Teresa Medeiros - Once An Angel

She could also feel his fingers on top of hers, stroking them toward the waiting keys. A shimmering

chord vibrated on the air.

"That's it," he said, his voice softening to husky velvet. "Don't attack the keys. Stroke them. Possess them. Make them your own."

He reversed their positions, slipping his hands beneath hers until they rested lightly in the cup of her palms. Her hands looked pale and delicate against the swarthiness of his own. He began the piece, not merely playing the keys but seducing them with his touch. She could feel the music reverberating through his powerful tendons. She turned her head to watch his face, captivated by the play of emotions over his handsome features.

"Music isn't like sewing, Emily. It's feeling and not skill that separates mastery from mechanics. Listen to this piece. It's deceptively simple. But hear it as Mozart did. See the dancers twirling around the ballroom. See two lovers meet and touch hands."

The final note chimed with the crystalline purity of a bell. Their gazes locked in its echo.

Justin felt his breath quicken. Emily smelled like burnt vanilla and her ringlets made her look like a forlorn cocker spaniel, but all he wanted to do was graze his lips against the creamy flesh of her throat and sink his teeth into the inviting fullness of her lower lip.

She gazed up at him, her eyes wide and guileless. "Like this?"

She slipped her hands beneath his and played the piece with the flawless accuracy of any schoolgirl accustomed to a music teacher rapping her knuckles for each error.

Justin straightened. His voice sounded tight, as if something were caught in his throat. "Yes. That will

do very nicely."

As he spun on his heel and marched out of the room, Olivia Connor buried her face in her embroidery, her plump ringlets dancing with amusement.

* * *

The next day Emily ducked into the kitchen, seeking an escape from Lily. Justin's sister had devised

some gruesome new coiffure for that night's dinner party, and had been trailing her for hours,

brandishing an iron and some alarming tongs that looked better suited for shoeing horses. She doubted

if any of Justin's sisters even knew the kitchen had been moved out of the basement in recent years.

They seemed to be caught in a web of perpetual girlhood. Emily thought Justin ought to boot both

them and their shiftless husbands out of Grymwilde to start homes and families of their own.

The kitchen was in an uproar. Cooks and maids scurried from oven to table, their aprons streaked with flour and their faces flushed from heat and exertion. Damp tendrils of hair escaped their crooked caps. Gracie, the toothless old cook, hovered over an enameled caldron, stirring and muttering under her

breath like one of Macbeth's witches. The salty tang of mussel chowder hung in the air.

As Emily sidled around the coal box, Gracie cocked her bulbous nose and sniffed the air. "Check the buns, Sally. I smell somethin' burnin'."

Emily sighed and blew a singed ringlet out of her eyes.

Gracie's pink gums cracked in a smile. "Never mind, Sal. It's only Miss Emily. And how are ya today,

my dear? Come to pilfer another o' my raisin buns, have ya?"

"Not today, Gracie. I just came in to . . . warm myself."

It was true there was little enough warmth in the drafty old house. The fire in Justin's eyes had been banked to an unnatural coolness that made her shiver.

One of the maids burst into tears over a pan of clotted-cream sauce and Gracie bustled over to comfort her. Emily wandered down the long galley, hoping to alleviate her boredom by peering into this pan or that one. At the sight on one of the tables she let out a cry of dismay.

"Can't cook those till it's time to serve 'em," one of the maids explained, brushing past with a tray of steaming buns. "The duchess likes 'em nice and fresh."

Emily knelt and rested her folded arms on the table, bringing herself eye to eye with a glass tank of live lobsters. Pity touched her at the sight of their shiny claws bound by thick twine. They looked helpless

and trapped.

Just like her. She imagined her own arms hobbled by ruffles, her legs by crinolines.

She cocked her head sideways, studying the lobsters. Did they dream of the sea as she did? Did they

hear its haunting rhythms? Taste its pungent tang?

At least the lobsters did not wake in the night, dreaming of a man garbed not in a crisp waistcoat and trousers, but a pair of faded dungarees. They never ached to remember his dark hair tousled by the wind, his stern features softened by laughter. She reached into the water and stroked a sleek head, surprised by the burn of tears in her eyes.

"There you are, Em!" Lily's shrill tones grated down her spine. "I've found the most enchanting coif in this magazine. Do you think Gracie might give us some egg whites to stiffen your curls?"

Groaning, Emily dropped her head. The lobsters' stalked eyes seemed to glint with sympathy.

* * *

"I won't go. I'm not hungry," Emily repeated, digging her nails into the polished oak of the door frame.

"Of course you'll go," Lily chirped, prying her free and dragging her another ten feet. "Mama wouldn't tolerate your not making an appearance. She's hoping you'll make some friends among girls of your own sort." "Girls with birds' nests on their heads?" "Don't be ridiculous. Your hair looks charming." Emily caught her reflection in a console glass as they passed. Her ringlets had been swept up and stiffened with an alarming mixture of egg white and starch. She ducked under a gasolier, afraid her hair might ignite if touched. She dug her heels into the carpet, but Lily jerked her onward. The frail-looking creature must have inherited her mother's muscle tone if not her fortitude, Emily thought. "Do hurry," she commanded. "Mama will be cranky if we're late."

