Rhapsody for Two Read online

  Rowena cut the spruce dowel to length, wishing she could take his hand. “I’m so sorry. Losing a parent is terrible, and losing both abruptly must have been more so.”

  “It was a long time ago,” he said, setting the subject aside. “A tinsmith in the village agreed to take me on as an apprentice. It was a kindness—Glennon Lines was a fair and kind master—and he said I could work off the apprenticeship fee by completing extra tasks. Sometimes I worked as a groom and sometimes as a maid, and Lines kept careful account.”

  Rowena had just picked up the dowel in her tweezers, and she bobbled it. “You were an indentured servant!”

  “So are all apprentices,” Simon replied. “And I learned many skills working for him. How to handle horses, how to talk to customers, how to clean virtually anything. But not...” He drew in a ragged breath. “Not enough about metalworking.”

  Rowena ignored the fallen dowel, ignored everything else, as Simon spoke on. About the older apprentice, Elias Howard, who treated Simon as a brother would. About the accident with boiling ore that Simon had caused.

  “I don’t quite know what happened,” he said quietly. The lamp’s light flickered over his face, limning every groove of sorrow. “All the times I’ve thought of it over the years, but memory shifts and changes. All I know for certain is the result: Howard was horribly burned on his right hand and arm.”

  “Your friend,” Rowena said softly. “Your friend whom you try to help. You mentioned him the day we met.”

  “I didn’t help him at the time,” Simon said bitterly. “Once the surgeon had been called, I ran. I was fifteen years old then, and I ran and left my friend, and for thirteen years I’ve wondered what I could have done or should have done differently. He was only nineteen, and he lost the use of his right hand. His chance to become a master tinworker. He was courting a woman, and he wed her, but he’s had lifelong health troubles.”

  Rowena splayed her fingers before her. Looked at her hands, her livelihood, and wondered what it would be like to lose the use of one completely. “Oh,” was all she could think of to say. Any other words were closed off, her throat tight and heart hurting for the young man who had lost so much and the younger boy who blamed himself.

  “So.” Simon neatened the tools that didn’t need neatening, probably to keep his back to Rowena. “Now you know. I think the world of your shop, and I wish I could help you. I’ll do my best, and I won’t give up. I can’t, because Howard needs money. But I never stay anywhere for long because I hurt people.”

  He was repeating the cycle, she realized: part of an apprenticeship, and then he ran. Onward, across England, darting from town to town and skill to skill until at last he’d made his way to London. Here a man could get lost, could hide from anyone. Except himself.

  “Why do you have to leave,” Rowena asked, “just because you always have before? You could find a good place here in London. Surely your friend would be best served by you keeping a steady position with a good income.”

  Simon scoffed. “I had one—two, actually—and lost them.”

  “Playing the horn, you mean? Yes, but now you’re here.”

  “Ah, but you can’t afford to hire me. You told me so the day we met.”

  “I can’t put a price on you,” she blurted, and he turned to look at her at last.

  “Now who’s the incorrigible flirt?” He smiled. “Sweet of you to say so, but we both know my work here was a move born of desperation.”

  “Was, or is?”

  “Was.”

  Your desperation, or mine? She did not know which of them had needed the other more.

  Instead, she asked, “And what is it now?”

  He caught his breath. In the sunset-warm light, the dim of the lamp, his eyelashes made touchable shadows on his cheekbones. “Now it’s a dream.”

  Her heart went out to him, to the bleakness on his face. He could not carry such guilt if he had not cared deeply for his friend. “You cannot forgive yourself, can you?”

  “Why should I when the harm I caused still exists?”

  She understood this feeling, and her heart hurt. She realized how tender it had become for him, so that his pain could pierce it. She wanted to take him in her arms, and she wanted above all to ease the pain within him.

  She took his hand, savoring its warmth and strength. “What good is guilt? Does it honor your friend if you feel guilty? If you don’t allow yourself to make more friends? If you never settle?”

