Page 49 of Rose and the Rogue
“Not perform. Just sing. Your voice gives me chills.”
“Really?” She couldn’t help but laugh. “As if I scare you?”
“It scares me to think I’ve heard you sing once but might never hear you again. You could raise me from the dead with your voice, Rose. No, I’m not being facetious now. I mean it. When you sang, you made me feel…alive.”
Rose inhaled, shaken by the confession.
Adrian led her to a room on the ground floor, a smaller room by the sound of it, or otherwise the walls and windows were draped with enough fabric to cushion any stray noises.
“This is my reading room,” he explained. “Comfortable couch and chairs, very secluded. Will this do?”
“For a song? Yes, perfectly.”
He guided her to a spot on the floor, and told her that he’d sit on the couch about ten feet in front of where she stood. “I haven’t got a piano. Yet. Or any instrument, really. Do you need something for…I don’t know, tuning? I remember when your cousin played a note for you at that recital.”
Rose shook her head, surprised he even noticed that little detail. “I’m going to sing a cappella and solo. It doesn’t matter what key I begin in. And I’ve always had good pitch.”
“Then I’ll just sit down and shut up,” Adrian said.
So Rose sang. She warmed her voice up with a favorite aria that Maestro Valdi had declared suited her range perfectly. Rose liked the lower alto registers, and she kept her volume lower than usual, since the concert felt so clandestine, even if they were alone in the house.
There was something nerve-racking in performing for an unseen audience of one. Rose was used to performing for her family, gathered in the drawing room in their usual seats, with their usual supportive attention. Rose could always sense their presences because she was so familiar with them.
But Adrian was different. The room was different, the acoustics were different, everything was different. Rose knew he was sitting down, because she heard the creak of the wood and rustle of fabric when he did so. But she had little sense of what else was in the room, only that it was small enough that her voice did not echo.
And she did not know what he thought of her music. He was listening in total silence. But was it attentive or bored? Did he regret asking for this? Was he less impressed this time, having built up his memory of the first time he heard her sing into an impossible perfection?
She finished the song, and inhaled deeply, getting her breath back.
“Did you…like that?” she asked into the deep silence.
Then he stood, and walked over to her, his hands resting tightly on her torso, just under the bust of her dress. His fingertips just grazed her rib cage, and stayed there.
“Gorgeous,” he said, his voice a little rough. “Sing something else. Please.”
“Right now? You don’t want to sit again?”
“I want to feel the music.”
Rose swallowed, and then took a deep breath, from the belly, preparing for the next song.
She let the first notes out slowly, tenderly. This was a much more challenging song, with long, long notes she had to hold until the very end, when she could play with a demi-quaver and a flourish as she got the whim.
She heard Adrian breathing, and felt the absolute concentration of his attention on her. No one besides her instructors had ever listened to her this closely before. Rose was acutely aware of the faint vibrations generated by her singing, her lungs swelling, pushing her ribs out…and there were Adrian’s hands to register the feeling.
“Keep singing,” he ordered softly. He kissed her neck, and again Rose was more aware of the physical effects of singing than she’d ever been. The way her throat opened and her lungs filled. The way the vibrato in her vocal cords rippled through her body. The way her breath came and went, inhaling the cool air of the room and exhaling the same air as music warmed by her own flesh.
On the last note, she maintained her breath as long as she could, spinning out the tone to a final, lingering sound. But just before the note ended, Adrian lowered his mouth to hers, and the music became a kiss.
Rose was lost. Music was passion given sound, and the intimacy of a private concert was more than enough to raise her heart rate and send her imagination running rampant.
And now her imagination had to bow out, replaced by the far more sensuous reality of being in Adrian’s arms, feeling his mouth on her skin, and listening to his breath as he ran his hands over her.
“My lord…”
“Adrian,” he corrected. “You’ve said it before, and we’re much too close to use formal address between each other now.”
“Are we? Close, I mean?”
