The Princess and the Pauper (7 page)

His belly clenched
at the disgusting
thought.

But the longer he
inhaled her perfume
and listened to her soft breathing and watched her fingers dance
with musical lightness, the more he realized he would never have
let her fall—even if she believed it.

She frowned.
“I didn’t think you
would—”

“
And your father approves
of your choice to sell yourself?”

He didn’t want to hear her admit
the
past,
that she didn’t think he’d have helped her because of what she’d
done, what her father had done to him. He wasn’t prepared to
revisit that night.

“
Papa is dead.”

Grey
expected to feel something at the
news that the man who’d destroyed his grandfather’s violin was
dead—but he felt nothing at all.

“
He died from shock,” she
explained.

Or shame, thought Grey. A man so high
had far to fall.

“
I lived off what little money
remained for as long as I could, but the funds are now gone, and my
landlady doesn’t run a charity house.”

She had said the last part with
unmistakable bitterness, and he suspected those were the landlady’s
very words to her. They were also the words her father had used
when he’d evicted Grey’s grandfather.

“
And now you’re mine,
princess.”

“
So it would
appear.”

“
Take off your
dress.”

Her features fell. She remained still for
a long while before her shaky fingers reached for the front buttons
of her garment in resignation. She said not a word after
that.

He watched her remove
the outerwear,
listened to her labored breathing. When the dress fell to the
ground, she stepped out of the fabric pile, looking slim, perhaps a
little waifish, and if he’d doubted her story before, he didn’t
doubt it now. She had clearly lived off few means.

You should have come to
me.

“
The corset,” he said
next.

She pinched together the front of the
jaeger corset, trimmed with lace and rosettes, and released the
hooks and eyes. All her accessories were fastened from the front so
no maid was needed for dressing—or undressing.

She remained in her stockings and chemise,
but there was still one binding contraption that needed to be
removed.

“
Let down your
hair.”

At
that, she sent him a rebellious stare. She
had once lived in his heart, ruled his every waking thought. She
had mastered him, and she had broken him. Now he was
her
master. And he would
tame her, if only to wrest from her the power she still yielded
over him.

H
e stood firm and waited.

His lung
s cramped when she finally pulled the
pins from her hair, releasing the thick tresses. The long locks
tumbled down her back and over her shoulders in wild waves, and his
every nerve throbbed with temptation.

“
Sit,
” he whispered.

Her body tensed, but
s
he went over
to the bed and sat down.

“
No!
” he snapped, rougher than he’d meant, but
he’d been alarmed by her choice of the bed, that she’d assumed he’d
ravish her. He wouldn’t even kiss her on the mouth—their last kiss
had almost destroyed him.

He grabbed a high chair
with
a round
backrest and no armrests. “Sit.”

Her brows
puckered, but she obeyed and
moved to the chair. When she hesitated, he placed his hands on her
shoulders and pushed her down into the seat.

The heat from her flushed skin very nearly
scorched his fingers, and he jerked his hands away. Her lavender
scent rose up to seduce him, wrapped around him even as he stepped
away and retrieved one of the many violins.

He handed her the
instrument.
An edge in his voice, he said, “Play.”

She eyed
him, puzzled.

“
Play for me.”

At length
, she took the violin.

G
rey turned down the gas lamps until a soft
glow remained in the room, then settled in an upholstered winged
chair, facing her.

She held the instrument
for a time as if
unsure what to do with it. Had she forgotten how to play? But soon
she lifted the violin to her chin.

When bow connected with string,
the sound that came fo
rth set off a storm in his soul. She had not
forgotten how to play, the opposite in truth, the music more
powerful than he remembered. And as more notes followed and a
melody formed, he was wracked with pain and sorrow and anger. Loss,
too. The loss of his grandfather. The loss of her.

The loss of himself.

CHAPTER
4

Emily slowly opened her eyes and
looked through the window at the grey morning light. She smiled as
her hazy vision cleared
and hugged the crisp white pillow. How she loved
to sleep and dream. But Papa would expect her for breakfast so she
sighed and pushed off the comfortable bed.

Her chemise, twisted around her
legs, fluttered to the ground.
She walked over to the large window, almost as
tall as herself, and gazed out at the industrious city, every
rooftop piping smoke. Her hands went to her arms and she rubbed
them, shrinking the gooseflesh, wondering where she had left her
robe.

As she turned around, she noticed a figure
in a chair and started. The man was slouched in the seat, his shirt
half opened, his unruly locks tousled across his brow. Dark eyes
watched her with sharp focus, and her smile faded away.

“
Rees.”

Her
world turned on its ear and she
remembered everything—that Papa was not waiting for her in the
morning room, that Papa was dead, and Rees now owned
her.

“
It’s almost
noon
,” he
said in a tempered voice, his features inscrutable.

Since boyhood
, he had guarded his heart from
her. It was only when he played the violin he unleashed his true
feelings. He couldn’t contain them, then. But there was no
instrument between them now, and she couldn’t imagine his
thoughts.

Her heartbeat quickened. “Is it noon? I
can never tell when I’m in Town. It’s always so grey.”

“
Did you sleep
well?”

She glanced at the bed and the rumpled
sheets, then back at him. He had stayed in the chair all night and
let her sleep and sleep and sleep. Had he watched her dream the
entire time?

