Read Online Indiscreet by Mary Balogh - Free Book Online Page B

would be unwise.
    She had played well in Claude’s drawing room two evenings ago. Competently and even with some flair. Viscount Rawleigh pursed his lips now as she started to play Mozart, rushed it rather as Juliana had done, stumbled, played a horrid mischord, and stopped.
    â€œNo,” she muttered, addressing the ivories. “No, you are not going to do this to me. You are not. You were the one
entirely
in the wrong.”
    The offending keys—or key, since she used the singular form—made no response. He strolled a little closer, staying in her line of vision. He was almost enjoying himself again.
    But it seemed that she meant what she had just said. She started again, playing correctly and flawlessly—and after a minute or two with considerable talent and feeling. She closed her eyes and dipped her head forward as if she was lost in the music. And it was no act, he could see.
    He could also see why she had not played like this in the drawing room. She would have shown up the other ladies. She would have drawn everyone’s attention and silenced all conversation. It would not have been the sociable thing to do to play like this. Or the wise thing—Clarissa, he suspected, would have been annoyed, to say the least.
    She kept her eyes closed and her head bowed after she had finished. Who
was
she? he wondered suddenly. She lived in a small country cottage with no instrument, yet she could play like this? What had happened to bring her down in the world? Who hadMr. Winters been? Why had she moved after his death to a strange place to live among strangers? She was something of a mystery.
    â€œYou have talent,” he said, realizing as he spoke the understatement of his words.
    Her head came up and he knew she was back in Claude’s music room—with him. “Thank you,” she said coolly.
    â€œI wonder,” he said as her finger dusted a key that did not need dusting.
    He thought she was going to play again without asking the obvious question. Her fingers spread on the keys. But she looked up at him, her expression impassive. Except that she looked slightly square-jawed again. Ah, she was angry. Good.
    â€œYou wonder why I refused such a very flattering and advantageous offer as the one you made me last evening?” she said. “I suppose you are not often rejected, are you? You have so many assets both of person and property. Perhaps, my lord, those of us with far fewer assets like to keep those we do have.”
    â€œHow dull your life must be, Mrs. Winters,” he said. He liked to see her angry.
    â€œIt is my life,” she said. “If I choose to make it dull, then that is my concern. Not that it
is
dull.”
    â€œI daresay,” he said, “you draw amusement from being a tease.” His eyes moved unhurriedly down her figure, outlined quite alluringly against the wool of her dress as she sat on the bench, leaning slightly forward over the keys. “Do you enjoy issuing invitations with your eyes and with your body and thenslamming the door in the face of those gullible enough to accept them?”
    Her jaw hardened and her eyes started to shoot sparks again. “I have issued no invitations to you, my lord,” she said. “If it is a curtsy and two smiles to which you refer, one when you passed my house on your arrival and one at this house the evening before last at dinner, then perhaps you need to be reminded that you have an identical twin with whom I am familiar.”
    Damn! He gazed at her for a few moments, arrested. She had mistaken him for
Claude
? It was such a very credible explanation that he could not understand why he had not thought of it for himself.
    â€œYou took me for Claude?” he asked.
    â€œYes.” She looked at him in some triumph. “For a moment. Until I remembered that Mr. Adams is a courteous and an amiable gentleman.”
    His eyebrows shot up. “By Jove, a hit,” he said. “You have a