She loves her granddaughter.
He didn’t know why he was astonished, but he was. He glanced at Arabella Knightley. Did she know her grandmother loved her?
The piece came to its end. Lady Westwick dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Adam stepped away from the door. “Miss Knightley, that was incredible,” he said, as sincerely as he’d ever said anything in his life.
“Wasn’t it?” Grace cried, clapping her hands. “I’ve never heard anyone play so well!”
Arabella Knightley accepted their praise with a small smile. The serenity had disappeared from her face. Adam glanced at her grandmother. Lady Westwick’s expression was politely approving. The handkerchief was gone.
“SLEEP WELL, MISS KNIGHTLEY,” St. Just had said loudly when he’d bowed goodnight over her hand. And then, too low for anyone to overhear, “I shall see you in an hour.”
Arabella had undressed numbly and donned a nightgown. She’d washed her face and cleaned her teeth and brushed and braided her hair. She had bid Polly goodnight. Now she sat curled up in an armchair beside the fire, trying to read the book she’d brought with her, Northanger Abbey. It was written with a light, humorous hand. The parallels should have been amusing—the gothic Abbey, the gothic Priory—but instead of being diverted, she found it almost impossible to concentrate. She bent her attention to the page and reread, for the third time, the same sentences. A lamp could not have expired with more awful effect. Catherine, for a few moments, was motionless with horror.
Arabella stiffened. Was that a footstep outside her door? She listened for several seconds, and then wrenched her attention back to the novel.
Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled the room. A violent gust of wind, rising with sudden fury, added fresh horror to the moment.
Arabella glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. An hour, St. Just had said. Which was now.
She shuddered and gripped the book more tightly. In the pause which succeeded, a sound like receding footsteps and the closing of the door struck on her affrighted ear.
Arabella leapt in the chair as the door to her bedchamber opened. Adam St. Just stood in the doorway, wearing a dressing gown of gold and red brocade. It looked like something the Marquis of Revelstoke would own, Arabella thought—and then her attention focused on his feet. They were bare.
Her throat tightened. She couldn’t breathe.
St. Just closed the door. “Good evening,” he said.
MISS KNIGHTLEY DIDN’T return his greeting. She closed her book and watched as he crossed the room.
Adam halted at the edge of the rug and stood looking down at her. Her face was as white as her high-necked nightgown. Even her lips seemed to have no color. Her eyes were black in the firelight.
He took a deep breath and held out the glass of port. “Here. I brought this for you.”
Miss Knightley looked at it warily. “What is it?”
“Port.”
She shrank back in the armchair and shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“Just a few mouthfuls,” Adam said patiently. “It’ll help you relax.”
“I don’t drink alcohol,” she said. “Ever.”
“Why not?” he asked, perplexed.
“My mother drank,” Miss Knightley said in a flat voice. “In the end, she couldn’t live without it. She needed alcohol more than food, more than air itself.”
“I see.” Adam placed the glass on the mantelpiece. “I beg your pardon.” He was at a loss. Now what?
He looked around him. The bedchamber was filled with candlelight and firelight and shadows. The four-poster bed with its heavy canopy of damask silk looked vaguely tomb-like.
Adam turned his back to it. How to get her to relax? Standing over her certainly wasn’t going to accomplish that. He sat down on the rug beside the fire, leaned back against the footstool, and tried to look comfortable. “What are you reading?”
Miss Knightley moistened her lips. “Northanger Abbey.”
“Is it good?”
She nodded. “You may read it if you like.” She politely held out the book.
Adam accepted it. Now what? he asked himself, turning the book over in his hands. He needed a subject that would get her talking. “You play the pianoforte extraordinary well.”
“Thank you.”
For a moment there was an awkward silence. Adam looked at her in frustration. Firelight gilded her hair and played across her pale cheek. Talk to me, Miss Knightley.
As if she had heard him, Arabella Knightley said, “My mother taught me how to play. Music was her passion. She played much better than I do.”
Adam placed the book on the floor. “She must have been very gifted.”
Arabella Knightley nodded. She looked at the fire. “Mother insisted there was always a piano in the houses we were in, and after . . . after Lord Crowe, when we were in Whitechapel, she found one in a church.” She glanced at him. “Every week we’d clean the church, and afterwards my mother was allowed to play the piano.” She smiled faintly. “And after she’d played, she taught me. We had two pieces of music: a prelude by Bach, and one of Handel’s airs.” The smile faded. “I still have them.”
“The piece you played tonight, is that one of them?”
Miss Knightley shook her head. “That was Beethoven. I like Beethoven. His music has been . . . a very good friend to me.”
“How?”
“Oh . . .” She grimaced. “My mother made me promise, before she sent me to Westwick Hall, that I would never lose my temper, or sulk or cry or behave badly in any way. Sometimes it was a difficult promise to keep.”
“I can imagine it was.”
Miss Knightley nodded. “When it was particularly hard, I played Beethoven.” She glanced at him, with almost a hint of mischief in her eyes. “Beethoven is very good to play when one is angry.”
“Is it?” he said, amused.
Miss Knightley nodded again. She smoothed her nightgown over her knees and fingered a fold of cambric. “Beethoven is also why my grandfather made me heir to his fortune.”
Adam’s eyebrows rose. “Beethoven? How?”
She pleated
