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This must be the father, composing his fabled Symphony no. 10. West could have a brief listen outside the music room door, a preview of the great composer’s masterwork.
The sleepy servant who answered West’s knock evinced no surprise at seeing him there. It was his house, after all.
West sent him back to bed and made his way to the music conservatory, lured by the music and the promise of hearing the genius at work.
The playing stopped at intervals and was replaced by the scratching of a pen across paper.
West reached the conservatory and paused outside. The door was ajar, the room striped withshadows. The figure sitting at the piano was slight and . . . shapely.
Viola wore a shadow-colored gown. The light in the room danced in the flickering candelabras mounted on either side of the pianoforte and the flames in the fireplace.
Her back was to him, she’d never even know he’d been here.
She stopped making notations and resumed playing.
How could such a small person create such an overwhelming wave of sound? Her fingers flew across the keys and her whole body swayed in time with the music.
She gave herself to the music, letting it possess her, move her, as she would give herself to a lover.
You’re drunk.Go to bed.
He had to stop having these thoughts about her. She was his employee and the woman he’d hired as companion to his sisters. And he was engaged.
And she was living under his roof.
After a difficult passage which she repeated three times, she finally mastered it and laughed aloud. Her voice had a husky richness to it that made him shiver.
Would she laugh with delight like that after he made her come?
All right. You’rereallydrunk. Off to bed, you bounder.
He backed away, heading for safety. His boot caught on the carpet and he nearly fell, righting himself with a hand against the wall.
Viola started, her fingers playing a disharmonious chord. “Who’s there?”
He cleared his throat.
She whirled around. “Your Grace? I didn’t know I had an audience.”
“I was just leaving.”
“Please come in for a moment. I want to ask you something about Lady Blanche.”
A conversation about his sisters. No harm in that. He entered the room, hat in hand. “That was an astounding piece of music you were just playing. Unlike anything I’ve heard you play before.”
“It’s the instrument.” She ran her hand over the scrolling wood. “I’ve never played an Erard pianoforte before. It’s remarkably sonorous. The action is smooth as silk.” She played a shimmering scale. “Such beauty and power.”
Just like you, he wanted to say, stopping himself just in time.
She gazed at the piano, enraptured, and then turned that smile on him, as though he’d given her the instrument as a gift.
He suddenly wished with all his heart that he had given it to her, that he had been the author of that smile.
“What were you playing just now?”
“Oh that?” She shrugged one shoulder. “That was one of my father’s compositions that I was embellishing upon, creating variations on his theme.”
“Do you compose your own music?”
