"Why? Are... umm... governesses in such short supply these days?"
"Suffice it to say, when I am paying for things, I like them my way."
Grace didn"t want to dance around the issue. If he was making an honorable offer, she would accept it. If not, she would write to her brother. "What do you believe you will be paying for?"
"A governess." When she did not reply, he went on, "Since you seem to wish for plain speaking, I will confess I came here with a different offer in mind, but you are clearly not amenable to the idea of being my mistress." His smile became winsome, meant to sweeten. "I give you fair warning that I am going to attempt to change your mind on that score, but in the interim, I am offering you a post as governess to my daughter instead."
"I see. At least you are honest. If you make these attempts to change my mind, as you put it, and I continue to refuse you, what then?"
"Then you refuse." His dark eyes narrowed a bit. "I won"t force you, if that is what you fear."
He certainly hadn"t needed to force her last night, she thought with chagrin. "Why me?" she asked. "A man like you has no trouble finding a mistress."
"You are not just any woman. I told you last night, I hear music with you."
"You were just saying that," she scoffed. "You did not mean it."
"But I did mean it. When I am with you, I hear music. You inspire me."
Oh, G.o.d. She closed her eyes and saw herself on a Cornish hillside with another man, a man who had wanted the very same thing of her. A man with blue eyes, not black, looking at her over the top of a canvas on a cliff above the sea.
My muse, Etienne had always called her. Etienne Cheval, the greatest painter of his day, who had believed that a commonplace English girl from an unremarkable country family was the wellspring from which he could draw all his inspiration and brilliance, who had blamed her and broken her heart when it had not worked.
"You need not look as if I am leading you to your execution," Moore said, breaking into her thoughts.
His dry comment caused Grace to open her eyes. Etienne"s image disappeared at once, vanquished by the much more dominating presence of the man right in front of her, a man dark and ravaged, and very much alive.
"Why does Dylan Moore need a muse?" she asked.
"Why do you loathe the idea of being one?"
Grace looked at him, helpless to explain. She felt history repeating itself, and she did not know why. She was nothing like what an artist"s lover ought to be. She was practical, serious-minded, moral, and not exciting at all. It was so strange, she thought, that not one but two men of genius could see the same thing in her, something that captivated their imaginations and inspired them to create works of art. She did not understand it, for she was so very ordinary.
Muses, she knew, did not exist. Her dismay vanished, leaving only a deep, bruising tiredness. "It doesn"t work, you know."
Something painful flickered in his expression, but in less than a second, his face was once again unreadable. "Yes, it does. It has to."
Grace sighed. A blocked and frustrated artist in a dry spell who wanted an easy way out of the drought. Though this was an ideal opportunity to escape the dire straits in which she found herself, accepting Moore"s offer would be like wrapping herself in chains. She wanted nothing to do with artists and their art. "Thank you for your offer, Mr. Moore," she said, shaking her head, "but I must refuse. I cannot give you what you want. You promised me five pounds for listening, two of which you gave my landlady on my behalf. I would like the other three now, please. Then I would like you to leave."
She expected him to refuse to pay her, or sulk and argue and ask tiresome questions about her reasons, but he did none of those things. He sat there and studied her, his deep-set eyes unwavering in their scrutiny. Grace waited, but the seconds came and went and still he did not stir.
"I would like you to go," she said, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
"Slate blue shutters," he murmured, his intense gaze still on her face. "And lots of roses."
Those words. .h.i.t her like a punch to the stomach. Grace sucked in a deep breath at having her deepest desire quoted back to her. d.a.m.n the man.
"A cottage in the country with a garden," he went on. "If that is what you want, Grace, I can provide it."
Of course he could. She should have known a devil would tempt her with what she wanted most.
"I happen to have just such a cottage," he went on. "The shutters are not blue, I"m afraid, but that can be remedied. And, if memory serves, there are plenty of roses in the garden."
