“Can I open it?”
She glanced at Dominic. He was in the doorway, one shoulder against the frame, his arms folded. He had not come into the room. His eyes were on James and the piano and not on her.
“May I?” she said quietly.
James straightened. “May I,” he repeated, looking at his uncle.
Dominic said, “It’s for use, James. Not for admiring.”
James took this as permission and lifted the fallboard. He pressed one finger to middle C, listened to it ring out, and lifted it. Pressed it again.
“It doesn’t buzz,” he said. He turned to Annabelle. “The one at Fairmont House buzzed on the third note from the right.”
“I know,” she said.
He ran one finger slowly along the span of the keys without pressing, heel to end and back again.
Annabelle sat beside him on the bench, close enough to guide his hands. Before she placed them, she looked once more toward the doorway.
“James,” she said, “your uncle arranged this for you.”
James turned on the bench and found Dominic with the direct, unhurried gaze he used when a matter required his full attention. “Thank you,” he said. “It is a very good piano. The keys don’t stick.”
Dominic’s hands moved out of his pockets and went back in again. “Good. I was told they wouldn’t.”
James turned back to the keys. “Which one first?” he asked Annabelle.
She set his right hand at middle C and played the four-bar opening of the piece they had been building. James listened with his eyes closed, which meant he was committing it, and she played it again so he had it twice.
The door clicked behind her.
She did not turn. She played the opening again, and James placed his finger at the first note, waiting, and the room was the new music room with the mahogany cabinet and the morning light in from the south window, and whatever Dominic’s footsteps were doing on the other side of that door was not her concern for the next hour.
It was, however, a concern afterward.
Mrs. Howell, intercepted on the way back from the library, mentioned without being directly asked that His Grace hadcalled for his hat and gloves directly after going downstairs, and had gone out.
She had expected this.
That did not make it easier to set aside.
White’s on a Tuesday afternoon was quiet enough that Dominic saw Miles the moment he came through the door, and Miles looked up from the newspaper he was not reading and raised one eyebrow at whatever he found.
“You look like a man who has left a pleasant house to avoid enjoying it,” Miles said. “A very specific kind of misery.”
“I came for a conversation that doesn’t require thinking a dozen exchanges ahead.” Dominic dropped into the chair across from him. “You’ll do.”
“Deeply touched.”
A footman brought wine. Dominic drank, set the glass down, and looked at the fire. Miles let the first five minutes pass without filling them, which was one of the better qualities he possessed.
Then the door opened.
Lucien scanned the room in the two-second way he had, and Dominic was in the east chair, and their eyes met before either of them could arrange around it.
Lucien walked over.
“Keldwick.” A nod. He looked at Dominic, held the look for a measured beat. “Silverford.”
