her home.
But she also knew she had been handled by the one man whom she should never allow to enchant her—and from whom she did not wish to stay away.
#
“We should take it in through the kitchen door in the alley, don’t you think?” Halsey asked as he settled in the seat beside her in his carriage.
“It’s much too dirty to take through the Ashleys’ front door,” she agreed, though she questioned if she should allow him such autonomy.Ba!He was too helpful and she could not scold him.
But across from her in the opposite seat, Hawkins bobbed his head in quick agreement. “We’ll carry it through to the workroom behind the scullery. That’s the best place to clean it up. There is a workroom near the scullery,” he said to Halsey.
“Wonderful.” Halsey was acting as if he were her best friend. Her best male friend. And she did not want Hawkins to get any ideas that she was interested in entertaining male callers. Especially notthismale.
The trip home was brief, and Hawkins left the carriage as soon as Halsey’s coachman pulled up next to the kitchen door. “I’ll notify Lord Ashley’s butler of our need to bring this in. I shall prepare the way and return.”
Halsey sat beside her, his gloved hands folded, serene as a large jungle cat. “I look forward to hearing you play.”
“You won’t,” she bit off, and rearranged her pelisse to cover her gown over her knees. She must stop fidgeting!
“I am not invited?” His question was part insult and part surprise.
Exasperated, she took a breath and turned her face toward him. “I apologize. I do not play the cello.”
“Yet you had to have it. Why?”
She would be forthright. “My father played. It was the most vibrant music in the world. I cannot forget.” She swallowed old memories, irrelevant in this chaotic world. “I do apologize to you. I am not myself lately.”
“You have had a wonderful time, so I understand from Lord Ashley and his wife, renting a house. I presume the cello, like much else, is to bring the house up to your standards. So why are you not yourself?” He was curious, but his words implied he was concerned.
She could not blurt out that he disturbed her. That he appealed to her so strongly, his magnificent height and shoulders, his cologne, his regard of her and,oui, even and most especially hissavoir faire. “The stress to furnish the house and make it a showplace.”
“Must it be grand?”
“I want it so. Oui. Oui, I do. My mother was a renowned hostess. At our chateau, she had noteworthy receptions inside and out to celebrate the harvesting of the grapes. Christmas approaches,” she said, closing her eyes, wishing to forget and yet dying to remember each tiny detail of her parents’ festivities. “She celebrated Christmas Day by inviting all our tenants and the local distributor and his family. The mayor came, and the town’s shopkeepers. We had wine, of course, a whole pig roasting on a spit, and dozens of roast chickens. New bread. Potatoes with leeks and pie. Oh, you have never tasted such pastry. Mama made it herself, always. It was a delicate slice of heaven, crisp and full of air, a hint of sugar.”
She inhaled, realizing she rambled on and on. “Excuse me. I can live too much in the past.”
“It is wise to live there and remember all that we have enjoyed.”
“And all that is gone. All that we hated when the devils took it all away.”
His gloved hand took hers to his thigh. “Those moments, good and bad, define who we are, what we value, what we strive for.”
“What we will not abide,” she added, picturing in her mind’s eye Vaillancourt, the man she hated the most. His devilishly handsome face,his sharp, blue, accusing eyes and his fabulous mouth that uttered lies and threats of torture and death.