Emily entered the long dining room in dread. An awkward silence fell over the gathering. She could see only a blur of seated guests, all of them staring fixedly at her head. She jerked her hand out of Lily's, wanting desperately to slither beneath the Brussels carpet.

At the far head of the table sat Justin, riveting in his black tailcoat and silk revers. The startling white of his shirt and bow tie drew out the bronze lingering in his skin. His gaze flicked to her for the briefest moment, and she lowered her eyes, fearful of revealing a hunger that had little to do with the succulent aromas wafting from the serving dishes.

A silvery peal of laughter broke the silence. Emily jerked her head up as a helpless shudder of remembered distaste rippled down her spine.

Seated next to Justin, her icy blond hair the perfect complement to his dark head, was the former toast

of Foxworth Seminary and the bane of Emily's existence- Cecille du Pardieu.

Emily slunk to her chair beneath the curious stares of Harvey and Herbert. Harold was too busy slurping his chowder to notice her. As she sank down, she stole a look at her old nemesis. Cecille looked as prim and elegant as a Dresden statuette in a froth of silver-gray silk trimmed in tiny blue roses. Her hair was knotted in a stark chignon. Loose tendrils softened the heart-shaped angles of her face.

Emily smoothed the stiff ruffles of her bodice, wondering if anyone would notice if she sawed them off with her knife. Compared to Cecille's polished sophistication, she felt like an overgrown six-year-old.

As Cecille draped her graceful fingers over Justin's arm, Emily's hand tightened around the ivory hilt of her spoon.

A test. She must simply think of this as her trial by fire. She had practically bitten off her tongue in the past week to maintain the image of the perfect young lady. If she survived tonight, Justin would be

forced to see her as a woman, not a child.

"So nice of you to join us, Emily," the duchess brayed. "I should like to introduce you to the Comtesse Guermond and her charming daughter-"

"We've met," Emily mumbled into her chowder.

"I'm sure I don't remember," the countess said. She was a tiny creature swathed in lace who chirped rather than talked.

"Mama," Cecille drawled in the French fashion, "Miss Scarborough is that poor dear creature they were discussing at Baroness Gutwild's last week. The one who spent all of those dreary years working at Foxworth's."

Justin laid down his spoon and pushed back his chowder bowl.

Even Harold stopped slurping as she continued, her blue eyes sparkling with malice. "Quite an

industrious little thing, too. You used to give my boots a good polish, didn't you, darling?"

Emily swallowed, remembering Cecille's shrieks at finding a dead mouse stuffed in the patent leather

toe of her brand new jemimas.

She grinned sweetly. "Every chance I got."

Cecille's eyes narrowed, but she recovered by fixing Justin with an adoring gaze. Emily's stomach churned.

"You must realize, Your Grace, that you are the gossip of every salon in London. It was so benevolent

of you to open your heart and home to an unfortunate orphan in this Christmas season. There's even

talk of organizing a society in your name to help rescue other"-she cast Emily a sly glance-'' urchins."

Justin met Emily's gaze, his eyes somber beneath the muted glow of the gasoliers. "It was the least I

could do."

"Yes, it was," Emily replied, tilting her goblet to her lips. "The very least."

She almost choked as the rich, sweet liquid flowed down her throat. Milk, she realized. Crystalline droplets of wine sparkled on Cecille's pink lips. Emily wiped her upper lip with her napkin, praying she didn't have a foamy mustache to rival Herbert's.

Justin had given her milk just like some babe. She set down the goblet with a deceptively mild thump

and fixed Cecille with her most innocent gaze. "My guardian has been the very soul of benevolence."

She shifted her gaze to Justin. "Haven't you, Daddy?"

Justin's head snapped up. His eyes darkened in warning.

"So what do you all think about those pesky Zulus?" Herbert offered, obviously hoping to steer the conversation in a safer direction.

"Shut up, Herbert," Millicent and Edith snapped in unison.

Emily dipped her spoon in her chowder. Justin's gaze dropped to her lips. "His Grace likes it when

I call him daddy," she announced.

Cecille's smile waned. "Does he now?"

Emily swirled the spoon around her mouth, then slowly slid it out, licking away the stray drops of chowder with feline satisfaction. Herbert gaped, the pesky Zulus forgotten. Justin lifted his goblet and began to drink in long, convulsive swallows.

"Especially after dinner each night." Emily lowered her voice to a sultry whisper. The little countess bobbed forward so far that her lacy fichu sank into her chowder. "That's when he makes me sit on his

lap for my bedtime story."

Justin choked, spewing wine all over Harold. Cecille's elegant mouth dropped open. Edith and Millicent gasped and Herbert went scarlet. As Justin disappeared behind his napkin, Harvey jumped up and began pounding him on the back.

"If you'll excuse me for a moment," Emily murmured. She slipped her knife up her sleeve as she rose, thankful for once for the voluminous ruffles.

When she returned, the second course had been served and they were eating their shrimp in chill silence. The countess's fichu drooped and Harold's silk waistcoat was speckled with wine. Justin watched her