Michael leaned against the cold brick of his fireplace. With unseeing eyes, he sifted idly through a stack of correspondence. So many cards, letters, invitations. And yet the only person whose voice he longed to hear never wished to speak to him again.

Despondent, he glanced over at the table, where yesterday’s paper yet lay. Michael still wasn’t certain whether to frame the Cloven Hoof’s announcement or to burn it.

Despite all odds, he had won the forty day wager—but the victory could not have felt more hollow. He felt no relief over what he had won because all he could think about was who he had lost. And how much she meant.

Camellia had said that winning hadn’t changed anything. That his reputation was still too scandalous to take his proposal seriously. Yet Michael had never been more serious about anything in his life.

There were plenty of other women who would have valued a countess’s life of luxury over something so ephemeral as a reputation. The silver tray on his mantel overflowed with calling cards of ladies hoping to ensnare an earl by any means necessary.

He didn’t want just any woman. He wanted the one he loved. The one he had hoped to share his life with, not merely share a title. Without Camellia, the rest didn’t matter. No amount of riches could bring joy to a loveless marriage.

And she was right. He’d won a wager, not a war. The battle to improve his reputation in society’s eyes was far from over. It might take months, years, before London thought of him as the Earl of Wainwright rather than the Lord of Pleasure.

But he didn’t have years to work on improving his image before winning Camellia back. He might not even have months. Some other toff—a true gentleman—would already have swept her off her feet and whisked her to the nearest altar. If Michael wanted an opportunity to change her mind, he needed to make his case before it was too late. But how, if she refused to even speak to him?

He snapped his gaze back to the stacks of calling cards and correspondence upon the mantel. A spark of hope sizzled across his skin. Camellia may not wish to resume their conversation, but if he wanted to hear her voice… perhaps he still could.

An electric excitement ran through his veins as he rifled through the piles of unopened correspondence until he found the only invitation that mattered. The Grenville soirée musicale. Tonight. No—not just tonight. Right now.

He shoved the small rectangle into the inner pocket of his greatcoat and strode straight to the mews. There was no time to waste with summoning a servant to ready the horses or coaxing his refined coachman into driving with more urgency than befitted an earl.

There wasn’t a moment to spare. Michael would drive himself in his swiftest phaeton.

If he arrived after the performance had begun, he would not be granted entry. Indeed, even though the invitation was hand-lettered to him by Lady Grenville herself, he still had to cross the threshold. If the butler remembered him as the man Camellia had thrown out and instructed never to return…

Oh, who was Michael fooling? Of course the butler would recall such a memorable incident. Michael’s first task wasn’t winning a private word with Camellia. It was wheedling his way through the front door.

Reins in hand, he raced his phaeton through Mayfair’s cobblestone streets. When he arrived at the Grenville townhouse, he handed over the carriage and a gold sovereign to the closest footman and strode up the walk to the front door.

The butler’s lips pursed in distaste upon sight.

Michael’s hopes fell. No matter. He would fall to his knees and beg if necessary. “My name is—”

“Lord Wainwright,” the butler finished darkly. He stepped forward as if to block the entrance. Although he had quickly schooled his features into the carefully blank expression worn by front door staff, the butler showed no sign of stepping aside to grant the earl entry. As trusted staff, he likely considered the girls to be under his protection… and had no intention of allowing them to be hurt anew. “Is the family expecting you?”

Michael rather doubted it. He fumbled for the invitation in his greatcoat pocket and presented the side bearing his name with a flourish. “I am in possession of a personal invitation for tonight’s musicale.”

“I see.” The butler did not move.

Michael’s gut filled with dread. “Has it already begun?”

“It has not,” the butler replied slowly. “Although I expect it shall at any moment.”

There was still time! Michael tried not to display his frustration. “Then may I please come in and take my seat?”

“It’s standing room only.” The butler’s scowl faded. He sighed and stepped aside. “But you may try.”

The acquiescence was so unexpected, Michael blinked twice before he realized the butler was indeed allowing him to cross the threshold. Renewed hope stretched his face into a grin. “I… I may come inside?”

“Miss Bryony and Miss Dahlia both gave me explicit orders,” the butler responded stiffly.

But not Camellia. Michael’s smile dimmed. At least he had been granted entrance. It was more than expected. What happened next was up to him.

He thanked the butler and followed a footman to an open door leading to the rear of a well-appointed salon. Michael’s head jerked back in surprise at the scene inside.

Standing room only didn’t begin to describe the astonishing crush of people present. He stared in disbelief. He’d had no idea the Grenville musicales were this popular. In fact, he’d heard that the same siblings presented the same score in the same format year after year. Yet there were almost as many bodies crammed into one small townhouse as there were attendees at Lambley’s sprawling masquerades.

“The performance is about to begin,” prompted the footman. “All doors must be closed to preserve acoustical purity.”

“Of course,” Michael stammered, and stepped into the room as the door followed right behind him.

Rows of chairs filled the room in two large blocks. Those who had not arrived early enough to secure a seat stood shoulder-to-shoulder about the perimeter. Every eye focused on the small wooden stage at the front of the room. A pianoforte stood to one side, and a thick velvet curtain on the other.

Despite the incredible number of guests in attendance, the salon was completely hushed. The air fairly crackled with excitement and anticipation.

Michael eased along the crowd until he found a bare scrap of wainscoting to lean against by the far wall. It was much farther from the stage than he would have liked, and not at all the best angle to view a performance, but by the looks of things he was fortunate to have found a spot to stand at all.

Lady Grenville stepped out from behind a curtain to the side of the stage and strode to the center to face her guests. “Thank you all for coming to share a night of magic and music. If this is your first time joining us, please allow me to introduce my children as they take the stage. First, my only son: Mr. Heath Grenville.”