She pressed a hand to her forehead, thinking of her disgraced family and Dylan Moore"s fame. If she lived with him, even as a governess, people would still think the worst. On the other hand, her reputation was beyond amendment, and what did it matter? What was left of her family had already rejected her. It would be stupid to refuse an offer such as this. So, so stupid. She felt herself beginning to crack. "Please tell me this cottage is not in Cornwall," she said.
"No, Devonshire, actually," he answered. "It sits on an estate I own there. It is yours if you work for me for the coming twelve months. The same terms still apply, however. You cannot leave unless I tell you to go, and I will not pay you until the end of that year. Then I will deed the cottage to you and pay you all wages I owe you."
"What are these wages?"
"Is one thousand pounds acceptable to you?"
"A thousand pounds? As one year"s wages for a governess? You must be-"
"Mad?" He moved unexpectedly, straightening and rising from the bed in the taut, fluid motions of a predatory animal. As he crossed her tiny room, Grace took an involuntary step back, and her heel hit the door behind her.
"I am not mad. Not yet, at least." He halted with scarcely a foot of s.p.a.ce between them. "I want you, I have made no secret of it. I hope with time to make you feel the same and become my mistress in truth for as long as it is agreeable to us both. If that happens, I will give you far more lavish gifts than a mere cottage and a thousand pounds, believe me. If you choose to be nothing more than a governess for the coming year, then that is your choice. Be aware that I would never make an offer as generous as this to any other woman to be merely a governess. This is for you alone."
"Why me?" she cried out in frustration, asking the question not only of him but of the great Cheval as well. Etienne, who could not answer her, who had never been able to answer her.
Moore, one of the most brilliant composers who had ever lived, could not answer it either. A hint of her own bafflement crossed his face. "I don"t know," he said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "I cannot explain it."
Grace stepped around him and crossed the room to put more distance between them. How could she accept? How could she not?
She turned to look at him over her shoulder. The fine linen sleeves of his white shirt and the gold b.u.t.tons on his black-and-beige striped waistcoat looked so expensive and elegant against the pitted, dingy wall of her flat. He expected her to do what all his money and position and talent could not do. Take away his desperation. She would fail, and he would hate her for it, but that could not be helped. He had made himself her only honorable chance to have a life beyond the edge of dest.i.tution, and she was going to take it. "I accept."
"It is done, then." He walked around her to the door, fastening shirt b.u.t.tons as he went. He pulled his cravat from the chair, turned up his high collar, and wrapped the damp strip of silk around his neck.
"What sort of education do you require for your daughter?" she asked as he moved to the tin-framed mirror on her wall near the door. He knotted his cravat, bending to see his hands reflected in the distorted gla.s.s as she went on, "I can instruct her in violin, but as I am not accomplished with piano, I fear-"
His abrupt shout of laughter stopped her. He straightened, giving her a wry glance as he pulled his coat from the chair and shrugged into it. "Isabel is a better composer than I was at her age. She plays the piano exquisitely. Violin instruction would not go amiss, I daresay." He paused, frowning in thought. "Unless she already knows how to play the violin. Given her talents, that would not surprise me."
"You don"t know if your own daughter plays the violin?"
"No." He did not elaborate. "I leave it to you to select an appropriate curriculum for her. I would imagine you know more about what a little girl needs in the way of an education than I do." He pulled his card from the pocket of his coat and tossed it on top of the oranges in her basket. "I hope you can begin your duties tomorrow," he went on, placing three one-pound notes in her basket as well. "I will expect you at eleven o"clock."
"This is so absurd!" she cried, still unable to quite take it all in. "Paid like a mistress to do a governess"s job."
"Absurdity is part of life, is it not?" He slung his cloak around his shoulders and reached for the handle of the door.
She watched him open it and walk out. "What if you find me a horrible governess?" she called after him.
"It does not matter in the least."
"So being your daughter"s governess is merely a pretext to install me in your household? It really has nothing to do with her, does it?"
He stopped and turned to look at her in the doorway. "No." With that, he departed and closed the door behind him.
