Aoife wasn’t sure how she felt about wording it that way, but he wasn’t wrong. “That’s right.”
“Well, it’s customary for girls in Eldross to learn a musical instrument. Most of them learn the pianoforte.”
Aoife knew what that was only because there was one in Halverton’s drawing room and she’d asked Mrs Harrow about it.
“I’m not sure I’m musically inclined.” She told him. The fisherman, Tomás O’Healy, played the fiddle and Gwen played the riddle drum, but music hadn’t been an option for her growing up. She liked to sing and dance at any feast or celebration, but she’d never even tried to play herself.
“The basics aren’t too hard. I can teach you if you’d like.”
They spent the next hour in the servants’ hall practising on a small upright piano.
Kit sat beside her on the bench, endlessly patient, correcting her posture, guiding her fingers to the correct keys. Her hands cramped by the end.
By the end of the hour she could play a C scale cleanly, both hands moving together without thought. It wasn’t music. But it was a start.
Several times over the next week she felt as if she were watching herself from a distance. She was outside her body, watching as a woman who held her face spoke with an accentthat was not her own about topics that held no interest to her. A creature of poise and grace, and calculated devotion.
At first, Aoife had thought of her only as the stranger. But the longer the performance continued, the clearer the distinction became. This was the woman Halverton wanted. The polished lady he believed he was shaping.
Lady Eva.
Lady Eva was affectionate, she touched Lord Halverton freely: a hand on his sleeve when she asked a question, a brush of fingertips on his wrist when passing him a document, the lightest pressure of her shoulder against his arm when they stood together by a window.
Lord Halverton returned her attentions readily.
Lady Eva pleased him.
His hand was rarely far from her now. It settled at the small of her back when he guided her through a doorway, drew her closer at her waist when he wished her beside him, closed around her wrist or her fingers as though the contact belonged there.
And he kissed her.
He claimed her mouth in stolen moments when the corridors were empty or the servants distant, drawing her close with an impatience that bordered on triumph. Sometimes his hand tightened at her waist, sometimes it slid higher, holding her firmly against him while his mouth moved over hers with the same confidence he carried into every room.
Lady Eva received it all as she was meant to.
She tilted her face toward him before he asked, let her hands rise to his shoulders, answered his hunger just enough to keep him pleased. She knew exactly when to soften, when to yield, when to look at him as though the attention delighted her.
Aoife watched from somewhere far behind her own eyes.
Halverton had told her they would wait for marriage. He spoke of it as a mark of his honour, as though the restraint proved his virtue.
For that, at least, she was grateful.
Each time his mouth closed over hers, each time his hand tightened at her waist, Aoife slipped further away, retreating to the quiet place she had built inside her own mind.
Lady Eva remained behind to smile.
She was reshaping herself to be exactly what he wanted, and in the end, it had taken him not much effort at all. She shuddered at the thought, all too acutely aware that a lie repeated often enough takes on the shape of truth.
Alone in her room at night, she would remind herself it was a role, a way to help her people. She would reread Cormac’s letter over and over again. ‘You’ll find a way through. You always do.’ That was what she was doing: finding a way through, surviving this. But then she would come back to his earlier line, ‘If you stop being yourself, I’ll have lost you for good, and that I couldn’t survive.’ She wasn’t lost for good, though. This was all dressing. Her outside might change, but she was still the same person on the inside. Wasn’t she?
“It’s a role,” she whispered to the empty air. “Just a role.”
But roles had weight. How long could she play Lady Eva before she became her?
Three weeks into her performance, Halverton invited her to his study. The fire was low, throwing amber light across the floor. Aoife crossed the room with measured elegance, every step deliberate.
Halverton watched her as she approached.
