Will you be playing?
What difference does that make?
If you’re playing, I’ll have little choice in the matter.
Those weren’t the words exactly, but they were close. Yet it was well after midnight. All his mother’s guests were safely ensconced in their chambers, or their neighbor’s chambers, as the case might be with Finn. And Sophia hadn’t arrived.
He stopped to gaze out his window and sighed heavily. Was it his lot in life to be alone? Was it truly? He’d thought Sophia’s arrival heralded the beginning of new things to come for him. He’d attended dinner, for God’s sake. Dinner! With his mother and all of her friends. He’d labored through it with a smile on his face. Well, perhaps not a smile, but he’d been present. And he’d done it all for Sophia. She could probably snap her fingers at him and he’d drop to his knees to kiss her slippers—he was that enamored of her.
He groaned aloud. Enamored? Is that what this was? It was something he didn’t understand at all. He was two-and-thirty. And
he couldn’t figure out what his infatuation was with Sophia Thorne. He felt like a green lad who’d had his first kiss. First kiss? Ashley hadn’t even had the opportunity to kiss her yet. He could imagine the feel of her in his arms. The taste of her on his lips. He glanced absently around the room and wished she was there to brighten it.
His dressing gown lay draped across the bed. Ashley had run Simmons from the room almost as soon as he’d arrived. Ashley didn’t want him to encounter Sophia when she finally did decide to grace him with her presence. He flopped heavily onto the piano bench and plucked lightly at the keys.
Dinner had been painful. His mother’s guests all had held their tongues about matters of importance and discussed things like the scandalous clothing young ladies were wearing. It was dreadfully boring. Ashley would rather discuss politics. Or finance. Anything aside from fashion.
To top it all off, he’d been unable to draw his eyes from Sophia Thorne’s person the entire night. He’d caught her looking back at him more than once, and not one time did she lower her gaze, shy away from his bold appraisal of her, or even flush when he let his eyes linger too long. She had simply smiled as though they shared a secret. Perhaps they did. Perhaps Sophia knew that Ashley was well and truly out of his league. Perhaps she was humoring an addled old idiot, making his heart and his loins swell with every bold glance she returned.
What if she was?
What if she did, indeed, feel nothing for him? He found that hard to fathom. But it was a possibility. Ashley clunked gently on the keys of the pianoforte. He let his fingers tickle the ivory keys. And it was only once he was engrossed in a song that he heard the door open behind him. His heart leapt into his throat as he turned his head and watched her glide into his room. She looked at him and smiled softly as she closed the door behind her. Into the lion’s den goes the lamb.
She was dressed the same way she had been the last time she slipped into his room in the dead of night, in a virginal nightrail with puffy sleeves and a frilly collar. She walked toward him, gazing at the piano until he stopped playing and turned to look at her.
“I thought you’d never arrive,” Ashley said hesitantly.
She laughed lightly. “I thought you’d never start playing.” She looked down at her state of dress. “Oh, goodness. I’ve done it again,” she said, shaking her head at herself as she drew her lower lip between her teeth and worried it absently.
“Done what again?” Ashley asked.
“I kept on my dress until only moments ago. Because I knew I’d be unable to resist you when you started to play. But then when you didn’t, I finally gave up and went to bed.” She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and yawned heavily.
“You went to sleep?”
She nodded as she walked closer and sat down on the piano bench and slid closer to him. Ashley parted his thighs so he could feel the length and warmth of her leg through his trousers. She didn’t back away.
“I did go to sleep.” She looked up at him with a quirky little grin. “Then you began to play.” She reached out one delicate little hand and stroked it across the front of the piano. Then she turned to him, smiled broadly, and said, “Thank you for attending dinner.”
“I did it for you,” he admitted.
“I know,” she said softly. “Situations like that must be difficult for you?” she asked hesitantly.
“Quite.” He didn’t know what else to say about that. It was nearly impossible to voice his thoughts. Even he didn’t understand the muddle inside his head. How could he expect her to?
“You did very well, even amid discussions of pantaloons and tall boots.” She giggled lightly, and the sound reminded him of the tinkle of the wind chimes he’d given to her. It was happy and melodious and it turned his insides to mush.
“You were worth it,” he said as he raised his hand to brush a lock of hair from her face. Her hair hung freely down her back, her combs having been removed. It fell in silky dark waves to land at her waist, and he wanted to gather it in his hands, bury his face in it, and inhale her scent. He shook the thoughts away. They would get him nowhere.
“It’s highly unorthodox for a lady to meet a gentleman in his bedchamber, is it not?” she asked hesitantly.
“It is,” he admitted.
“Yet you lure me here, anyway,” she said with a playful groan.
A grin tugged at his lips. “I believe I am the one who is being lured,” Ashley said.
“Directly into my web of deception,” she said with a tremulous quake to her voice. She tilted her head from side to side, as though mulling that thought over. “It’s not truly deception,” she whispered to him. “I’m here to help you.”