Elizabeth Mansfield (13 page)

After the cheerful and leisurely meal, the diners discovered to their chagrin that the rain still poured down too heavily to permit them to resume their ride. But Lord Canfield would not allow his guests to languish in boredom. “There is a fine billiard room upstairs,” he suggested. “Shall we go up and play for a while?”

“Oh, what a splendid idea!” Cleo said eagerly.

“Yes, splendid for you,” Tris laughed. He turned to explain to Peter that Cleo had a real talent for wielding a cue and would promptly put the men to shame. “But Julie doesn’t care much for billiards,” he added with a sigh.

Julie recognized a look of slyness in his eyes. He was plotting something, she was certain of it. “I’ll be happy to play, if that’s what you all wish to do,” she assured them.

But that was not what Tris had in mind. He didn’t wish for her to play at all. “No need to sacrifice yourself on our account,” he said with bland innocence while giving Julie a surreptitious wink. “Perhaps Peter will show you about the house while Cleo and I play.”

“That’s an excellent suggestion,” Peter said at once, his voice so eager that Julie could have no doubt of its sincerity. “Ever since the night of the musicale, I’ve been most eager to show Miss Branscombe my pianoforte.” He turned to her with a smile. “It was made by Zumpe, you see, and it has—”

“Pedals!” Julie cried, clapping her hands excitedly. “Oh, Peter, how wonderful! I’ve never actually tried a pianoforte with pedals.”

“There, then, that’s settled,” Tris declared, throwing Julie a look of triumph before taking Cleo’s arm and steering her toward the stairs. “You two go along to see the pianoforte, and we’ll go up to the billiard room. Don’t bother showing us up, Peter. I know the way.”

Peter and Julie watched them disappear up the stairs. Then Julie glanced at Peter in embarrassment. “Tris maneuvered that on purpose, you know,” she said. “To force you to be alone with me.”

“I’m glad he did,” his lordship said, taking her arm. “I’ve truly wanted you to try my piano, for one thing. And for another, Tris’s machinations actually caused you to call me by my given name.”

Julie reddened. “Did I?”

“Yes, you did. ‘Oh, Peter, how wonderful.’ Those were your very words. Music to my ears, I might add.”

“What humbug,” she said as they started down the hall toward the music room. “You needn’t flirt with me when Tris is out of earshot, you know.”

“I’m not flirting at all, you goose. Don’t you know the difference between mere cajolery and sincere compliments?”

“Perhaps I don’t. Tris says I don’t tolerate compliments very well.”

“He’s apparently right. From now on, Miss Branscombe, please believe that any compliment I give you is utterly honest. Despite your mother’s remark when we first met, I’m not the sort to pour buttersauce over a girl. Promise me you’ll take my word.”

“Very well, I’ll promise. But in return you must stop calling me Miss Branscombe. If I’ve begun to call you Peter, surely you can call me Julie.”

They’d arrived at the music room. Julie gasped at the sight of the magnificent instrument they’d come to see. It was longer than the pianos she’d seen before, made of highly polished rosewood, with curved sides inlaid with brass figures of Greek dancers and musicians. Six gracefully carved legs held up the L-shaped body. Julie immediately noted the lute-like appendage that hung down below the keyboard, bearing three brass pedals. Although she’d heard about this thirty-year-old innovation to the pianoforte, which deepened and enriched the tone, she’d never before seen an instrument that actually
had
pedals. The few pianos in Amberford were too old to benefit from the improvement. She took a step into the room and stared, awestruck.

“Go on, Julie, sit down and try it,” Peter urged.

“Oh, no, I ... I couldn’t!” she muttered, backing off.

“Nonsense. No one here is capable of playing it, and it needs to be played.”

“Don’t you play?”

“I?” He shook his head, amused at the thought. “Men of my ilk are taught riding, hunting and fisticuffs, not music, I’m afraid. Please, Julie, do sit down and play something.”

