Cold-Hearted Rake

“I know the value of details. But where shirts are concerned…” He hesitated. “I’ve made a point of wearing the kind that I sell, so that customers know they have the same quality as the store’s owner.”

“That sounds like a clever sales strategy.”

“It is. I sell more shirts than any other store in London. But it didn’t occur to me that the upper class pays close attention to buttonholes.”

It had chafed his pride, she thought, to realize that he had put himself at a disadvantage when mingling with social superiors.

“I’m sure they shouldn’t,” Helen said apologetically. “There are far more important things for them to worry about.”

His gaze turned quizzical. “You speak as if you’re not one of them.”

She smiled slightly. “I’ve lived away from the world for so much of my life, Mr. Winterborne, that I sometimes wonder who I am, or if I belong anywhere.”

Winterborne studied her. “Trenear plans to take you and your sisters to London when you’ve finished mourning.”

Helen nodded. “I haven’t been to town since I was a child. I remember it as a very large and exciting place.” She paused, vaguely surprised that she was confiding in him. “Now I think I might find it… intimidating.”

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “What happens when you’re intimidated? Run to the nearest corner and hide, do you?”

“I should say not,” she said primly, wondering if she were being teased. “I do what has to be done, no matter what the situation.”

Winterborne’s smile widened until she saw the flash of white teeth against that deep bronze complexion. “I suppose I know that better than most,” he said softly.

Understanding that he was referring to how she had helped him through the fever… and remembering how she had held that black head in the crook of her arm, and bathed his face and neck… Helen felt a blush start. Not the ordinary kind of blush that faded soon after it started. This one kept heating and heating, spreading all through her until she was so uncomfortable that she could scarcely breathe. She made the mistake of glancing into his simmering coffee-black eyes, and she felt positively immolated.

Her desperate gaze settled upon the battered pianoforte in the corner. “Shall I play something for you?” She stood without waiting for a reply. It was the only alternative to bolting from the room. Out of the periphery of her vision, she saw Winterborne automatically grip the arms of his chair in preparation to rise, before he remembered that he was in a leg cast.

“Yes,” she heard him say. “I’d like that.” He maneuvered the chair a few inches so that he could see her profile as she played.

The pianoforte seemed to offer a small measure of protection as she sat at the keyboard and pushed up the hinged fallboard that covered the keys. Taking a slow, calming breath, Helen arranged her skirts, adjusted her posture, and placed her fingertips on the keys. She launched into a piece she knew by memory: the allegro from Handel’s Piano Suite in F Major. It was full of life and complexity, and challenging enough to force her to think about something besides blushing. Her fingers danced in a blur over the keys, the exuberant pace unfaltering for two and a half minutes. When she finished, she looked at Winterborne, hoping he had liked it.

“You play with great skill,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Is that your favorite piece?”

“It’s my most difficult,” Helen said, “but not my favorite.”

“What do you play when there’s no one to hear?”

The gentle question, spoken in that accent with vowels as broad as his shoulders, caused Helen’s stomach to tighten pleasurably. Perturbed by the sensation, she was slow to reply. “I don’t remember the name of it. A piano tutor taught it to me long ago. For years I’ve tried to find out what it is, but no one has ever recognized the melody.”

“Play it for me.”

Calling it up from memory, she played the sweetly haunting chords, her hands gentle on the keys. The mournful chords never failed to stir her, making her heart ache for things she couldn’t name. At the conclusion, Helen looked up from the keys and found Winterborne staring at her as if transfixed. He masked his expression, but not before she saw a mixture of puzzlement, fascination, and a hint of something hot and unsettling.

“It’s Welsh,” he said.

Helen shook her head with a laugh of wondering disbelief. “You know it?”

“‘A Ei Di’r Deryn Du.’ Every Welshman is born knowing it.”

“What is it about?”

“A lover who asks a blackbird to carry a message to his sweetheart.”

“Why can’t he go to her himself?” Helen realized they were both speaking in hushed tones, as if they were exchanging secrets.

“He can’t find her. He’s too deep in love – it keeps him from seeing clearly.”

“Does the blackbird find her?”

“The song doesn’t say,” he said with a shrug.

“But I must know the ending to the story,” Helen protested.

Winterborne laughed. It was an irresistible sound, rough-soft and sly. When he replied, his accent had thickened. “That’s what comes o’ reading novels, it is. The story needs no ending. That’s not what matters.”

“What matters, then?” she dared to ask.

His dark gaze held hers. “That he loves. That he’s searching. Like the rest of us poor devils, he has no way of knowing if he’ll ever have his heart’s desire.”