Page 25 of The Lady Knows Best

“Certainly not.” She seated herself at the instrument, her spine impossibly rigid.

“You needn’t be distressed that I’ll embarrass you. I’ve been told I have a fair voice.”

She rolled her eyes, the expression hidden from the room. “I daresay at one time or another, you’ve been told you have a fair everything.”

She’d meant the remark to be cutting, but he only returned a wicked smile. “More than fair, my dear. Now”—he leaned over her shoulder to place the book on the rack—“which of these do you think will suit?”

The words Hibernian Melodies gleamed up at them in gilt letters.

Her poet brother’s verse, set to music.

Rather than respond with enthusiasm, as he’d hoped, she dropped her shoulders and her fingers, which had been resting silently against the keys. The magnificent instrument gave up a discordant plink.

He had a sudden memory of the Clearwaters’ ballroom, and his toes curled in his shoes.

“All right, then?” he asked, using the pretense of turning pages to speak into her ear.

“Certainly.”

Nothing sounded amiss in her voice; perhaps he’d misread her reaction. Still . . .

“If you’d rather something el—”

She flipped to a page two-thirds of the way through the book, nearly pinching his fingers in the process. “I believe this will just do for you.”

Without further preamble, she played the opening bars of “The Fae’s Lament,” a song styled after an old folk ballad, made popular once again by the fashion for all things rustic and simple. Quickly, he scanned the lyrics of the unfamiliar tune, so as not to fall behind.

Her brother’s words told the story of an Englishman who had taken a notion to visit Ireland and, having been thoroughly charmed by a certain green hill, had claimed it for his own. The green was no ordinary shade, however, but a reflection of the local fairy’s fluttering, iridescent wings. The moment the hill was no longer her home, she departed and the green began to fade. Disillusioned with his conquest, the Englishman left, though he still possessed the land, now brown and sere.

Even Miles, who had never been particularly adept at understanding poetry, understood Mr. Galen Burke’s metaphor for England’s cultural and political mistreatment of Ireland.

And as for what Daphne meant by it? Well, that was no more opaque.

She might have no choice but to marry him, but she still thought Miles an unprincipled, insensitive rogue.

At least she didn’t change the key mid-song or play sour notes or try to drown him out as some sort of protest. In fact, he doubted whether another soul in the room—with the possible exception of her sisters—even knew she was unhappy. Bright-eyed, she glanced back and up at him from time to time, a seasoned accompanist watching for cues, the better to weave the pianoforte with his voice. And once she had begun, the stiffness melted from her figure. She gave herself to the music so thoroughly, he took up the rhythm as much from the fluid motion of her fingers as from the notes themselves.

On some level, the performance—much like their kiss—revealed an unexpected connection between them; their innate responsiveness to one another belied the tenuousness of their bond.

But the peculiar shade of pink in her cheeks when they finished—somewhere between mortification and apoplexy—made it clear she did not see it that way at all.

Or, if she did, she took no pleasure from the observation.

She curtsied, absorbing the applause reluctantly, like a series of small blows to her body. And she winced when an elderly grande dame in the front row whispered to her neighbor in a carrying voice, “What a well-matched couple.”

At that, Daphne spoke to him in a low voice. “Please, I’d like to return to my seat.”

“I sense I’ve done something to displease you.” He offered his arm, then surreptitiously dropped it to his side when she ignored the gesture.

“On the contrary. You behaved exactly as I ought to have expected.”

“You played beautifully,” he tried to reassure her a moment later.

“Then I suppose you may check another item off your list,” she replied—a reference, he gathered, to the qualifications of his bride as specified by the conditions of the wager. “How gratified you must be by everyone’s approval of your singing. I had no notion a rake’s reputation could be rehabilitated with one sentimental air.”

He mustered a bitter laugh. “Not with that song, certainly. As I think you well understood when you chose it. But in any case, you know that was not my object tonight.”

“No, I’d say you were far more determined to make a mockery of me and my family, by performing a foine Irish melody”—her ordinary speech transformed into a thick, exaggerated brogue—“with a foine Irish lass.”