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Lina rounded on Rees. “Why are you keeping all this garbage?” she asked. “Do you honestly think there’s a good piece of music on the floor somewhere?”

He looked at her, his face unmoving. But Helene saw a spark of uncertainty in his eyes and cursed Lina inwardly. How dare she make him feel worse about his music than he already did?

“There might well be something marvelous here,” she said quickly. “This piece is breathtaking and fresh, for example.” She sang the little score she had picked up from the floor, adding a couple of minor aeolian triplets, for emphasis.

Rees snatched it out of her hands and then gave her a hard look. “Breathtaking after you got hold of it, perhaps,” he said. But he didn’t sound truly distressed.

“Supper is served, my lord,” Leke said, appearing behind them.

Rees dropped both sheets back to the floor. “Right,” he said briskly, standing back and allowing Helene, Rees, and Tom to pass before him. “You are spared the indignity of waltzing for the moment, Tom.”

“Tell the footmen to clear up all this mess,” Rees said to Leke, jerking his head at the floor.

Leke’s jaw literally fell open for a second before he snapped it shut. “Yes, sir,” he said hastily.

“I should like the room cleared by the end of our meal. And move that harpsichord to the side so that we have a dancing floor,” Rees said, striding after his wife.

In point of fact, he was striding after Lina and Tom, but somehow he didn’t think of it that way.

“I didn’t know that waltzes had a song with them,” Rees said with considerable curiosity. “Where did you get the words from?” He had picked up Helene’s score and was looking it over. Her fingers itched to grab it back. In the middle of the sitting room, Lina was showing Tom the steps of the waltz with a certain hilarity.

Helene bit her lip. The part of her that was terrified of being exposed as a rank amateur was urging her to dash from the room. “I wrote the words as well,” she said, watching his eyes move over the paper.

Once he looked up at her briefly, but he said nothing. Then he put the score back down in front of her. “I feel as if I have never understood you.”

Helene’s eyes dropped to her fingers, waiting on the keyboard to begin playing. “There’s not very much to understand,” she said, embarrassed.

“Shove over,” Rees said, sitting down.

“I’m playing the waltz,” Helene protested. But her body traitorously welcomed that broad shoulder next to her, the heat of his body.

“I’m going to have to sing it with you, aren’t I?” he asked.

“I can sing it myself,” she said, the color rising even higher in her cheeks.

“I thought there were two voices!” he said, picking up the score again.

“Oh, no,” Helene replied. “It’s only one. I never marked a change of voice.”

“Well, you should have done so,” Rees said. “Look, here’s your first verse, ending with Let me, lovely girl, embrace you, As would a lover his lovable bride. That line repeats, right? As would a lover his lovable bride.”

Rees never sang things with florid emphasis. Instead his deep baritone took Helene’s rather simple lines and gave them a masculine flair that turned them incantatory. “It seems obvious to me that the next verse should be sung by the bride, not the groom: So surrender ourselves to the delicious deception, Happily imagining what will never come to pass, Happily imagining what will never come to pass. The male voice wouldn’t want to emphasize the fact their embrace will never come to pass. The female voice might, though.”

“I never thought of making it a duet,” Helene said, staring at the words. “I would have to rewrite the fourth stanza.”

“If it was a duet, they could sing the final stanza together,” Rees said. “What has wilted once, ne’er blooms again. Never will rosy youth bloom for us, again… That’s a bleak line, but it makes sense to have their voices intertwine.”

“Let’s try it,” Helene said. Tom and Lina seemed to be ready. In fact, they were holding hands as if they were about to start a country dance, rather than a waltz. “Tom,” Helene called. “Do you feel able to give this dance a try?”

“Of course,” he said, turning to Lina so quickly that he almost tripped.

“Right!” Helene said, nodding at Rees. “There’s a musical portion first. The song doesn’t begin until I’ve repeated this section twice. I’ll count to three,” she told Lina and Tom.

Lina curtsied before the vicar and then his hand settled at her waist.

“This is dangerous,” Tom said, almost under his breath.

“Ready,” Helene called, dropping her hands to the keyboard. The music flowed around them sweetly, a languorous, swirling invitation to dance.