Page 101 of Regency in Color

Frank kept his gaze on the keys, not meeting her eyes. “My mother was born in Hanover. Seventy-five years ago today, in fact, and Pandora’s still trying to get the lid back on the box.” His shoulders slumped and expression defeated, Andie had never seen him so dejected. She’d seen him anxious, impatient, and even frustrated, but this was something worse.

He was resigned.

“I should have told you,” he said, finally glancing up at her. “It doesn’t change anything. I didn’t know what to say.”

Andie took a deep breath. She knew families were complicated, and titles and property only complicated matters. It was clear his relationship with his family was strained. “Why don’t you tell me now?” she asked softly, playing a couple of hopeful high notes. “What happened?”

“I don’t know where to start.” Frank stared straight ahead. Unconsciously, his hands found the opening chords of the Phantasmagoria, and he gently started to play it a new, pensive pattern, the overture to some tragedy. “I always loved music. It was everything to me. I started with a viola, then cello, then piano, harpsichord…” He let out a long breath. “I set out for my Grand Tour with Felix and Fritz when I was seventeen. Did you or your brothers ever do that? You’re meant to ponder ancient ruins and produce mediocre watercolors.”

Andie shook her head. “They had other interests. I traveled around to study with various tutors, but I didn’t do a lot of drawing.”

“Me neither.” He moved up a key and continued playing. “I was too young to go, really, but old enough that I knew what I wanted out of life. Then one night in Padua, I got the chance to play with an orchestra, and I found I couldn’t stop. By the time my brothers returned, I had joined one and was playing nightly in Rome. I only returned to England when the war broke out. By that time, I was twenty-eight.”

Andie’s hands paused over the keys. “You were gone for eleven years?”

“Just about.” Frank nodded. “My brothers had all grown up and married, and I was alone with a two-year-old daughter. Mother was horrified, naturally.” He gave Andie a tight smile. “She couldn’t understand why I’d brought Lu back with me at all. She insisted I marry, and I even tried courting for a time, but the ladies were the most wretched…” He stopped himself. “Suffice to say, they weren’t anything like you. Few could accept that I already had a child, and those who did insisted I send her away. One even offered to ‘keep her on in service,’ like it was the most generous notion in the world. Can’t get in the way of any legitimate children, you understand.” He hit a few low notes, his expression disgusted. “Of course, Mother agreed with them. What would people think?”

The notes got brighter as he continued. “I had some money of my own. I’d worked nightly for years and never had time to spend it. It wasn’t enough to maintain all of this”—he looked around the room— “but it was enough for a little theater. When I saw the apartment on the top floor, I knew I’d found the right place. Lulu and I moved in that week, and my mother hasn’t spoken to me since.”

Andie rested her hand over his on the keys. “I’m so sorry.”

“Do you think less of me?”

The question broke her heart. “How could I?”

He met her gaze, his eyes filled with the pain of old wounds that still refused to heal. She raised a gloved hand and brushed her fingers through his hair, the silver silk bright in all the dark. He didn’t say anything but let her do it, closing his eyes at the sweetness of her touch. This was enough. He was everything she’d been looking for but hadn’t known she’d wanted. When he opened his eyes, she saw herself in them, recognizing something she’d only felt hints of before.

They were the same.

They understood each other in a way that no one else ever had, because they’d had the same drive, made similar sacrifices, and faced the same impossible decisions. Frank’s decision had ultimately been made for him, but Andie could still choose. She was on the precipice of something irreversible, looking over the edge but still holding on.

She jumped.

Andie kissed him. It was a kiss of understanding, of love, and a promise of the union to come. She had sensed he wasn’t telling her everything, but now that he had, there was no more hesitation.

Frank felt it and kissed her back, passion and relief making him careless. In one swift motion, he pulled her onto his lap. Elated and suddenly ravenous, Andie straddled his hips and wrapped her arms around his neck. After weeks of sneaking kisses in a packed playhouse, they were finally, blessedly alone in the dark, and Andie was going to enjoy it as much as she could.

Lost in sensation, she seized his cravat and pulled him closer, a few keys fluttering as her back bumped the piano. Frank pulled her closer, his lips on her throat as his hand slid up her stocking to her bare thigh under her petticoat. Feeling him there was alarming, but she found she didn’t mind. She had his cravat untied and two buttons popped before he pulled himself away, drowsy with want. “If anyone found us…”

Andie groaned. “I don’t care.”

Taking her at her word with a cheeky smile, he grasped her hips, lifted her, and sat her down on the piano keys with a single discordant bang. One hand pinning her petticoat to her hips, the other brushed the heat between her thighs. After weeks of frustrated want, Andie was so aroused, she nearly screamed at the contact. “Tell me to stop,” he murmured against her lips.

At the press of his arousal against the inside of her thigh, her legs seemed to open of their own accord. She pulled him closer. “Don’t you dare.”

Focused on the heat of his mouth and the scent of his skin, the first press of his fingers came as a surprise. She was so wet, they slid inside her easily, teasing her toward breaking point with long, slow strokes. The man really was good with his hands. Her heart skipped as the tension built, her breath coming faster and faster under she shuddered, only breaking the kiss as she gasped his name.

She held onto his shoulders for dear life as he briefly let go of her hip and fumbled with his falls. Frustrated as his hand left her, she squirmed on the keys, sending a few scrambled notes into the air. Thank God she’d closed the door.

Suddenly something warm, thick, and very hard was pressing up against her. His nose brushing hers, his breath was shallow as he asked, “You’re sure now?”

If Andie was any surer, she’d burst into flame. “For God’s sake, Frank, yes!”

He held her gaze as he slid into her, wary of causing her pain. She gasped as she felt it, but the initial discomfort passed as she adjusted to the new sense of fullness. The feeling that took over was nothing but sublime. But it was slow, too slow. Close, so close to edge, Andie buried her fingers in his hair and dragged his mouth to hers.

Understanding without needing to be told, he braced her lower back with one big hand and hammered into her harder, deeper, and faster, the piano banging louder with every thrust. It was an unholy racket, but Andie had never heard a song she liked quite so much. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and the tension inside her burst, erupting in a scream she muffled in his shoulder.

Undone, Frank withdrew and spent into her petticoat. Not caring a fig for the ruined silk, she kissed him slowly as she came down, needing the moment to last for as long as possible.

It wasn’t to be. Frank had barely fastened his trousers when the door opened quite suddenly to the Duke of Bodmin with the dowager duchess on his arm.

Lord Bodmin took one look at them—Andie still sitting on the piano with Frank, disheveled and missing his cravat, standing between her legs—and said, “Ah. I see you’ve already met.”

The dowager duchess fainted.