Chapter 3

3

Joshua made his way downstairs and marveled at how invigorated he was despite his labors yesterday and his lack of sleep last night. Playing the part of the impoverished music master meant that he was solely responsible for packing up most of his worldly goods and transporting them from Albany to Grosvenor Street. Not that he'd given up his rooms at the gentlemen's establishment. After all, he'd have to have somewhere to go once this singular employment ended.

After he'd wrestled everything into a hackney and then carried the various boxes, trunks, bags, and cases into Mrs. Hawksworth's establishment, he'd finally had the assistance of a couple of footmen and an arrogant butler who smelled distinctly of port. By the time he'd settled his belongings in the music room and the rather elegant bedchamber next to it, he'd foregone supper in favor of a long, hot bath and an early retirement to his bed. A bed so comfortable he should have slept through the night. He would have too, if dreams of a very naked Sophia Hawksworth beneath him, on top of him, and in several other imaginative positions had not kept him tossing and turning until a few hours before dawn.

"This way, sir," the young underbutler instructed as he led Joshua down the short corridor that ran from the drawing room where he'd met his new student to the breakfast parlor where he was to dine with her this morning to arrange for her lessons. The footman, no underbutler, Short Rutherford as he was called, opened the door, and motioned for Joshua to enter.

"Good morning, Mr. Norcross. Do help yourself." Mrs. Hawksworth sat at one end of a small but elegant dining table, a news sheet in one hand and a teacup in the other. Joshua filled his plate from the sideboard set with an enticing variety of dishes and sat at the place set for him, opposite that of Mrs. Hawksworth.

"I trust you slept well," she said as she sipped her tea and devoted most of her attention to her news sheet. "Is your chamber comfortable enough?"

"Yes to both. It is very kind of you to allow me the use of a bedchamber on the first floor. Had I been required to move my belongings onto the third floor I might still be abed."

"That would have been a pity. The chamber next to the music room is never in use, and it seemed a shame to put your constitution to the test of all those stairs every day." She put down the news sheet and busied herself buttering a toast point.

"I assure you my constitution is quite hardy, but I do appreciate the consideration." When she glanced up quickly, he continued, "I trust you slept well, Mrs. Hawksworth?"

His question produced a vigorous attempt to cover the toast point with jam from the crystal jam pot next to her plate. "Yes. Thank you." She gave the toast a vicious bite and picked up the news sheet once more.

"I understand you played for the guests at Goodrum's for several years," he said in a purposefully amiable tone. "What led you to such an interesting place?'

She snorted. "Interesting. Is that what we're calling a notorious pleasure club these days?"

"I did not wish to appear…indelicate." He forked a section of sausage and bit into it. This conversation was not going as he'd planned.

"Mr. Norcross." She dropped the news sheet and placed her fork across the top of her plate. "I am an earl's paid mistress. My last position was as entertainment in a place where men and women of the ton go to indulge their carnal appetites with each other or with the men and women who work there. I am many things. Delicate is not one of them. You obviously want to know something about me. We will discuss your reasons later. Please ask me directly what you wish to know, and I may or may not answer you. I am a woman after all and that is my prerogative."

Joshua coughed and worked to chew and swallow the sausage. He washed the food down with a long draught of the coffee he'd poured himself from the sideboard. "Are you always this direct?"

"Not always, but I save time in many circumstances by being so." Her expression was serene, but he noticed her tapping the handle of the knife next to her plate. The pulse at the base of her throat fluttered like a moth trapped under a glass. Sophia Hawksworth did an excellent job of playing the no-nonsense mistress inured to the niceties of life. But there was something above all of that in her, something of a lady caught in the role of someone who had been born into a hard life by some dark mistake.

"Very well." He pressed the embossed silk serviette to his lips for a moment. "Mrs. Hawksworth. Does that mean you are a widow?"

She blinked, then cleared her throat. "Yes."

"My condolences."

She inclined her head but said not a word.

"How long ago?"

"Nearly seven years."

"Seven years? You must have been a child when you married."

"Is that your gallant way of telling me I have a youthful appearance?"

"Apparently not, if that is your reaction." She did give him a little smile at that.

She dotted her mouth with her own serviette and stood. Joshua was on his feet at once. "I am twenty-five years old, Mr. Norcross. I was married for a year and he died. I went to work at Goodrum's because I had nowhere else to go. A few years ago I grew tired of the noise and crowds of the club. Here, I sell my body for privacy and peace and quiet. The earl is more than kind, and I suspect he hired you because he has not been able to visit me as often as he did when I first came to live here."