“Very well, if you wish it.”

She sat down gingerly on the lavishly upholstered seat, turned the wheel at its side to adjust the height and began to play a simple etude. Her first attempts at pedaling made her jump—their effect on the sound was startling. But she soon accustomed herself to the change and, almost forgetting where she was, lost herself for a few moments in the sheer joy of the quality of the sound she could create on this wonderful instrument. It was only when she heard a distant clock chime the hour that she came back to herself. More than a few moments must have gone by, she realized. She must have been playing for more than twenty minutes! She looked round, embarrassed, and opened her mouth to apologize, but she found him gazing at her with such undisguised admiration that words failed her.

“That was lovely,” he said softly. “Please go on.”

She shook her head and jumped to her feet. “Thank you, but no. I didn’t mean to bore you so long. Please forgive me.”

“It was anything but boring. I could sit here and listen to you all day.”

“Come now, Peter, you swore you’d give me no butter-sauce.”

“And you promised to accept—and believe—my compliments.”

She felt her throat tighten with grateful tears. No one had ever said such kind things to her before. “I think you should show me some more of the house,” she suggested hastily, to hide her emotions.

He did not argue but offered his arm. As they strolled along the hallway, looking into the various rooms, he pointed out—as befitted a polite host—some of the noteworthy accoutrements he’d brought with him from his London house: a pair of magnificent Irish crystal chandeliers in the large dining room, an elaborately designed Persian rug in the drawing room and a number of family portraits they passed on the way. His manner was so pleasant and his remarks about his treasures so modestly humorous that she lost all feeling of self-consciousness and timidity. She felt deliciously comfortable and at home.

This sense of ease emboldened her. When they strolled by a pair of closed doors, and he made no mention of what they led to, she, barely hesitating, brazenly asked what was behind them.

“You don’t want to see it,” he answered. “It’s not fit for guests.”

“Aha! A Bluebeard!” she taunted saucily. “I knew you were too good to be true. Is that where you keep the heads of your murdered wives?”

He laughed. “Now that you’ve guessed my secret,” he retorted with a mocking, menacing leer, twirling the ends of an imaginary mustachio, “you will soon find yourself among them. Come! I dare you to step over the threshold.” He threw open the doors, his leer changing to a rather embarrassed grin. “It’s my library, but as you see, hardly in condition for company.”

But Julie, stepping over a pile of wrapping litter, looked about her, entranced. Though the state of the room had not much improved from the time Tris had last seen it, with boxes and packing cases still scattered over the floor, books still spilling out of them and dust still covering everything, she could see, nevertheless, what an impressive room it was. She gazed in wide-eyed admiration at the tall windows, the paneled walls and the lovely gallery. “What a wonderful room!” she breathed, clasping her hands to her chest. “Why have you left it in such neglect?”

“I want to arrange my books myself,” he explained, “but I’ve had no time of late to attend to it, having become involved in the affairs of a silly chit who claims to need lessons in flirtation.”

Her eyes fell from his face. “That is most selfish of her,” she murmured. “You should tell her at once that you have more important things to do with your time.”

He came up to her and lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Even if I find time spent with her more enjoyable than sorting through books?”

“M-more enjoyable? Really?”

“Infinitely more enjoyable.”

She felt her heart swell up again. “If I had the choice,” she admitted in her soft voice, “I would find sorting books more enjoyable than lessons in flirtation.” Her eyes looked pleadingly into his. “We have time this afternoon. Tris and Cleo will play for hours. May I not help you with the sorting now?”

“Now? Impossible.”

“But why?”

“Because it’s filthy work, for one thing. Your clothes would become so grimy they would be beyond recovery. Take my word for it. My valet has already had to discard three of my shirts.”

“I don’t care a fig for these old riding clothes. Please, Peter. I’d love to see some of your books.”

He could not resist. He took off his coat, tossed it over an unopened crate and led her to a packing case resting in the far corner. “I’ve just started on this batch—my poetry books,” he said. “I plan to shelve them here, near the window.”

