“For your sins, for the sins of your mother, I will punish you, once and for all! May you never play again.”
With a curse, his father snatched the candelabra from its perch on the piano and poured hot wax and fire onto Dominique’s hands. When Dominique screamed in anguish and tried to pull away, his father merely held his hands next to Dominique’s, taking the punishment with him, Dominique’s struggles nothing for the giant man. His hatred was so deep that he would rather hurt himself and his son than not give any punishment whatsoever.
With a curse, his father threw him to the ground and marched over to the fireplace, taking Dominique’s sheets of music with him.
“No! Papa, no!” Dominique wailed, for he had worked his entire existence on those songs. They were his everything. With a sneer his father threw them into the fire.
“Follow them into the fires of Perdition for all I care.”
With a scream, Dominique charged his father, his blistered hands reached into the flames, grasping at the remnants of the music. It wasn’t until his hands hit the scorching heat that he noticed his father was holding them there as well.
A scream would not come, though Dominique tried. The blackness enveloped him, and he felt once and for all, he had truly died.
****
15 years later
The carriage dipped, jolting Dominique from his nightmare. Always the same. Always that cursed song. Why was he never given respite? He looked down at his hands, covered by his gloves and never to be seen by the outside world. For their hideous scars were the stuff of legends and dark fairy tales. Surely the girl sitting across from him would expire on the spot if she saw what gruesome brutalities lay beneath his tortured gloves.
With a sigh, he leaned his head back against the leather of the seat. Had he done the right thing in taking her? Now he wasn’t so sure.
He looked across the carriage. His gaze rested on the young girl. Isabelle was her name. Or, in his mind, Belle, for the music surrounding her was true beauty, nothing he had ever seen in his lifetime.
The carriage dipped again and the young beauty opened her eyes. “Are we there yet, my lord?”
“No.” Dominique despised conversation of any type, especially with a woman. He hadn’t any experience with the lot of them unless he needed to satisfy his beastly needs and even then, he never looked at their faces, never kissed them, and never took off his gloves. Women were good for only one thing. Besides that, they could not be trusted. They were full of betrayal and lies.
The young maiden licked her rose-colored lips and pushed her lustrous brown hair away from her face. “Are we close then?”
“Why?” he asked, irritated with her questions. Was she to plague him the entire trip?
“I’m thirsty.” She looked embarrassed; her hands were shaking just slightly. Blast, the girl was probably cold too. What did she think he was about? Being her nursemaid?
“We’ll arrive soon enough.” He cut off the conversation by looking out the window, so desperate was he to get the girl to stop talking, or at least stop staring at him the way she was, with such curiosity and contempt.
“Why did you take me?”
Dominique took a deep breath then turned his gaze back to the girl. Her piercing blue eyes made him desperate for her to stop looking at him. If there was one trait he was always constant on, it was his honesty. So he told her the truth, not because he was being kind, but because it was the only positive characteristic he had. After all, his mother had lied, his father had betrayed him and his music hadn’t saved him at all. Honesty, it seemed, was his only mistress.
With a deep breath, he answered, “Because the minute I gazed upon you, the music changed.”
Chapter One
It is imperative that while writing music, you allow yourself to be lost to it, for those who listen will be the ones who find it, and in that moment a masterpiece will be created.
—The Diary of Dominique Maksylov
Isabelle blinked several times. She told herself to take a breath, or speak, or acknowledge that she had in fact heard what the man had just spoken to her, but she seemed paralyzed.
The music.
He’d said the music changed. What the devil did that mean? And why did his eyes close so often as if he was trying to shut out the world? Pain etched in his brow each time he wrung his hands together and try as she might, she could not figure out the man sitting across from her.
She had heard that Dominique Maksylov was eccentric, a beast, in fact, for he bore some sort of bodily scar given to him by his late father, the royal prince. But everything about the man sitting across from her screamed beauty more than beast.
Oh, with his hair unfashionably long and the overgrowth of beard across his face, he looked like a savage from a foreign land, but he was tall, graceful. Every movement he made seemed as if he was conducting some sort of invisible symphony, even when he lifted his hand to push back the curtains of the carriage. She found her eyes positively transfixed—bewitched by such a simple movement.
It made her wonder what else the man did besides play the piano and write terribly tragic music. There had to be some other purpose for this perfect specimen sitting opposite her. Perhaps she was guilty of reading too many gothic novels, but the way his full lips pursed together, how his hair managed to look wild yet purposefully so, well, he appeared like some fallen angel or a werewolf searching the countryside for his long lost love. Isabelle suppressed a giggle; obviously she was left alone too often. For those were nothing but stories, and her reality sat stone-faced across from her; emptiness and longing was etched on his every feature.
It was said that the Queen cried for two days after one of the court musicians played one of Dominique’s songs. That she, in such a fit of sadness, refused drink and food. Finally, the King himself ordered the doors to her room to be broken down so he could attend to her.
Isabelle had thought it a lovely story, for it showed how moved the woman had been by Dominique’s music, though she had to admit, only someone truly obsessed would go to such extremes. And as much as she loved music, she couldn’t fathom being so moved by it. It was difficult for her to understand how the man across from her could make anything beautiful, haunting. Absolutely.
The carriage jolted.
Isabelle pretended not to watch as Dominique clenched his gloved hands in his lap again, and a scowl of pain stretched across his face.
“Are you well?” she asked before she could guard her tongue from being so impertinent.
His cold blue eyes pierced the air between them. She would not look away, could not back down from such a frigid stare even though it gave her chills down to her toes.