"Excuse me?" For a heartbeat Joshua wondered if she knew why he was really there. Then his all too male mind began to entertain ideas he had no idea considering At least not yet. Some of his confusion likely appeared on his face as Mrs. Hawksworth blanched and then bit her lip.

"I simply meant his lordship knows of my desire to improve on my musical skills, and he hopes these lessons will occupy my time so I don't become bored or feel unappreciated. What did you think I meant?" She narrowed her eyes in a suspiciously provocative way, rather like a cat studying a fat mouse.

"Exactly that." He pushed his chair in and winged his arm at her. "Shall we adjourn to the music room and discuss a plan for your lessons?" She slipped her hand through his arm and placed her palm lightly on his wrist. A little sizzle shot through him at the touch of her bare flesh on his. He managed not to stumble as they went up the curved staircase to the first floor.

They did not speak, at least not with words. However, the brush of her hip against his thigh certainly spoke to some part of his body. He had to admit she was far more beautiful than he'd imagined her to be. She smelled of lilies and lemons. Her hair, pinned in an intricate arrangement of braids atop her head was the color of new gold. Surprisingly, her eyes were a dark amber color. Her face was exquisite and reminded him of the great master's paintings of Aphrodite he'd seen on his Grand Tour.

"Mr. Norcross?"

"Hmm?" He looked around. Somehow they had arrived in the music room. He needed to pay closer attention or he'd end up doing something foolish where Mrs. Hawksworth was concerned. Or he'd walk into a door. He suspected both would be painful.

"I said, what would you like for me to do now?" She let go of his arm and settled onto the lavender velvet tufted chair at the small Broadwood grand piano. Her simple green dress, silk the color of summer leaves with some sort of sheer dotted fabric over it, accented her diminutive height and goddess-like shape. Wonderful. Now he was randy as a schoolboy and had to play the dedicated music master.

"Do you play the piano as well as the harp?" He indicated the instrument behind her.

"Not very well and the only piano pieces I know are hymns." She gazed at him expectantly.

Mrs. Hawksworth made him think of music, but definitely not hymns. Hell and damnation, yes. Church? He shook his head. "Perhaps something on the harp, so I might attest your skill and your musical taste?"

"Very well." She rubbed her hands down her skirts and went to sit at the Cambrian pedal harp, a handsome instrument, though he noticed she also had an Erard Grecian harp as well as several other types of harps in her collection. She pulled the harp onto her shoulder and ran her hands over the double strings, making a few adjustments as she went. "What shall I play?"

"Whatever you like." He sat on the tufted chair she had vacated. "Play something you enjoy playing." He leaned back against the piano, prepared to hear one of the many folk songs, mostly Irish, young ladies were taught when taking up the harp to impress prospective suitors.

She sat very still, her palms pressed to the strings of her instrument and her eyes closed. Then she began to play. Slowly, Joshua sat up and shifted forward on the piano chair. He was struck dumb. Her fingers flew over the strings in a blur. She'd chosen to play a selection by Handel, the last movement of his Air and variations, Suite No. 5 in E major. The piece was also known as The Harmonious Blacksmith. Originally written for harpsichord, the suite was challenging enough for a trained musician. She, who by her own confession did not read a note of music, played every note exactly as written, no not exactly as written as she added embellishments even old George Frederic might have envied.

He watched mesmerized not simply by her talent and skill, but by the way she became one with the harp and poured the music onto those strings with the very force of her being. He had thought her beautiful from the moment he met her. Now she was glorious. And he was in a very great deal of trouble. He shook his head and adjusted his seat on the dainty chair. In addition to the assault on his musician's soul Sophia Hawksworth at the harp was producing a powerful and primal reaction in more carnal parts of his anatomy. Not. Here. For. That. That wasn't precisely true, but he needed to focus on the two tasks that would help him to obtain his dream.

Teach the lady music.

Discover if the lady is a murderess.

She finished the Handel with an amazing ornamental flourish and sat, her breasts rising and falling rapidly against the low scoop of the dress's bodice. Instinctually Joshua leapt to his feet and applauded. Mrs. Hawksworth blushed the loveliest shade of pink, stood and gave a short curtsy before she dropped back onto her seat once more. She waved at him dismissively.

"Do sit down, Mr. Norcross. You look ridiculous."

"Sincere appreciation of art in any form is never ridiculous." He retook his seat to mollify her embarrassment. "Mrs. Collins is right. You are a prodigy."

