He looked up at her as he finished what he’d been dancing through, then froze. “Not good?”
“Is there anything you
can’t
play?” she asked.
“Things that blow, especially the pipes,” he said with a small smile. “The rest?” He shrugged. “It’s all rubbish, but I generally only torment myself with it, so I keep at it.”
It was almost out of her mouth to ask him why he didn’t play professionally—in any number of arenas, apparently—but she stopped herself just in time. He didn’t, because he didn’t want any more notoriety than he already likely had thanks to his studio work.
“What other eras do you specialize in?” she managed.
“I draw the line after Rachmaninoff,” he said, toying with snatches of other things. “It has to sound like music.” He looked up at her. “And you?”
“The same.” She listened to him a bit longer. “John?”
“Aye, love?”
“What would you do if you could do anything?” she asked, before she gave the question too much thought and didn’t dare ask it.
He shot her a look from under ridiculously long eyelashes. “I’m not sure you want to know the answer to that.”
“Is it illegal?”
He smiled, a little smile that left her smiling in return. “Nay, but it is decadent and involves you.”
“Cad.”
He only winked at her, then turned back to concentrating on what he was doing. Tess watched him until she thought she might rather like to have somewhere to sit. She looked around, then found she couldn’t move.
Lord Payneswick was standing just inside the door, watching them.
“John,” she managed faintly.
He looked up, then stopped. “Ah—”
Lord Payneswick waved him on, then stepped over his velvet rope and sat down gingerly in a chair. He beckoned for Tess to come sit across from him.
She went, because she thought humoring him might be a good idea.
She listened to John, who seemed to have dredged up a new level of commitment to his playing, and watched Lord Payneswick, who didn’t seem to be reaching for a phone to call the cops. Though she was tempted to make a few inroads into a relationship with him, she didn’t suppose the time was right to be asking him for any favors. Better that he continue enjoying hearing Bach on the appropriate instrument and hopefully forget that she and John had ventured where they shouldn’t have.
John played another pair of pieces, then stopped, dropped his hands in his lap, and turned to look at Lord Payneswick.
“My most abject apologies for trespassing.”
Lord Payneswick pursed his lips. “I might believe that, Mr. de Piaget, if I didn’t strongly suspect you were the sort who would pick the lock on any number of my other private salons to try your hand at whatever you might find there.”
John smiled a self-deprecating sort of smile that Tess found was inspiring her to forgive him for things he hadn’t done yet. She could only hope it would work on Lord Payneswick as well.
“Your instrument here is magnificent,” John said sincerely. “The temptation was too strong.”
Lord Payneswick looked at him sternly. “And the only reason you’re still sitting at it, old chum, is because Dave Thompson convinced me not to call the authorities.”
John took a deep breath. “Good of him.”
Tess found herself suddenly the object of Lord Payneswick’s scrutiny.
“I understand you’re a colleague of the Viscount Haulton,” he said sternly. “And the lady of Sedgwick.”
“Guilty on both accounts,” Tess admitted, holding out her hand and feeling quite grateful it wasn’t trembling. “Tess Alexander. My specialty is the Middle Ages.”
Lord Payneswick shook her hand with a gentleness that belied his fierce frowns. “I suppose you’ll now tell me that you share Lord Stephen’s interest in my medieval artifacts.”
Tess smiled. “I can’t deny that. Your collection is rumored to be extensive.”
Lord Payneswick pursed his lips. “I’m beginning to feel a bit like a fox in a thicket.” He looked at John. “I understand from Dave that you play the lute.”
Tess forced herself to maintain a neutral expression. If John admitted to that skill, she might actually get a look at what she’d been trying to drool over for years. But she wasn’t about to ask him to.
John met her eyes briefly, took a deep breath, then nodded at Lord Payneswick.
“If it means Dr. Alexander will have her look, I would be more than happy to play anything you like.”
Tess didn’t dare say anything. She imagined, however, that she was going to be humoring John in all sorts of herding activities as repayment.
Payneswick stood up and rubbed his hands together. “I’ll look forward, then, to a little concert after supper.
If
you two can keep yourselves out of trouble this afternoon. Let me start you on that path now, shall I?”
Tess thought it might be best to agree quickly, before he changed his mind. It occurred to her that it might have been better to get inside on her own merits, but she shoved that thought out of her mind as quickly as it had come. Not even Stephen, with his impressive academic credentials and a couple of titles to augment them, had managed to convince Payneswick to let him in. If they both had to hang on to John’s coattails to have what they wanted, so be it—and gratefully so.
Lord Payneswick showed them the door to the garden and advised them to use it. He looked at John before he walked away.
“Give her your jacket, lad, and show some chivalry.”
John shrugged out of his coat immediately and draped it around Tess’s shoulders. “Thank you, Your Lordship.”
Payneswick looked at them both, then pursed his lips as if he strove not to smile. “Incorrigible.”
Tess watched him walk off, shaking his head, then looked up at John. “That was close.”
He blew his hair out of his eyes. “Too close, I’d say.” He reached for her hand and smiled weakly. “Let’s go have our turn about the garden, though I’m not entirely sure you won’t be carrying me back to the house.”
She stopped him before he started off. “Thank you.”
He looked at her in surprise. “For what?”
“For playing the lute tonight so I can look in his private books.” She paused. “I know it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Tonight, the prize is worth it,” he said seriously. “Consider it my pleasure.” He looked at her with an eyebrow raised. “Are you already making plans for your assault on the inner sanctum?”
“That will all depend on how long you intend to distract him.”
