They continued to smile at each other, but with a little less amusement than a few moments before. He understood her, and perhaps she knew he did.
“Perhaps Jessica?” she suggested, and laughed. “Now she is eligible. Even more than I am. Though I do pity the man who has to face Avery to ask for her hand. He can be terrifying.”
“I may have to decide if I am willing to take the risk, then,” he said just as they were joined by her twin and a friend she introduced as Mrs. Overleigh.
If he had been invited here as a possible suitor for Lady Estelle, Gabriel thought, then his continued presence here was redundant. Rochford was fawning all over Lady Jessica. How the devil was he going to use this occasion to some advantage in order to romance her? He had not set eyes upon her for three days, and though she might have seen the humor of the pink rose the first day, the joke might have worn a bit thin on subsequent days. Besides, he did not suppose a joke was romantic. But what else was he to do? He found it difficult, even impossible, to be ostentatious. He would feel downright embarrassed about sending a bouquet. The next thing he might find himself doing was kissing his fingertips and blowing her a kiss or gazing soulfully at her.
He discovered as the evening progressed that this was not the sort of party at which one spent the whole time in the same place with the same set of fellow guests. These people were adept at moving about, aligning themselves with different groupings, keeping the conversation fresh and touching upon any number of topics. No one dominated any conversation, though Gabriel suspected Rochford would have done so if he had been allowed. But almost immediately after he had divulged that damning and astoundingly inaccurate information about Gabriel Rochford and his relationship with him, both Riverdale and Lady Hodges deftly turned the subject without being at all obvious about it. Both had perhaps felt that such conversation was not appropriate to the occasion, though young Peter Wayne, one of Molenor’s sons, had been agog with interest.
It was a strange tale Rochford had told. He had been just a boy when Gabriel went to America—a boy he had never met and had known next to nothing about. Yet there had been the story about his own wildness and its gradual development into vice and rape and murder. Had all these lies come from Anthony Rochford’s father? After thirteen years, without any contrary story being told, were the details now etched in stone? Had Rochford told the story tonight with the sole purpose of blackening the name of a cousin he assumed was not alive to speak for himself? So that no one would question the moral as well as the legal right of his father to take over the title?
Lady Hodges had moved to include Viscountess Dirkson and another lady in the group, and Lady Estelle had turned away with her friend when two young men, Dirkson’s son, Gabriel believed, and the friend’s husband, drew their attention. The Duchess of Netherby had approached to say good evening to Rochford. He was bowing over her hand and raising it to his lips.
“Lady Jessica,” Gabriel said, seizing the opportunity, “do you play the pianoforte?” There was a grand pianoforte in one corner of the drawing room, though no one had yet gone near it.
She raised her eyebrows in that haughty way of hers. “Well,” she said, “I do, but I do not lay claim to any great talent. My music teacher told me one day when I was still a child that I played as though I had ten thumbs instead of just two and eight fingers. All my governess could say in my defense was that it was unkind of him to speak so candidly. And when I ran to Avery to complain, all he did was look at me with that pained expression he is so good at and ask me what my point was.”
Everyone in the group laughed.
“We love you anyway, Jessica,” her aunt, Lady Dirkson, said, her eyes warm with merriment. “And that was a cruel thing to say, and not at all accurate.”
“Definitely not ten thumbs, Jess,” Peter Wayne, her cousin, assured her. “More like eight thumbs and two little fingers.”
“Perhaps you would care to tackle a duet,” Gabriel suggested.
“You play?” Lady Jessica asked.
He did. He had never had lessons and no one had ever encouraged him, though his aunt had come quietly into the room a few times at Brierley while he was playing and quietly listened and quietly went away again. Cyrus’s late wife had had a pianoforte in Boston, sadly out of tune. Gabriel had had it tuned after Cyrus’s death and had played it for his own entertainment.
“A little,” he admitted.
“You must certainly play for us, then,” Lady Hodges said with her characteristic warm smile, and she raised an arm to summon her husband. “There is some sheet music inside the bench.”
He had never learned to read music.