"She said that?" The harpist fluffed her skirts around her and folded her hands in her lap.

"She did."

"She's very kind."

Joshua snorted. "She's not being kind. You should be playing for kings or at least for Convent Garden or Vauxhall audiences paying you a fortune." Her expression quickly changed and he swore his words frightened her in some way.

"I am more than happy playing for the earl and the other g—servants."

"Servants? You are content to play for servants?"

"I was born and raised in Seven Dials, Mr. Norcross. I came from nothing, from less than most servants I know." He liked her better like this, chin up and eyes alight with indignation.

"My apologies, Mrs. Hawksworth. I meant no disrespect. You've done what many could never do. You have used your talent and beauty to greatly improve your circumstances." He waved a hand around the opulent music room filled with expensive instruments and music books.

"An earl's mistress? Really, Mr. Norcross?"

"There are few opportunities afforded women in this world, more's the pity. Even those born into monied and titled families. You could have done…far worse."

She tilted her head and studied him in that way she had, a way he'd already learned to fear if only a little. "I've never thought of my life like that." She stood and went to the shelves where music books and lined copy books stood in neat stacks. "But as for talent and beauty? I suppose my talent is a gift. But beauty? Beauty is often nothing more than a curse for a woman."

"A woman's beauty is only a curse if there is no one in her life to appreciate it."

"Appreciate? In my experience appreciation takes many forms and some of those forms…do not bear contemplation." She spun in a graceful circle and indicated all of the instruments and music "You are correct, however. I am surrounded by everything my heart has ever desired thanks to the earl. I have the very best instruments on which to play and compose." She sat down in a lavender and gold striped armchair, an open music book in her hand. "And music I can neither read nor write. Cruelly ironic even for a girl from Seven Dials."

She laughed, the brittle sort of laugh he'd heard from his friends who had taken their families' offered commissions and gone off to war only to return forever broken by what they had seen. Sophia Hawksworth had experienced those same horrors in some form. He'd wager his own Broadwood grand on that.

"Life is unkind to all of us in one way or another," he said.

"Very true. Even the poor old king and queen had to live with his madness for all those years."

Yes, and they left the rest of us to deal with Prinny once they were gone. Ironic cruelty at its finest."

She laughed. "You are wicked. Very well. Life is unkind to us all. What are we to do?"

"I am going to teach you how to read and write music. Which will make both of us happy." He pushed to his feet and retrieved the large leather case he'd left next to the piano yesterday afternoon. "Yes?"

"Yes, please." Her response sent an erotic shiver down his spine. He'd love to hear those words from her lips with such enthusiasm in different circumstances. Naked circumstances. Damn! The earl had better be prepared to pay a great deal for agony Joshua was suffering in this endeavor. He doubted the man would consider a constantly stiff cock as suffering. How was it possible the earl had need of four other women when Sophia Hawksworth was his for the taking?

"Mr. Norcross, are you well?" She had crossed the room and placed a dainty hand on his arm. Concentrate, man. Concentrate!

He shuffled his hand around in the portfolio and drew out two books. "Perfectly well. We will start with these." He handed her his copy of A Musical Grammar in Four Parts and a copy of Explanations of the notes, marks, words & c, used in music both by the renowned musician and teacher J.W. Calcott. "I began my study of music with these very books."

She sat down on the piano chair and ran her hand across the worn covers of each book. Her touch was reverent, and when she looked up and smiled at him, he found he could not breathe. She opened the cover of the first book and saw his name scrawled in a childish hand beneath a dated inscription in a hand he knew by heart.

"These are your books. Gifts from your mother?"

"Indeed." He swallowed to steady his voice. "My first music teacher. She was a very talented pianist and an excellent teacher."

"Was? She is…gone?"

He nodded. "She died when I was twelve. Consumption. I was sent away to school when I was ten. I was not told she was ill until it was too late. I was not allowed home for her funeral." Joshua ran his hand back and forth on the raised top of the piano to avoid meeting her gaze.

"Life being unkind again?"

He did look at her then, and the sympathy and understanding in her expression settled over him like a balm. "Most definitely. Now." He pulled a padded bench over to the piano and sat down. "Let us begin." He opened Calcott's book on notation and pulled a random piece of sheet music from the stack on the music rack.

