Chapter 4: Hands on the Keys

By Wednesday evening I had been inside that piano for fifteen hours, and I was cross with everyone.

I was cross with the damp, and the Broadwood, and the cousin who walked past the music room twice an hour to look in.

Most of all I was cross with the duke, who had kept his word and not asked me anything.

He had only stood in the doorway at six with a tray.

It held bread and cold chicken and a pot of tea.

"I'll hold the lamp," he said.

"I've moved the lamp. There's a hook." I pointed at it. "I don't need your arms tonight."

"Then I'll read."

He carried a chair to the far wall and opened a book.

He did not turn a page for twenty minutes.

I know, because I counted, and a woman who counts a man's pages is a woman in trouble.

At last I set the hammer down.

"A London man would do this faster," I said.

His head came up.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You've thought it. You're a practical man."

"You've thought, I can send for the Broadwood people."

"They'll put a new block in and charge four hundred pounds, and it'll be done in a week."

"I have thought it."

"Then say it."

"I will send for them if you wish." He shut the book on his thumb. "You said it would take two months."

"I said that for me."

"Then I don't understand what you want."

"I want you to stop looking at me as though I were something you might buy," I said.

It came out sharper than I'd planned.

The room went silent, and the lamp hissed on its hook.

He put the book down on the chair and stood.

"I have never looked at you like that," he said.

"You look at me like a bargain."

"I look at you," he said, "the way a man looks at the only person in the house who is telling him the truth."

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