Page 87 of A Lady of Means
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The Duke had had a shiningmoment to exit, and he’d chosen instead to stay by her side.
Moria didn’t know what to make of that.
She should be happy with her choice, but she was angry that she had to make such a choice, though who she was angry at, she couldn’t say.
Devyn was good, he was honorable, leaving her had not been a choice.Neither had staying.Neither were choices he could make.
The choice that she could make was to keep on loving him even as it ripped her soul to rags.
The Duke appeared in the doorway of her sitting room the day following the scandal of the Burn Book, standing over Moria to admire the embroidery hoop in her hand.
“It looks like… willow fronds,” he said in awe.
Moria looked at the white-on-white garment in her hand.“Do you like it?”she whispered, not meeting his eyes.
It had been the design she’d started stitching for her wedding to Devyn.She’d tried to take a pair of scissors, a seam ripper, a knife, a match to it, but she couldn’t.
“I think it’s lovely,” he said jovially.“I think you’re lovely.You’re so…” He paused.“Creative.It’s different from what I pictured you’d choose, but I’m sure you will look divine.”He placed a kiss on her forehead, walking over to the other side of the room to take a scone from a tea tray just as her chaperone entered.
Miss Kelley gave Moria a reassuring smile.Moria hated seeing her, or any of her loved ones, walking on eggshells around her like one misstep might send her reeling.
“My lady,” he spoke, interrupting her thoughts.“My mother sent me to ask if you’d mind playing something tonight before guests arrive for the dinner she’s hosting?”
Moria followed his gaze to the piano in the corner of the room, to his right.She quickly looked away.
She knew what she’d see if her eyes hesitated too long.Devyn’s body crowding hers, playing the right hand while she played the left, him loving her so fully on a piano bench.A pianoforte with hand painted flowers on the music desk showing up at her family’s London house after she told him she didn’t have a piano to play in town.
She shut the memories in a drawer quickly.
“I don’t…I don’t play anymore.”
His face fell.“You don’t….play anymore?Is something wrong?You have a gift.”
Moria felt the tears pushing behind her eyes.She shook her head.She could tell him the truth; but then where would she be?
“Your Grace,” Miss Kelley began.
“Could you give us just a moment?”He interrupted, crossing the room to reach Moria.
His eyes were so kind.That was Moria’s first thought.The green of them was a hue that could only belay kindness, and maybe want.
He touched her cheek.She closed her eyes at the contact because it had been so long since she’d been touched so softly, so intimately, not because it heated her throughout.
“I won’t pressure you.The Burn Book yesterday, and your feelings about the piano…I just want to understand.”
As words go, that was the right thing to say just then.She felt grateful to him for it.She hated him at the same time for not being conspicuously terrible so she didn’t have to care for him.But some part of her knew that in time, she would trust him with more than just the surface of her heart, and his tender touches and those green eyes would work their way deeper.
And then how could she hold allegiance to more than just one man without being a traitor and every other name her mind called her at night?She looked down at the embroidery in her hand that she’d begun for a union with another man.
“Playing music is something…tied to parts of my past…I’d rather not hold fast to.If I let go of music, I let go of that too.”She swallowed the lump in her throat.
His eyes were confused, but he nodded, more out of a desire to understand than genuine understanding.“And not playing the pianoforte, does that for you?”
He was on his knees before her.His hands rested on his thighs, she set down the embroidery and took them in her hands, turning them over.They were lined, but smooth.A warm shade of brown.Long and lean.Nails neatly trimmed.
“You have beautiful hands,” she said, tracing the edges between his fingers.If she could focus on something before her, not all the things behind her and ahead of her and inside her head, she could push through.