Joshua glanced at the gold lyre-shaped ormolu mantel clock. He and Mrs. Hawksworth had been working diligently for two hours now. Which shocked him as the time had not seemed even half that long. The earl's talented harpist proved herself a quick study. She struggled some. So had he when first learning musical notation and harmonics. He centered their study on the piano and its notation as it was a medium with which they were both familiar. He would need to find some treatises on the harp and consult the harpist he knew from the opera houses at some point to expand on her basic lessons.

He studied her with open attention as she carefully copied the exercise he'd written out for her. The sunlight from the tall window at the end of the room bathed her hair in a shimmering halo. Her tongue peeked out of the corner of her mouth in an almost childlike attitude of concentration. Her use of the quill was deliberate, almost artistic. And she was thoughtful, took her time with each note and rest and clef she put down on the blank lined paper the earl had provided her at no small expense. She'd learned the piece she'd played for him without reading a single note of music. Sophia Hawksworth was a marvel.

"Where did you learn the Handel piece?" he asked.

She raised her head slowly, as if breaking a trance. Joshua understood that sensation well as he often found himself waking from the spell music wove through him. After a few blinks she returned the quill to the ink tray Short Rutherford had fetched from her drawing room when she'd summoned him with a brief tug at the bell pull next to the fireplace.

"Vauxhall," she said, her lips tilted in a sad trace of a smile. "When I was a girl, before I m-married there was an old street musician, Blind Jim. He played in some of the taverns and on street corners for money for food and gin." She stood and went to a chinoiserie cabinet where she picked up a small very old lap harp. "He gave me this and taught me to play." She sat back down on the piano chair, absently stroking the worn wood of the instrument. "I kept this hidden from my father for years so he wouldn't sell it for rent money. The only thing I own that is truly mine."

"This man, Blind Jim, he took you to Vauxhall?" Joshua could not keep his eyes off her long slender fingers as she caressed her treasured possession.

"Not exactly." She laughed and he met her gaze. Laughter gave her the appearance of a young girl, bright and happy and absent of cares. "In addition to teaching me the harp, he taught me how to sneak into Vauxhall. I went many times, and they played the Handel piece often. After a few hearings…" She shrugged. "You must admit the song is memorable. I memorized the tune and taught myself to play it."

"Memorable," he mused as he perused the exercise she had written. "You truly have no idea how singular you are, do you?" He placed the sheet back onto the music rack. "I have worked with hundreds of musicians. Not one in a hundred can hear a piece and reproduce that piece the way you have. Not one in a thousand have the talent you have and can do so."

"That is the silliest thing I have ever heard," she said though her expression lit up with what had to be delight. She hurried back to the cabinet and placed the old harp back inside with care.

"Would you like to hear something even sillier?" he asked as he picked up her completed exercise and made his way to her. "You completed this exercise perfectly. You will be a trained musician in no time at this rate."

She took the sheet from him and stared at the carefully copied musical notations. Her hand trembled. For a moment he believed her to be upset for some reason. "I did it?" She gazed up at him and threw her arms around his neck. "I did it!"

"You did and very well too." He lifted her off her feet and swung her around. As he slowly lowered her to the floor the entire room shrank to where they stood. The music sheet fluttered to the floor. Her breasts rested against his chest. Her quick breaths created a pulse of heat between them. He pressed his palms into her back. Her palms slid up his chest, against his throat, and around to the back of his neck. He lowered his head. She pushed up on her toes and brushed her body against his hard cock. Her eyes widened, her lips parted and with a tiny gasp she kissed him.

At first she was tentative. Joshua's very being burned to consume her, but he did not want to frighten her, He let her explore and reined himself in as tightly as possible, though he shook with the effort. Her lips were soft and sweet, but her kiss was hot and wanting. When she slanted her mouth and pressed more fervently, he opened his mouth and sucked her probing tongue inside. She moaned and tangled her tongue with his thrusting and teasing. At that point Joshua loosed all his good intentions and met her kiss for kiss barely pausing to breathe.

A door slammed down the corridor and she drew back for a moment. "What are we doing?" she gasped.

"I was hoping you knew," he replied his chest heaving. He touched her forehead to hers.

"Well," she said as she stepped back and patted his chest. "Until we know, we had best stop, don't you think?"

"I will admit I am incapable of coherent thought at the moment."

She did not smile at his intended jest. She merely shook her head. "Then I will have to think for the both of us." With that Mrs. Hawksworth walked calmly out of the room.

"What just happened?" Joshua staggered back to the striped chair and collapsed. "I am so buggered," he muttered as he rested his head in his hands. He glanced down at the considerable bulge in his buckskins. "Oh, stubble it!"