She gave herself to the music, letting it possess her, move her, as she would give herself to a lover.

You’re drunk. Go to bed.

He had to stop having these thoughts about her. She was his employee and the woman he’d hired as companion to his sisters. And he was engaged.

And she was living under his roof.

After a difficult passage which she repeated three times, she finally mastered it and laughed aloud. Her voice had a husky richness to it that made him shiver.

Would she laugh with delight like that after he made her come?

All right. You’re really drunk. Off to bed, you bounder.

He backed away, heading for safety. His boot caught on the carpet and he nearly fell, righting himself with a hand against the wall.

Viola started, her fingers playing a disharmonious chord. “Who’s there?”

He cleared his throat.

She whirled around. “Your Grace? I didn’t know I had an audience.”

“I was just leaving.”

“Please come in for a moment. I want to ask you something about Lady Blanche.”

A conversation about his sisters. No harm in that. He entered the room, hat in hand. “That was an astounding piece of music you were just playing. Unlike anything I’ve heard you play before.”

“It’s the instrument.” She ran her hand over the scrolling wood. “I’ve never played an Erard pianoforte before. It’s remarkably sonorous. The action is smooth as silk.” She played a shimmering scale. “Such beauty and power.”

Just like you, he wanted to say, stopping himself just in time.

She gazed at the piano, enraptured, and then turned that smile on him, as though he’d given her the instrument as a gift.

He suddenly wished with all his heart that he had given it to her, that he had been the author of that smile.

“What were you playing just now?”

“Oh that?” She shrugged one shoulder. “That was one of my father’s compositions that I was embellishing upon, creating variations on his theme.”

“Do you compose your own music?”

“I dabble.”

“It was intoxicating.”

“Did you think so?”

“Absolutely.” He took a seat next to her on the piano bench. Should have sat in a chair instead. But he was here now. And she hadn’t jumped up and run away. “When did you learn to play?”

“I’ve known since earliest childhood that my role in life was to be a muse for my father’s art. I practiced and practiced until my fingers cramped and my shoulders ached and my head throbbed. I had to play his music flawlessly or suffer the consequences.”

“He didn’t beat you, did he?”

“Nothing like that. He made his disappointment known if I played even one wrong note, he’d shake his head sadly and tell me that the angels were weeping in heaven to hear his music thus mistreated.”