The Girl is Not For Christmas: A Christmas Regency Romance Novel by Emma V Leech

Author:Emma V Leech [Leech, Emma V]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emma V Leech
Published: 2020-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

13th December 1818.

Music and melody and the means of undoing an unhappy earl.

King had found the piano by chance, some happy stroke of luck that he was not about to question, though why it hadn’t been pawned already he didn’t know. Once Walsh had told him of the family’s situation, King had noticed the spaces. There were picture-frame-shaped gaps on the walls, the paint or wall hanging exposed beneath a far brighter shade than elsewhere as the family’s paintings had been sold off. In every room there was a space, sometimes several, where perhaps there had been a chair or a pretty piece of furniture. The more he looked about the place, the more he saw, and yes, he was an appalling guest, the nosy kind, poking his beak in where it wasn’t wanted. There were too many rooms stripped bare, though, the layers being peeled away one by one. Lady Boscawen’s bedroom was the only one that remained untouched. He could see it happening to Livvy, too, could see the strain of hoping when experience had taught her not to be so foolish. Yet she kept on, kept hoping for better, striving for better, and not for herself but for those children whom she loved like her own, and whom she deserved more than their blessed mother did.

Something like rage swelled in his chest and he tamped it down. Not his fight. Even if it were, there was nothing he could do, nothing he could offer.

He sat down at the piano and smoothed his fingers over the keys, feeling a little of the tension in his shoulders ease as he did so. To his relief, and somewhat to his surprise, the piano was well tuned and cared for, and he ran through a few well-loved pieces before settling on something more personal and closer to his heart. Foolish of him, but he was a fool. He’d always been a fool, a dreamer, an idealist, until his father had finally taught him the lesson King had resisted learning, once and for all. Either he was the man the marquess wished him to be, or he was nothing. Anything King tried for that was his own, his father destroyed. Yet, he couldn’t destroy this. He could take back the piano, which had been a gift to him as a very young man, but not the music he’d written himself. That was his own, except it didn’t feel like it was his any longer. When he’d written it, he’d been foolish enough to hope, to hold on to a wistful longing, to believe there might be something more in his future, something rare and bright and hard to find, but he’d had that glimmer in the darkness. He’d clung to the fragile hope that he might find it for as long as he could. It had been lost to him too long ago now, drowned it in brandy as he let himself sink into the darker side of life, and yet here it was again, mocking him now, taunting him.

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