“You tell me how long you need.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “You’re a good man, John de Piaget, to make that sort of sacrifice for me.”
“I am,” he agreed dryly, “and you can thank my father for any chivalrous tendencies I have.” He tugged on her hand. “Let’s go, so Payneswick can see us making good use of his garden. We don’t want him to change his mind.”
T
ess
was relieved, several hours later, to find that Lord Payneswick hadn’t changed his mind. She stood at the edge of a room that reminded her so sharply of her own solar—well, Montgomery de Piaget’s solar, actually—at Sedgwick, she could hardly catch her breath. It was as if she’d stepped back in time hundreds of years.
There were a couple of bookcases, of course, tucked discreetly in a corner and filled with all manner of things that looked as if they were hundreds of years old. Tapestries lined the walls and were spread out over the floors. A modest fire burned in the hearth—just hot enough to keep them warm but not hot enough to disturb the delicate tempering of the amazing collection of period instruments residing inside what she was certain were climate-controlled glass cases.
She was joined by Lord Payneswick, of course, as well as Stephen and their earlier savior, the relentless Dave Thompson. Tess watched as John was allowed to remove what she could see from across the room was indeed an amazingly preserved medieval lute. If she hadn’t known better, she might have suspected some plucky time traveler had brought it with him and plopped it down in Payneswick’s private office.
“This ought to be interesting,” Stephen murmured from where he stood next to her.
“Wait until you hear him play,” Tess murmured back.
Stephen took her hand and pulled it into the crook of his elbow. “Well, since you’ve already heard him, maybe you should discreetly take a turn about the room and see what you come up with. We’ll both make lists of what we’ll want further looks at.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “Always the scholar.”
“Darling, it flatters my enormous ego to be an expert in something,” he said with an answering smile. “It’s for damned sure that will never be swordplay—as Kendrick would tell you without being asked. I suppose that leaves me no choice but to pursue books.”
“I’d be careful what you say,” she warned. “Karma has big ears.”
He patted her hand. “Go start at the other end of the room. We’ll meet in the middle and compare notes.”
She tried to, truly, but she kept finding herself distracted by the music. John shot her more than one look that said she should be keeping her nose to the grindstone, as it were, but that didn’t help her much. She did managed to look over a good chunk of the titles in the bookcases and she did identify a few goodies locked in glass cases, but it occurred to her as she looked at them that she had been overlooking the true treasure.
She turned and looked at that treasure, sitting there on a chair with a lute in his hands, giving them all a glimpse into another world.
The thought was so staggering, she lost her breath.
She jumped a little when she realized Dave Thompson was standing next to her. That she hadn’t noticed him getting up to do so said quite a bit about her mental state. She smiled weakly.
“Hello.”
He looked as overwhelmed as she felt. “I don’t suppose you could use your influence on him to convince him to do all that in studio, could you?”
“With all due respect, Mr. Thompson, what do you think?”
He laughed quietly. “I think he has us all right where he wants us, you included.”
“I’m afraid you’re right.”
Dave studied John for so long in silence, Tess found herself growing a little uncomfortable. She could see the wheels turning and suspected he was genuinely puzzled about where John had learned to play as he did. She was equally convinced it would never in a million years occur to the man that John was anything but what he said he was: a modern guy who knew a couple of songs on a medieval instrument. The only fly in that ointment was that Dave spent an equal amount of time looking from John to Stephen and back, as if he couldn’t quite believe they looked so much alike but apparently didn’t know each other very well.
That was going to have him asking questions John wasn’t going to want to answer.
Tess caught Stephen’s eye and tried not to look as uneasy as she suddenly felt. He sauntered over immediately to hopefully help her with a little diversion. He held out his hand to Dave.
“Stephen de Piaget,” he said easily. “And you need no introduction, Mr. Thompson. Your business adventures are the stuff of legend.”
“Are you and John related?” Dave asked bluntly, apparently content to ignore the flattery. “You could pass for brothers.”
“Distant cousins, I believe,” Stephen corrected smoothly. “I’d have to consult the earl’s genealogy to be certain. My father’s very keen on that sort of thing.”
“I’ve met the Earl of Artane,” Dave mused. “He’s quite the patron of the arts, isn’t he?”
“He is,” Stephen agreed. “And he’s always eager to see what sorts of productions you’re behind.”
“Has he heard John play?”
“I don’t believe so,” Stephen said slowly, as if he were truly trying to remember. “He likely should, though, wouldn’t you say?”
Dave only looked at Stephen with a frown, then turned that thoughtful frown back on John. Tess didn’t dare look at Stephen for fear some of her panic might show on her face. It was no wonder John didn’t like notoriety. She could hardly stand it for him herself, and she wasn’t the one in the hot seat.
It was with no small bit of relief that she watched John eventually hand the lute back to Lord Payneswick. He claimed no ability to play any of the recorders there and demurred when faced with the viols.
“Is your passion music only?” Lord Payneswick asked, locking up the case again and turning to look at him. “Or does it extend to languages?”
“I believe Dr. Alexander and the Viscount Haulton would be better choices for that,” John said promptly. “I’ve exhausted any pretense of expertise I have already.”
The liar. Tess wanted to shake her head but she couldn’t, because she was too unnerved to. Something was going to have to give—and soon. She couldn’t pretend forever not to know who—and what—John de Piaget was. She found herself surprisingly torn between things she hadn’t begun to think she might be torn by. The scholar in her didn’t want him running off before she could ravage his mind for eyewitness accounts of things she had only read about in books. Rare books, but still not the real thing.