Entanglements by Rachel McMillan

Author:Rachel McMillan [McMillan, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2020-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

Nic’s head spun. He wanted to drive his fist into the brute’s smug face. He rubbed his forearm as if he had felt every nerve and tendon squeezed as Esther’s had been with Weatherton’s tightening grip. But he was powerless. He wouldn’t lift an inch of a finger if it meant the brute’s temper would worsen. He wasn’t leaving with Esther. Weatherton was. She was to marry him. Esther… He had never seen her scared and agitated before. He only saw her face when she smiled, eyes closed, falling into a piece of music. He only registered the gleam in her eyes when she perfected an unexpected winning movement with a stealthy competition in one of their chess matches.

Nic felt dizzy. How could his sensations survive so much in the course of an afternoon? His fingers still tingled from the silk-feel of her hair looped in his hand. His heart still thrummed with the first test and friction of their kiss. His mouth still buzzed with the taste and sensation and every thought reconciled the slight and then oh-so-quick shift between his attraction to Esther and his fervent love.

Nic closed his eyes, drew a jagged breath.

“Mr. Ricci?”

It took him several seconds to register the voice. “Widow Barclay! You’re still here!”

“I believe I was forgotten.” She held tightly to her knitting bag with one hand a bouquet of hairpins with the other. She must have picked them up when Nic wasn’t looking.

“Widow Barclay, I…” Nic didn’t know how to finish the sentence. He pushed the damp hair from his perspiring forehead.

“Yes, Mr. Ricci?”

Widow Barclay looked perturbed and a little shaken but very much rooted to her spot. And far calmer than he felt.

“I feel that it might not be my place but…”

“What is your place, Mr. Ricci?” her voice was as innocent as her wide doe eyes.

“I am a rehearsal pianist.”

“And a good one.”

“Time will tell.” Nic shoved his shaking hands in his pockets.

“I believe that you and Miss Hunnisett will create a beautiful and memorable occasion.”

“Well, its dependent on her actual accompanist.” Nic didn’t mean for the harsh annoyance to undercut his tone but he wondered how her chaperone could stand and watch Esther assaulted as she had been, her eyes filling with tears, the pain over her features. Nic reeled. Perhaps Widow Barclay was merely accustomed to it.

“Mr. Ricci, I believe that you should speak freely.”

“Widow Barclay, I was…am…very disturbed by the way that Mr. Weatherton treated Miss Hunnisett just now. As if he was intentionally harming her.”

“Oh he was. Very intentionally.”

Nic pinched the bridge of his nose. “It is not my business but I worry for her welfare if Miss Hunnisett were to marry Mr. Weatherton.”

Widow Barclay adjusted her pince-nez to focus on him more intently. “And that would bother you?”

“Of course it would bother me!” He lowered his register. “I do not like to see a lovely, refined and talented woman… or any woman for that matter… subjected to such brutal and unkind treatment.”

“So I am to

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