  “No, of course not. Guilt doesn’t honor him. I don’t know how to honor him.” Simon’s fingers clung to hers, tightly intertwined. “I do the best I can. I send him money. I know it’s not enough.”

  “What you do is enough for me.” Rowena laid a gentle hand on his face, stroking the stubbly roughness and the hard line of his jaw. “It is. Thank you for trusting me with your story.”

  “You’ve told me yours.” He sighed, shutting his eyes. “I wanted you to know mine. I wanted you to know what sort of fellow I am.”

  “I already knew.” Her other hand, she laid over his heart. The quiet thunder of his heartbeat was unbearably intimate, his life beneath her palm. All they had to give was time, the precious gift they traded for coin. To help others. To support the life they wanted. To pay for the burdens they’d taken on.

  But they had given time to each other for the sheer sweetness of it, too, for a touch and a kiss and a conversation of bitter, pure truths. Such time was precious, and Rowena could not allow it to end. Not yet.

  “Simon.” She brushed a kiss to his cheek. “Come upstairs with me. Let’s do something for the joy of it.”

  Chapter Six

  “When he loved, and he never really loved but one, it was with so violent, so blind a passion, that he might be said to doat upon the very errors of the girl to whom he was thus attached.”

  Glenarvon

  HE WAS IN ROWENA FAIRWEATHER’S bedchamber, and it was more beautiful than the fireworks at Vauxhall. Her laugh, as she clasped his hand and shut the door behind them, was more tuneful than the sweetest arpeggio.

  Simon could hardly dare breathe. “What do you want?”

  He’d almost asked, What do you want of me? But that seemed too forward. He wouldn’t beg to be essential to her—but if he gave her what she wished, maybe she would find him so.

  “You,” she said. “Kisses. You. In my bed.” Her light eyes were frank and merry. “All of you, and right now, please.”

  The room was small, the bedstead generously sized and dominating the space. It was of sturdy wood and light curtains and a counterpane so invitingly velvety that he wanted to tug her down and roll all over it.

  He did just that. “Have it all, then.” Taking her hands, he flopped back onto the bed and yanked her atop him. She laughed, squealing about their boots marking the counterpane, so he drew her into a kiss until she quite forgot what she was saying.

  When he broke the kiss for air, he felt glassy and buoyant. And then he cursed the boots and every layer of clothing that separated them. “Do you really want your boots off?” he asked.

  “Eventually.” Rowena moved atop him, driving him to distraction. “But at the moment, that is not my priority. I want your hands on me.”

  He grinned. “Any specific place?”

  She placed his hands on her breasts. “This will do, for a start.”

  “Indeed it will.” Through her gown and stays, he could feel the warm weight of her. She was the perfect shape, because it was her shape, and he thumbed her nipples until they grew hard and she gasped. It was nothing like touching her bare skin, though, and he coaxed her down so he could unbutton the back of her bodice and loosen the fabric between them. As he did, she remained straddling him, rocking her hips in a rhythm that drove him absolutely wild.

  “The start is going to be the finish if you don’t take pity on a poor celibate,” he groaned.

  She looked surprised. “I’m not a virgin. Are you?”

  “No, but it’s been some time.�
� As he’d made his wandering way toward London over the years, there had been other women. But at this moment, he had no idea why.

  Then he was jealous of the man who’d been Rowena’s first. “Who else have you...no, never mind. It’s not my business.” His better nature came forth. He didn’t want to know anything about the man or men she’d chosen in the past. That was done, and Simon was the one she had chosen today.

  She didn’t seem to mind the cutoff question, though. She shrugged, allowing her bodice to slip lower. “I gave myself to someone I thought loved me. I was wrong.”

  “He was a fool.”

  “You’re sweet to say so. But I was the fool, not he.”

  With the same nimbleness with which she brought violin strings into tune, she unbuttoned Simon’s waistcoat. When she tugged his shirt from his trousers, he almost forgot how to think.