A handsome young man with a secretive smile strode out from behind the curtain.

No one clapped. No one even moved. Yet the excitement in the room was even more palpable than before.

The show was finally going to start.

“Mother. Guests.” Mr. Grenville bowed to the hushed room and took a seat at the pianoforte.

Lady Grenville beamed at her son, then turned back to the crowd. “Next, my eldest daughter: Miss Camellia Grenville.”

Michael snapped to attention as Camellia stepped out from behind the curtain in a simple, butter-yellow evening dress. His heart tripped. It was nothing like the elaborate bejeweled gowns paired with exotic feather masks she had worn to the masquerades, and yet she had never looked more lovely to him than she did tonight.

No amount of diamonds and plumes could compare to the beauty of seeing her actual face. Michael would happily spend the rest of his life with both of them in rags if it meant there would be no more masks keeping them apart.

“And last,” Lady Grenville continued with obvious pride. “My youngest daughter: Miss Bryony Grenville.”

When the youngest chit stepped out with a violin in hand, Michael barely managed to restrain a gasp of shock. Because he’d spent the last decade-and-a-half haunting music stores across the continent in search of unique harps, he recognized the instrument for what it was.

Bryony Grenville’s violin was a work of art. A musical masterpiece crafted by none other than the famed luthier Antonio Stradivari. What on earth was happening?

Lady Grenville took her seat in the front row next to her husband.

Michael stood a little straighter. He’d always known that the Grenvilles were neither rich nor poor, neither shunned nor especially fashionable. He’d believed their much-publicized musicales to be nothing more than a mother’s obvious attempt to draw a level of attention to her daughters that they might not otherwise receive. Three suitors for three daughters was too important a task to be left to Almack’s alone.

But the middle daughter wasn’t even present. The youngest had a Stradivarius that cost as much as the townhouse they lived in. It was the son who sat at the pianoforte. And Camellia…

What had Hawkridge said, that day at the circus? The marquess had claimed Camellia’s voice was far superior to the current reigning soprano—a woman internationally famous for the beauty of her voice.

Lady Pettibone had immediately censured the idea of a proper young woman throwing her life and reputation away on something as vulgar as the theater, and the conversation had taken a sharply different path.

Heath Grenville arranged his fingers on the pianoforte and began to play. When Bryony Grenville touched her bow to her strings, Michael’s breath caught from the exquisite sweetness of the sound.

And then Camellia opened her mouth to sing.

The rest of the world fell away. All Michael could feel was the enraptured thump of his heart. All he could see was Camellia’s expressive face. And then not even that. Her voice filled the room, filled his body, filled his head and his heart and his soul.

He was no longer standing in a claustrophobic salon with four inches of wainscoting protruding into his back, but transported to another world. To the vast, endless sky. The joyful notes were like shooting stars exploding across the heavens. The sorrowful chorus ripped his heart from his chest.

The Grenvilles didn’t merely play music. They forced their guests to feel it, to live it, to be it.

Heath Grenville was more talented than Michael had ever suspected. Bryony Grenville was nothing short of phenomenal. But Camellia… Her voice was capable of lifting people out of themselves and into the music itself. Every word was a painting, every soaring trill an adventure.

Michael had never been more in awe—or more in love. She was incredible.

Only when the song ended and her brother began playing the introduction to the next did Michael become aware of murmurs rippling through the room.

He turned to the person next to him. “What is it? What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” replied a wide-eyed gentleman. “This is the sixth song, not the second song. They’ve never strayed from the score.”

Michael frowned. “I’m not sure a change in the order counts as straying from the score.”

“Shh!” A man to the other side waved Michael to silence without taking his gaze from the stage. “Hush. Something must be happening.”

Michael fell silent. Not because the other gentleman had asked him to, but because Camellia had once again started to sing.

She turned words into emotions, lyrics into reality. Her voice ran through his veins like lifeblood, filling him with joy, then despair, then hope, then love. She held the entire room in thrall as she lifted her audience up and tossed them down with the magic of her voice. Not a single person breathed until the song was over.

Dazed, Michael turned to the man next to him in wonder. “Is it always like this?”

The gentleman blinked slowly, as if coming to after a sultry evening in an opium den.

“Always,” he whispered. “Although tonight is even better than—”

Every guest froze in obvious shock as Heath Grenville began to play the next song.

“What is it?” Michael glanced around in alarm. “What’s happening?”

“It’s…a new song,” came the disbelieving voice of a gentleman on the other side. “It’s never a new song.”

Camellia stepped up to the edge of the stage to face the audience.

“Tonight, I am going to sing an aria currently being performed at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden.” She took a deep breath and smiled at the crowd. “With luck, the next time I perform, it will be on that stage.”

A collective gasp ran through the crowd.

Michael’s heart stopped. He hadn’t arrived here tonight just in time to hear her sing. He was watching her give up her reputation, her standing, and her future in order to pursue the thing she wanted most: performing live in an opera.

The sound of a hundred mouths falling open in unison disappeared as the music swelled and Camellia once again began to sing. The notes dove and soared, the lyrics transporting the audience from the impotent rage of betrayal to the tender hope of love, of trust, of possibility.

He almost laughed when he realized the truth. He had come here tonight prepared to promise forty scandal-free years, not mere days, if that was what it took to win a second chance… and it turned out he wasn’t the scandalous one after all.

Camellia was.

For Michael, it changed nothing. But he would never be able to forgive himself if he didn’t encourage the love of his life to live her dream.

She wanted to be an opera singer? With a voice like that, the entire world needed her to be an opera singer.

If she were willing to accept him, he’d be more than happy to play second fiddle to a far more scandalous wife. But if the siren call of the theater filled her world so completely that there was no room left for Michael…

He swallowed his sorrow. Then he would have to let her go.