“Shall we?” he asked, reaching out a hand toward Lady Jessica.
“Oh dear,” she said, eyeing his hand with obvious misgiving. But she set her own in it and allowed him to lead her toward the pianoforte. Lord Hodges had opened the cover over the keys and was propping open the lid. Lady Hodges was removing a pile of music from inside the bench and setting it on top.
“There,” she said. “I am sure you can find something you know, Jessica. And anytime I have heard you play I have found your performance quite competent.”
She smiled at them both, took her husband’s arm, and went off to mingle with their guests.
Lady Jessica looked through the pile of music while Gabriel stood half behind her, his hands at his back.
“Thank you for the roses,” she murmured.
“I have always considered a single rose more lovely than a whole vaseful,” he said.
She paused over one sheet of music, opened it, closed it again, and set it on top of the pile of discards.
“It enables one to concentrate the whole of one’s attention upon the beauty of a single bloom,” he said. He was sounding pompous.
“That reminds me of the poem that begins, To see the world in a grain of sand,” she said. “Do you know it?”
“By William Blake?” he said. “Yes. Another of the lines, I believe, is, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand. It is the same idea in a different image. And a single rose can be more breathtaking than a whole garden.”
“I could never quite understand Mr. Blake’s point when I was a girl,” she said. “A grain of sand is merely a grain of sand, I used to think.”
She played a ballad, “Barbara Allen,” though she did not sing the words. She played competently and even made a key change halfway through without stumbling. The guests had not stopped their conversations, but there was a smattering of applause nevertheless when she had finished.
“Let me see your hands,” Gabriel said, leaning slightly over the keyboard. She spread her fingers and turned her hands palms up while she looked inquiringly at him. “I see four fingers and one thumb on your left hand and four and one on your right. Your music teacher was cruel. And quite wrong.”
“I was ten years old,” she said. “And he actually did me a favor. I was so furious with him and with my governess and with Avery that I was determined to show them how wrong they were. After that I practiced twice as long as I was required to instead of half as much, as I had been doing. I wanted all three of them to eat their words.”
“And did they?” he asked.
“Not to my knowledge,” she said. “But I did learn to play well enough not to make an utter cake of myself in company. You have not chosen your music, Mr. Thorne. I shall not let you escape, you see, after you’ve admitted to being able to play.” She got to her feet, folded her sheet of music, and set it on top of the pile.
“My music is here,” he told her, tapping a finger against his temple. Though that was not strictly true. He had to think, yes, in order to bring a tune to mind, but the music was not in his mind. And when he sat at the pianoforte, he had to rid his mind even of the tune so that it would not interfere with his fingers as they played. He did not know where the music itself came from after that. He did not know how his fingers hit the right notes or how they knew what other notes to play in order to create the full melody and the accompaniment. It all came from some unknown somewhere inside him, yet it seemed too vast to fit within his frame. It was a good thing he had never tried to describe the process to anyone.
“You have memorized it?” she asked as he sat on the bench and arranged the tails of his coat behind him. “That is impressive.”
He very rarely played in company, and when he did, it was usually merely to entertain. Fortunately there was a hum of sound as people continued their conversations. This corner of the room actually seemed like an oasis of quiet. Of which Lady Jessica Archer was a part.
He gazed at the keyboard, not quite seeing it. He listened to the melody of Bach’s “Jesus bleibet meine Freude”—Jesus shall remain my joy—in his head. Then he set his fingers on the keys, let them find the ones he wanted, emptied his mind, and played. Perhaps, he thought for the first few moments, he ought to have chosen something lighter, something simpler, something more obviously entertaining. He was very aware of Lady Jessica standing beside the bench, watching his fingers.
And then the music took possession of him. He closed his eyes, tipped back his head, frowning, as the main melody, stately and dignified, asserted itself through his left hand while his right hand after the first introductory moments continued with the ripple of joyful accompaniment. It was a soul-wrenching contrast, part of his mind thought, between deep emotion and exuberant joy. He had heard it played on the organ in the church at Brierley when he was a boy, and the music had been a part of him ever since.