  Almost.

  I gave myself to someone I thought loved me.

  Rowena had invited Simon to her bed; she would give herself to him. Did this mean she thought he loved her? Did he love her? Did she love him?

  Did it matter, if they were here now and both wanted this pleasure?

  Yes, it mattered, he thought dimly as reason began to surrender to desire. It mattered very much. And if he’d known what love was—if he, an orphan, had known any love besides the old friendship that came with years of thwarted guilt—he would know in a flash how to respond.

  Instead, he knew only that any man who’d given up the chance to be with Rowena Fairweather in any way was a fool, and the man who’d been in her bed and left it was the greatest fool of all.

  But she hadn’t asked a question about Simon’s feelings, and when he kissed her, drawing deep of her taste of tea and sweetness, she didn’t speak again. Not of who she’d been with, or what she had wanted from him. Not of anything at all besides “There” and “Again” and “Yes, more.”

  Simon played her slowly, tugging free her boots and peeling away her layers of clothing. Each layer gone revealed new places to kiss. Skin to stroke. Curves to admire. Blessings to count.

  “You’re teasing me,” Rowena chided, rising up over him lovely and bare. “All that touching and stripping, and there you are fully clothed.”

  “Tease me back, then,” Simon offered hopefully.

  And she did, wearing a sly grin and nothing else as she tugged free his cravat, slipped his coat from his shoulders, wrenched his boots from his feet. She wasn’t quick about the matter. Simon couldn’t stop trying to touch her as she stripped him. He breathed the scent of her hair, kissing her neck or shoulders or chin or whatever he could reach. He was nearly drunk on her, nearly frantic, before she finished removing his clothing.

  “Now we’re even.” She lay back on the bed, reaching up for him. In the moonlight, he could count every freckle on her nose. He could touch them all, kiss them all.

  “We’re not even until—” He bit off the words. You’re mine, he’d been about to say. Because he was hers?

  Oh damn. He was hers, all right. He was decidedly hers, and he had no idea whether she wanted him to belong to her or not. Not beyond this night.

  “Until I bring you joy,” he ground out as she drew him close and he seated himself within her.

  They paused, gasping, then moved together, musicians in harmony. Each stroke of his body in hers plucked strings of pleasure deep within him. When she came with a cry, it was like the music of chimes. When he withdrew to spend outside of her cradling warmth, joy shot through him like the crash of cymbals.

  Encore, he thought. A million times. Forever.

  For a long, slow moment, they were silent beside each other. Through the window, a fat crescent moon smiled upon them.

  Still breathing hard, he asked lightly, “Was it as good as a Gothic novel? Lightning-struck towers and skeletons and all that?”

  Rowena took his hand in both of hers. “It was far better. I enjoyed your lightning-struck tower”—Simon choked—“but there was also a happy ending.”

  “I had no idea you were so able with erotic puns.”

  “I’ve had no idea about many things,” she replied softly and nestled her head on his chest. He held her in the bed, eyes wide in the night-dark room as if that would help him see stars.

  She had asked him to lie with her, which meant she thought he was worthy. Of her time, of her body, of a place in her bed. She gave him the right to kiss her lips, to touch her body, and he could not recall ever receiving such a gift.

  Then Rowena stirred beside him, all warm tangled limbs, and sang softly.

  “A brisk young man, diddle diddle

  Met with a maid,

  And laid her down, diddle diddle

  Under the shade.

  There they did play, diddle diddle

  And kiss and court.

  All the fine day, diddle diddle

  Making good sport.”

  Simon laughed, tweaking her earlobe. “Our special song, ‘Lavender’s Blue.’ Are those really the words? How scandalous.”

  “Yes, those are really the words. That’s why I had to stop singing it to you the day we met.”

  “You were too shy?”