Grace stared at the door after he had gone, bemused. Her feelings about what she had just done were bewildering and contradictory. On the one hand, she was so relieved to have employment, food, and a secure roof over her head that it made her weak, and the notion that a home of her own and a thousand pounds awaited her at the end of one short year was almost too good to be true. It seemed unreal.
She was not worried about being a governess. Having been the oldest of seven, she knew enough about looking after children to deal well with one eight-year-old. It was her employer who worried her. Dylan Moore was a man obsessed with his music and in the throes of thwarted creativity. He was willful, arrogant, and as changeable as an English spring day. She glanced at the bed, imagining him as he had been only moments ago, his long, powerful body sprawled across the mattress, studying her with those black eyes, smiling. He was darkly seductive to women.
I hear music when I look at you. You are my muse.
He believed that, and she knew what such a notion meant to an artist. She stood there for a long time, thinking of Faust, who had sold his soul to a devil in order to gain his greatest desire. In accepting Moore"s offer, she could not help but wonder if she had just made the same mistake.
The rain had softened from a downpour to a light drizzle by the time Dylan"s carriage pulled into Portman Square. Once inside the house, he handed Osgoode his cloak and informed the butler that his daughter"s governess would be arriving at eleven o"clock the following morning. He then ordered a bottle of brandy sent up to his room and asked about Isabel.
"One of the maids put her to bed over two hours ago, sir."
"Excellent," Dylan answered and started upstairs, relieved. He might be the child"s father, but he had no idea what to do with her, and he was glad he wouldn"t be the one to raise her. Most parents in his general acquaintance did not raise their own children. They put them in the care of nannies, tutors, and governesses, then sent them off to school, just as he intended to do. After his mother"s death when he was a boy, he had seen his own father for only a few minutes a day. That had become two hours twice a year after he"d been sent up to Harrow. If he had to be a father, he intended to be a typical one.
By the time Dylan reached the second floor and started down the corridor to his room, Phelps had already been informed of his arrival. Dylan found his valet waiting by the door of the bedchamber, watching his approach in horror. Before he was halfway down the corridor, the poor fellow was lamenting the wet clothes and hair that would surely bring his master down with the ague.
Dylan walked past Phelps into his bedchamber, ignoring the valet"s well-meant suggestion that he really should begin wearing a hat and carrying an umbrella when he went out. The servant a.s.sisted him out of his damp clothing, and since it was only ten o"clock, the valet suggested several evening suits from which he might choose, but Dylan stopped him.
"The weather"s too foul tonight," he said. "I shall stay in."
He changed into a pair of Cossack trousers, then slipped on his favorite dressing gown, a garment of heavy black silk embroidered with red dragons. When he left his bedchamber, he encountered a footman coming along the corridor with his brandy. He plucked the bottle from the tray as he pa.s.sed the servant and went downstairs to the music room, where he walked straight to the piano.
He lit a lamp and sat down on the bench, staring at the single sheet of composition paper that rested on the music stand, a sheet that contained scarcely a dozen notes. Because of Grace, there would be more to follow, though he could not explain what made him so certain of it.
Dylan took another swallow of brandy and rested his free hand on the keyboard. Closing his eyes, he played the notes several times, striving to shut out all the other noise as he focused his concentration on the woman and the music that invaded his imagination whenever she was near.
"Why do you play those same notes over and over?"
He opened his eyes and turned his head to see Isabel stretched out in the brown velvet chaise longue that rested in a darkened corner of the room. Her white nightgown gleamed in the shadows. When she scooted forward on the chaise longue and into the light of the lamp on the piano, he could see that firmly ensconced in one side of her mouth was a peppermint stick. He didn"t even know there were comfits in the house.
He frowned at her. "I thought you were in bed."
She frowned right back at him, unintimidated. "Your valet woke me up," she said in martyred accents as she brandished her candy stick at him. "I can"t very well sleep when he is wailing on and on about your soaking wet hair right across the corridor from my room, can I?"
"What are you doing in a room across from mine? Your room is in the nursery, on the third floor."