“
I did,” she returned,
flustered.

She wasn’t sure why she had slumbered so
well, not when her circumstances hadn’t improved. She had hoped to
take refuge with an unknown gentleman, but Rees was her pan, her
fairytale musician, her greatest secret. And deepest regret. How
she’d managed to sleep a wink was a wonder, and she could only
assume exhaustion was the cause.

“
Are you hungry?”
he asked.

“
Famished.”

Her hands
ached
, too,
and she flexed her fingers.

Rees
suddenly lifted from the chair and
approached her. Where there had once been a rough tenderness in his
manner, there was now a virile, even predatory charge in the air.
And she was the prey.

She stepped back, heart racing, and
bumped into the window.

He
stilled.

She ha
d never shied away from him in the
past, but so much had changed—he had changed —and she could only
guess his intentions toward her, all of them unpleasant.

After an indecisive moment, he
advanced
again until his six foot frame loomed over her. He reached
for her wrists and pulled them down. Her fingers splayed, revealing
blisters.

“
You
haven’t played for a long
time.”

He held her firmly, his thumbs
pressing over her
frantic pulses, and she shivered at the shift in his voice,
more gravelly.

She corrected,
“I haven’t played
for so long a time.”

She had played for more than
two
hours
last night before he’d cut her off and ordered her to
bed.

“
You will play in shorter
se
ssions
hence forth,” he said in a detached tone. “A half hour at a
time.”

She would play for him
again?

Emily had sold her own violin a month ago,
the last of her assets. She had played the instrument during her
darkest moments, when loneliness and regret had nearly strangled
her, and after Papa’s downfall, turned to it even more. She
understood its healing power—and its ability to cause pain, to
rouse memories better left buried.

She wondered what Rees wanted from her
when he asked her to play for him.

His gaze lifted,
locked with hers. To
look into his deep brown eyes and not find the light, the warmth
that had once lived there stabbed at her heart.

The man in front of
he
r wasn’t
the boy she remembered. The broadsheets had published tawdry
stories about his wicked music and immoral behavior. She hadn’t
believed a word of it. Gossip, she’d thought, spread by
gossipmongers. She knew Rees. She knew the soulful boy and his
healing music. But now . . . now she realized the chill in the room
wasn’t coming from the drafty window, but from him.

As soon as he released her
wrists,
she
brought her hands to her chest and rubbed them, but she wasn’t able
to chase away the cold—the cold he had created.

He studied
her hands again, then moved
across the room to the wardrobe and retrieved a woolly black robe.
He returned to her side, holding up the garment.

She eyed the wide expanse of black fleece,
needing its warmth, but she didn’t want to be buried under his
clothes, under him.

His expression revealed she had no
choice.

Slowly she turned around and slipped her
arms into the sleeves. The thick wrapper, too large for her figure,
overwhelmed her as he did.

Emily
tied the stays and faced him again,
but he walked away with a cursory, “I’ll fetch breakfast,” and left
the room.

Her shoulders dropped.

Rees.

She knew she wouldn’t receive a
warm welcome from him, not after what had transpired between
them
all
those years ago, but she was still dismayed by his dramatic
transformation. Was there even a remnant of the boy she’d once
known?

Emily
looked away from the closed bedroom
door and to the room itself. The walls were papered in a bold
print, gold and plum paisleys. The bed was large with four soaring
posts and an impressive headboard.

Moving over to the other doors,
she found
a
dressing room behind one and a water closet with modern plumbing
behind the other. She took advantage of the water closet before
returning to the bedchamber. Finally, she examined the violins. A
dozen, at least. She’d avoided them for as long as possible, but
she couldn’t walk a straight line without tripping over an
instrument.

She
bent down and picked up the nearest
one, tossed aside like soiled laundry. Her heart skipped a beat as
she fingered the familiar construction. She collected another
violin and soon realized each instrument looked like the one his
grandfather had made him with a slight variation. Each one was
close, but not one was a perfect replica.

A sharp pain in her chest,
s
he set the
instruments back on the ground. She gathered the music sheets next.
Notes were scrolled in haste, then scratched out. She thought he
couldn’t “see” music if it was printed on paper . . . but so much
had changed about him, she reminded herself, and it appeared his
music didn’t come to him as easily as it once had.

Rees opened the door and carried in a
large silver tray with an assortment of sweet smelling fares. He
set the food on a small round table near the window.

“
Come,” he said.
“Eat.”

She let the music sheets fall to the
floor. He pretended not to notice, but she saw his side-eye glance
when he heard the rustling papers.

He said nothing about the music or the
violins, only retrieved the chair from the middle of the room where
she had played for him and placed it beside the table.

Her stomach instantly
responded
to
the invitation, and she accepted the offered seat. “Thank
you.”

He remained quiet. He also
didn’t join her at the table.
Instead, he went back to the winged chair and
settled in it, watching her from afar.

Emily
didn’t want to devour the food under
his scrutiny, nor did she feel like nibbling it as a proper lady.
Asking him for privacy was moot. The man
owned
her. If he wanted to watch her eat, he
could. If he wanted to watch her sleep, he could. If he wanted to
hear her play, he could. Her preferences were not to be considered
anymore, and she had best grow accustomed to her new position. One
with no choices.