  “Not at all. I thought you might be,” she teased, and he couldn’t let that stand, of course. He had to tickle her, to take her in his arms and kiss her up and down her neck until she squirmed free, laughing.

  “Have you played your horn since that day?” she asked.

  He hadn’t. He hadn’t even opened its case. He’d shoved it under the bed of his rented room, a room that cost four shillings a week, with extra for meals. He was living on savings, telling himself he was working at Fairweather’s for Howard, to earn money for Howard.

  But really, he was here for himself. After years of work, he was playing: changing the shop window, flirting with Rowena, taming the hedgehog. He was playacting at a life that didn’t belong to him.

  I want it, he thought. I want her.

  “Sing some more,” he said, dodging her question. “Please.”

  Rowena obliged.

  “Therefore be kind, diddle diddle

  While here we lie,

  And you will love, diddle diddle

  My hedgehog and I.”

  Simon looked at her with skepticism. “Are those really the words?”

  She blinked, all innocence. “They might as well be.”

  Love again. It belonged here in this room. It belonged with her, to her; it was a part of her. Simon felt like an outsider, with nothing but a child’s memory of love. He wanted to be worthy of more, but he didn’t know how.

  But he could be kind. He could hold her, lie there with her to keep her warm. To bring her, he hoped, the joy she’d asked for.

  Now that he’d met her, it seemed he was ruined for a life without music or joy. And both lay beside him, for as long as he dared grasp them.

  WHEN ROWENA AWOKE IN the morning, Simon was gone, but signs of him remained. The air in her room held his scent, a whisper of soap and bergamot. The mattress and pillow retained, faintly, the shape of his form.

  And then there was her memory, which held every second of their conversation, their lovemaking, their embraces, their laughter.

  He’d made her feel beautiful. Capable. Successful. What a gift it was, to know that she had only to grasp and what she wanted could be hers.

  What a gift he’d given her, to draw pleasure from a body that had sometimes brought her annoyance and shame. To find joy in the way she was built, in the Rowena-ness of her.

  Whatever he’d done in the past, whoever he’d been, he was a good man now, doing good things.

  She bit her lip. He was an honest man, too, and he had always told her he was planning to move along. She mustn’t try to keep him, no matter how good it felt to have him at her side.

  Oh hell. She was falling in love with him, wasn’t she? Perhaps she had even completed the process.

  She would have to pretend she hadn’t. That she’d involved only her body, not her heart
, because Simon was clearly the property of his own past. A large part of him had never left the village in which he’d been apprenticed, and that same part had never moved beyond the day his friend had been injured.

  Well. After all the help Simon had given her, she could help him in return. Sliding bare from her bed, she retrieved her lap desk and tied a robe about her. Settling into the indentation Simon had left in her mattress, she assembled paper, ink, quill, thoughts.

  And then she inscribed a brief letter to the Howard family in...what was the name of the village? Something near Wolverhampton, with a flowery sort of name. Market Thistleton, that was it. She kept her letter short, knowing they’d have to pay to receive it. She said only that she represented Simon Thorn, that he missed them and would like to make contact again.

  Had he told her that? No. But it was true nonetheless. A man didn’t always have to use words to say what he meant. Especially not a man with eyes like Simon’s, which had told her the first time they met that he liked to look at her.

  That he liked her. Full stop.

  She was tumbling beyond like to a place she hadn’t intended to be, a place where she didn’t want to be without him. A place where she wanted to heal his heart so that he could give it to her.

  Once dressed for the day, she sealed the letter and placed it with other post, then tried not to think of it anymore. It was easy enough to distract herself with work, plunging into the accumulated tasks of the week. Tuning pianofortes, repairing violins, poring over her account books to calculate where margins could be increased and where pennies could be pinched. Counting her coins, studying her bank books.

  This was dull work, though worthwhile. If she did more of it, she just might be able to afford the new lease. Three guineas and a shilling...if Lifford would accept the offered rate, she could match it.

  She could save the shop. She could do this.