“The notes are the beginning of the real song,” she said. “When you can play the run cleanly five times without stopping, we’ll build it into one.”
He weighed this. “How many times can you do it without stopping?”
“As many as it takes,” she said.
He looked back down at Newton. Then, in the same easy, matter-of-fact tone he had used to ask about the cat, he said, “I want to play something for Uncle Dominic. When I’m good enough. Maybe he’ll like pianos more if I show him.”
Annabelle found that goal rather admirable, so much so that she nearly smothered him with a hug, but she barely held herself back and simply said, “I’m sure he’d like that very much.”
Chapter Five
“Ipracticed the sequence last night,” James said. “In my head.”
Dominic adjusted his stride to match the boy’s pace on the pavement. “In your head?”
“I moved my fingers.” He demonstrated against his own thigh as he walked: C, D, E, G, E, each note pressed with quiet deliberation. “Miss Hartley thought I was asleep.”
“Were you not?”
“Not straight away.” He glanced down at his hand, still moving. “Moving my fingers helps first.”
Miss Hartley followed two paces behind, silent and steady. The morning was cool, the street not yet busy, and Fairmont House was already visible at the end of the short stretch of pavement, cream-fronted, its windows catching the mid-morning light.
He had walked this same distance more than a few times, at Lucien’s invitation, for dinners and late evenings and the easy commerce of a long friendship. It had not felt like this then. The difference was the boy beside him, and he was only beginning to understand how much a small difference accumulated.
“You should hear it,” James said.
“That is what lessons are for.”
“You could come up. Just once. Before you go.”
“Not today.”
“Why?”
“The piano gives me splitting headaches. The sound of it. I have had the sensitivity since I was young. It has nothing to do with your playing.”
James walked on in silence for several steps, his coat straight, his face turned forward with the slow, unhurried patience he gave most things he was working out.
“Even when Annabelle plays?” he said.
“Even then.”
“But you can tell she plays differently.” He said it with confidence, as a point already settled and now recorded aloud. “Anyone could tell.”
They had reached the door. Dominic gestured toward it. “Come.”
James went up the steps. Miss Hartley followed. The door opened before anyone knocked, and Lady Annabelle stood in the frame with sheet music in one hand and Newton the cat at her feet. Newton looked at Dominic with the detached assessment of a cat with no obligations, then attached himself to James’s left ankle and purred.
“Good morning.” Her eyes moved at once to James. “You’re on time.”
“I practiced,” James said.
“Go wash your hands first.” She stepped back to let him in. “We’ll start in ten minutes.”
James went. Newton considered the corridor and followed James. Miss Hartley came through with a small nod.
Lady Annabelle looked at Dominic from the doorway.
