Best Laid Schemes by Emma Jensen

Author:Emma Jensen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780449002346
Publisher: Fawcett
Published: 1998-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

"There are three more verses."

"No. There are not." Tarquin seized a random piece from the stand and started playing without much enthusiasm. Julius, grinning broadly, strutted away.

The sounds of Mozart drifted through the room. Delighted, Sibyl watched Tarquin's long, blunt-tipped fingers sliding across the keys. This was a side of him she had never seen: the one who seemed so easy, so comfortable in front of the pianoforte. He was accomplished, too. She didn't know much of this Bach, but the piece Tarquin had chosen had been beautiful and, until he'd faltered, most impressive.

"Do you play, Miss Cameron?"

Sibyl was forced to scoot to the edge of the settee when Caroline Reynolds decided to take over the central cushion where she had been sitting. It only took a moment to comprehend why. The position put the other girl directly in Tarquin's line of vision.

"Play at what?" Sibyl returned dryly. "I have never been much for parlor games."

"No, silly. I meant the pianoforte."

"Did you? Fancy that." She tugged the edge of her skirt from beneath the other girl. "No, I do not."

"The harp, then."

"Not that, either."

"Surely you must play some instrument."

Sibyl allowed herself a quiet sigh. She'd had far too many of these conversations with far too many young ladies just like Caroline Reynolds. "I do not. Nor do I sing." Unless, she amended, she wanted to clear a room. Perhaps she ought to try a madrigal now. "I enjoy music a great deal, but have no skill at it."

"None whatsoever?" Caroline blinked enormous, pale eyes and fluttered her hands in apparent dismay.

"None whatsoever."

"Well, goodness. What do you do with yourself?"

"Do you draw?" Elspeth Vaer had perked up slightly and was now leaning into the conversation. "I have seen you with paper and drawing pencil."

"I draw. A little." Trees, mostly, though leaves tended to defeat her.

"Paint?" Elspeth queried.

"Not often." Sibyl had long since abandoned paints. She was more likely to end up wearing them than getting them properly on the paper.

"Well, goodness," Caroline repeated. "Have you no skills?"

Sibyl was tempted to reply that she mixed a very good poison. But that wasn't true, either.

"Miss Cameron is a bruising rider. Takes jumps like no other woman."

She had not seen Julius approach, and gave him a grateful smile. She was a decent rider, to be sure, but he could not have known that. On the one occasion when they had ridden together, he had spent most of the time carefully extricating her from a holly shrub. She had been haring after Tarquin, who was truly a bruising rider. Julius had not been altogether lying, however. She had taken the jump like no other woman: headfirst without her mount, right into the holly.

"Our Sibyl is a fine poet, too." MacGregor had left his position at the pianoforte and now propped a hip against the back of the settee. "Her verses have moved me."

Right out of the room, Sibyl added. She had been trying her hand at composing epic verse like Great-great-great-grandfather Kirkcormac Cameron. Tarquin had promptly closeted himself in the library.

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