She nodded eagerly. “How shall we proceed? I can sit on the floor, dust off the books one at a time, read off each title and hand the book to you for shelving. Does that sound efficient?”

“Oh, yes, quite. But I can’t permit you to sit on the floor with a dustcloth like a housemaid.”

“You have not the right to ‘permit’ me anything,” she declared firmly, picking up a cloth and sitting down on the floor before he could say another word. “I may behave as I wish. Besides, I’m not above dusting. I’ve wielded a dustcloth many a time.” She pulled a volume from the box, dusted it and read the words on the spine: “Edmund Spencer,
The Faerie Queen.”

He hesitated a moment, unwilling to take advantage of her good nature. But after another glance at her determined expression, he shrugged and took the book from her hand. They proceeded with the labor in that way for a long while, going through half the packing case without deviation from the system she’d devised. When she handed him Herrick’s
Hesperides,
however, she chanced to remark that it was a favorite of hers. “Of mine too,” Peter said with a pleased smile, and he sat down beside her to read his favorite passages. This led to a reading of selections from Dryden’s
The Hind and the Panther,
Thomson’s
Seasons
and Milton’s
Samson Agonistes.
So engrossed were they in the discovery of each other’s poetic tastes that they did not notice that two hours had passed, that the rain had stopped and that the late afternoon sun was slanting through the windows and illuminating their bent heads. Peter, reading aloud Andrew Mar-veil’s “A Definition of Love,” had arrived at the penultimate stanza:

As
lines, so loves oblique, may well

Themselves in every angle greet;

But ours, so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

After reading those words, he looked up and saw that she had tears in her eyes. “Julie!” he exclaimed. “Why—?”

“Is that the definition of love?” she asked, embarrassedly wiping away the tears with her fingers, causing smudges to appear under both her eyes. “Two parallel lines that can never meet?”

“Not necessarily,” he said with a smile, taking note not of the smudges but how the sun was haloing her hair. “Marvell is adopting Plato’s definition—love as a longing that is never fulfilled. But one needn’t accept—”

“I think there may be much truth in it,” she said, sighing sadly and lowering her head.

“Come now, my dear,” he said gently, “the verse has more poetic charm than truth. You are too lovely to believe that your life will be spent in unfulfilled longing.” He reached out and lifted her chin again. “The parallel lines will bend for you, I promise.”

Her mouth trembled. “You don’t know—! You can’t promise ...”

Something about her—the liquid eyes, the parted lips, the smudged cheeks, the sun-tipped hair ... he would never know what—aroused in him an irresistible impulse. Almost without thought, he leaned toward her and kissed her mouth. It was a gentle kiss, so soft she did not jump or pull away; she merely made a little sound in her throat, and her hand come up to his cheek. The touch roused him even more. Before he quite realized what he was doing, there in the mote-filled sunshine, he lifted himself up on his knees and pulled her into a tight embrace, his mouth never leaving hers.

It was at that moment that Tris came in search of them. He opened the door of the library and saw them. In the dusty light they appeared to be frozen into immortality, like the figures in a painting by an Italian master, their faces shadowed, their bodies outlined in gold. The sight was almost heavenly, so eloquently did the scene speak of rapture. To interrupt them would have been like interrupting a benediction. His throat constricted, and he silently backed out and closed the door.

But both Peter and Julie heard the sound; they broke apart at the instant of the door’s closing. Peter’s eyes flew to the door. “It must have been Tris, looking for us,” he said.

She, however, was not able to turn her eyes from him. The embrace had been shattering for her. Never had she felt so overwhelmed with emotion. Every drop of blood in her body seemed to be dancing, every cell trembling with a kind of ecstatic agony. “Oh, Peter!” she gasped.

He gazed at her guiltily. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t know what possessed me. The poetry, I suppose. Please, Julie, blame Andrew Marvell if you must place blame.”