Page 206 of Once an Angel
His accusing gaze impaled her. "I knew where every book was. Before you moved them."
A spirit of perversity seized Emily. She pulled his boyhood journal off the nearest stack and waved it under his nose. "Even this one, Homer?"
Justin snatched it out of her hand and reached around her to jerk open the secret drawer. It slid from its moorings and clattered to the floor, spilling out papers, bottles of ink, several charcoal pencils, a thin pair of gold spectacles, and a yellowing packet tied with string. Muttering under his breath, he squatted and crammed the journal and his symphonies into the cubbyhole.
Emily knelt to gather some papers, prepared to hand them over as a peace offering. She glanced curiously at an official-looking document signed with flourished signatures, but it drifted from her fingers, forgotten, as her gaze fell on the packet of letters. She recognized the bold strokes of Justin's handwriting.
He was still muttering through clenched teeth. "If I'd have wanted an infernal woman pawing through
my belongings, I'd have married one, now, wouldn't I? Why can't you stay out of my things? Better yet, why can't you just stay out of my life?"
His hand closed around the letters, but it was too late.
A tear splashed the envelope, smearing the faded ink. Another pelted his hand like a salty raindrop.
"Oh, Christ, Em, don't go all weepy on me. I get enough of that from Penfeld."
But Emily wasn't looking at him. She was staring at the thick bundle of letters, each one addressed to a Miss Claire Scarborough of 45 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London, and never posted.
She gazed up at him through a mist of tears. He reached for her, but she was already gone, leaving the door swinging in her wake.
Chapter 10
I believe your charm would challenge even his most
serious bent of mind. ...
It rain melted to a fine mist against Emily's skin, mingling with her tears. The wind tore at her curls and whipped the sea into foaming whitecaps. She hugged her knees to her chest, lulled by the sibilant hiss
of the waves against the shore.
It didn't take Justin long to find her. She looked up to find him silhouetted against a curtain of gray, hatless, his hands clenched into fists, empty and beseeching. Rain misted his hair and caught like crystal beads in the stubble of his beard.
She turned her face to the sea, dashing her tears away. How could she explain it wasn't sadness making her weep, but a fierce joy?
He had never forgotten her, she realized. In all of those long, lonely years he had never once forgotten her. The thick packet of letters bound by a frayed string was proof of that. But why had he never posted them? Why had he robbed a bereft child of the solace his words might have given? She had slipped downstairs each morning at the school when the mail was delivered only to creep back to her attic empty-handed, praying the others girls hadn't seen her. She could only imagine the joy and pride she might have felt had Miss Winters laid one of those crisp brown envelopes in her hands. She would have flown up the stairs then, torn open the letter, and savored every word from the guardian she had never met.
Confusion buffeted her like the wind. If Justin had uttered one word, one contrite syllable, it might have all come tumbling out—the questions, the accusations, the pleas. Instead, he offered her his hand.
Emily took it, relieved to find something of warmth and substance in her shifting world. He pulled her to her feet, and they faced each other for a timeless moment, just a man and a woman alone on a barren stretch of sand. He entwined her fingers in his own and led her up a sandy hill to a broad bluff crowned by a rough-hewn cross.
The wind was stronger there. It whipped Justin's hair to a dark froth and battered the purity of his profile as he freed her hand and faced the sea. Suddenly Emily didn't want to know the truth. With a desperation that shocked her, she longed to press her fingertips to his chiseled lips, to silence his mouth with the ravenous heat of her own.
But when he opened his mouth, only these halting words came out. "I hear music in my head all the time. I always have. For as long as I can remember."
Emily sank down in the shallow grass, her knees weakened by relief. "It must be a gift."
His laugh was short and bitter. "A curse perhaps. My family thought me a freak. I was my father's only son, yet I had no interest in his shipping firm or the blasted social obligations that accompanied his wretched title. He couldn't drag me away from the piano." His voice dropped, became as gray and passionless as the sky. When I was twenty-one he gave me a choice. My music or my inheritance. I chose the music. He tossed me into the streets with nothing but the coat on my back. I ended up at a music hall in a rat-infested rookery playing bawdy tunes for drunken sots who tossed me pennies for
pay. That's where I met Nicky. He took me under his wing and taught me how to survive."
He glanced down at the cross. Emily sucked in a breath, suddenly realizing what she was sitting next to.
"Nicholas?" she said softly. "Is he buried here?"
Justin looked up, blinking almost absently. "We never found anything of Nicholas to bury. My other partner rests here." He reached down and ran a hand over the cross. "The dearest friend I ever had."
Emily couldn't move, couldn't breathe. Emotions she'd thought long suppressed welled up in her throat, rendering speech impossible. She was as helpless as a doll in Justin's hands as he cupped her cheek and gently tilted her face to his. He could have hurled her into the sea, and she wouldn't have been able to