"I moved. There isn"t any furniture on the third floor."
"The servants should have brought furniture from another bedroom."
"I told them not to bother with all that. I don"t like the nursery. It"s too hot up there."
Dylan wanted to laugh at the lie, but he guessed that a father was expected to look stern about things like that. "It is not hot this evening. It is, in fact, quite cool outside."
"Maybe so," she answered, "but in a few months, it won"t be, and it would be silly to sleep all the way up there now and have to move later, don"t you think?"
If Isabel had already managed to persuade the staff to let her sleep in a room that was not part of the old nursery, Dylan suspected she was capable of far more troublesome antics down the road. Grace would have her hands full. "I"ve hired you a governess."
"Ugh." She made a face and chomped down on her candy stick. "How horrid!" she said around the bits of peppermint in her mouth. "Can"t I have a majordomo instead?"
"Only princesses have majordomos. Other little girls have nannies and governesses."
"I know, and it"s so rum. I"d rather be a princess. Then I could order everyone about. Even you." She brandished the stubby end of her peppermint stick at him. "Give me a proper bedroom, or I shall lock you in the Tower," she intoned with as much majesty as an eight-year-old could summon. He grinned, and she stuck her candy stick back in her mouth. "Besides," she went on in an ordinary voice, "governesses are awful. They are dowdy and dull. They are always making you do sums, and they twitter and fuss when you don"t mend your stockings."
Dylan took her word on that. "This governess isn"t anything like that."
"Is she pretty?"
Pretty? Hardly the word for a woman who had haunted his dreams for five years. "I suppose she"s pretty," he answered as he lifted the bottle of brandy to his lips.
"Is she your mistress?"
He choked. "For G.o.d"s sake, how do you even know about such things? Never mind," he added at once, realizing that this was hardly a topic one discussed with a child. "I think you should go to bed."
"You can tell me." She rested her chin on her cotton-covered knees, sucking on her candy and eying him with a wise sort of skepticism. He didn"t want to know how she had acquired it.
"She is not my mistress," he answered, telling himself his answer was the truth, at this moment anyway. "And we are not going to talk about this again. Go to bed."
She slid off the chaise longue, but instead of going toward the door, she moved to stand beside him. "I"m not tired. Can"t I play piano with you? We could do duets."
He shook his head, but she persisted. "I would keep up, I swear I would, Papa."
Papa. He did not even like the word. It implied affection that she could not possibly feel for him. It implied responsibility he did not want. He should tell her not to call him that. She put a hand on the keyboard and pressed a few notes at random. "I made that up just now," she said. "I like it. I think it"s a serenade, don"t you?"
"Perhaps."
"You have an estate in the country, don"t you?" she asked and played a few more notes. "Fruit orchards. Pears and apples. It"s in a place called Devonshire. I read about it." She stopped and met his gaze. "I"ve read all about you."
Dylan didn"t know what to say. Most of what was printed about him wasn"t what a child should be reading. Feeling suddenly awkward, he looked away from her gaze, staring down at the small hand on the piano. He watched as she put her other hand on the keyboard and began to improvise on her little serenade.
"Can we go there some time, Papa?" she asked. "I"ve never been to the country."
"Isabel-"
"It would be nice to go to the country and have a pony."
There was a mournful note in her voice, and when he looked over at her, her eyes were so hopeful, so wistful.
Without thinking, he leaned close to her and gave her a kiss on her temple, the same careless gesture of affection he would give any female with inconvenient expectations. "I have work to do, and you need to go to sleep. We"ll talk about ponies some other time."
Reluctantly, Isabel walked away from the piano. "If I don"t like my governess, can I sack her?"
"No."
She paused by the doors. "Would you sack her for me?"
He told her the truth. "No."
"Mistress." She nodded, looking far too wise for an eight-year-old. "Just what I thought."
With that, she departed, and Dylan watched her go, feeling chagrined by the child"s a.s.sumption, though he could not find fault with it. It would be the truth if he had his way.