The Light in the Darkness (11 page)

“I understood you to say you had never played the harpsichord before,” Catherine said in surprise.

“I haven’t.”

“Then where did you learn to play that melody?”

Jennifer gave her an apologetic half smile. “I heard it once.”

“And you can play it? Just like that?”

Jennifer nodded and played the melody again, perfectly this time.

The girl had an innate grasp of intervals, Catherine realized. Teaching her how to play might be easier than she expected.

She ran into an unexpected snag, however, almost immediately. Once she had given Jennifer a rudimentary explanation of fingering techniques, she tried to show the girl how to read music. Jennifer became perplexed, then frustrated.

“I don’t understand,” she protested, unhappy that she was a poor student, but simply unable to grasp the concept. “You say that the little blob on the parchment is C. How could it be? This”—and she struck a key—“is C.”

Catherine sighed mentally and started over. “The notes on the paper represent the notes that you play,” she explained with praiseworthy patience. “When you see that note on the paper, you know that you are supposed to play C.”

Jennifer’s brow was still furrowed, so Catherine added, “It’s somewhat like reading out loud. The letter A stands for a specific sound, or a limited number of sounds. The letter A has no innate meaning—it’s a symbol that represents a sound. These notes are like letters. They represent the sounds you make when you strike the keys.”

Jennifer nodded slowly. “I think I see,” she said, then added, “but why bother to write it down at all?”

“So you can remember it, of course.”

“How could you forget it?”

Irritably, Catherine started to snap at the girl for asking foolish questions, but she caught herself. It was evident from the guileless expression on Jennifer’s face that she had meant the question quite seriously. Perhaps, having once heard a piece of music, she was incapable of forgetting it.

Intrigued by the notion, Catherine began to test her hypothesis. “Play this,” she said, playing a simple melody.

Jennifer listened carefully, her head tilted to one side, her eyes half-shut in pleasure. “That is beautiful,” she breathed when Catherine finished. “Did you compose it?”

“Hardly,” Catherine said, in awe of Jennifer’s reaction. She had never seen Jennifer show so much delight in anything. For that matter, she had rarely seen Jennifer show any emotion at all. Clearly the girl had a genuine love for music. “I am not a composer. It was written by a man named Corelli.”

Jennifer played the tune haltingly, then played it a second time with perfect accuracy, obviously entranced by the melody. “How lovely,” she whispered. “I wish I could write something like that.”

“Perhaps you can,” Catherine said, “when you know more about music. But I have never heard of a woman composer.”

Jennifer looked at her in surprise. “Never?”

“Never that I’ve heard of. It is considered a ladylike accomplishment to play the harpsichord, but not to write music.” She remembered Jennifer’s enthusiastic description of the tunes she heard in her mind, her longing to create new tunes. “However,” she added kindly, “perhaps you will be an exception to that rule.”

“Perhaps. After all, I am not a lady.”

Catherine looked at her and smiled. “Not yet.”

And perhaps not ever
, Jennifer thought. But, not wanting to distress Catherine, she did not say it aloud.

A few hours later, Jennifer walked slowly along the winding dirt path that sliced through the woods on the
Greyson property. At the Pine Tree Ordinary, she had scurried along on whatever errand she had as rapidly as possible, so as to avoid her uncle’s wrath. At times she still found herself almost running from sheer habit. But today she walked slowly, head held high, partly because Catherine had taught her that ladies never looked as though they were in a hurry, and partly because her voluminous skirts tended to prevent running anyway. Her rose overskirt and ivory petticoat were draped over whalebone-and-canvas panniers, and the front of the skirt was flattened by a system of cords. If she forgot herself and tried to walk too hastily in such a gown, she would tumble to the ground in a graceless heap.

She had left the house because Catherine had tired of the lessons. Jennifer would have happily plunked at the keys of the harpsichord all day, but at last Catherine had driven her from the parlor, and Jennifer had decided to come for a walk. Due to the unseasonably warm May weather, it was cooler in the shade of the tall pines and oaks that graced the forest than it was inside the great brick house.

For months Catherine had tried in vain to impress upon her that a lady should take her constitutional in the formal gardens that spread out behind the great house. But Jennifer did not like the formal gardens. The oyster-shell-strewn paths were edged by English boxwood, forced to put down roots in this foreign soil and then trimmed into artificially geometrical shapes. Jennifer did not care for the boxwood, which seemed out of place in this wild land. Nor did she care for the bell-shaped, multihued flowers, imported at great cost from someplace called Holland, that bloomed so profusely among the hedges.

Jennifer preferred the small kitchen garden nestled close behind the cookhouse. There grew more modest but more charming plants such as lavender, which was already starting to extend purple, sweet-smelling flowers toward the sky; rosemary, with its pungent, spicy aroma; and the descriptively named, fuzzy-leafed plant called lamb’s ear.

But most of all, despite all of Catherine’s lectures to the contrary, Jennifer preferred the forest. Here grew the great oaks, never disturbed by man, that stretched out their massive limbs in all directions and seemed to almost reach the sky. Here also were maples and tall green pines. Smaller trees known as dogwood dotted the forest with their white, four-petaled blooms in the spring. In the winter the forest was adorned with the brilliant scarlet berries of the wild holly. And all year round the forest rang with the songs of a million birds, from the shrill-voiced blue jay to the sweetly trilling red-winged blackbird.

Jennifer felt much more at home in the woods. The formal gardens made her uncomfortable, serving to remind her that she was as superficial as its imported beauties, and as out of place. She felt like the boxwood, forced to grow in this alien land, being trimmed into a shape that was alien to her.

Strange, how she still felt like an interloper here. Whenever she walked through this forest, she had to remind herself that she was a Greyson. No one would run her off the property. But despite that knowledge, she could not seem to rid herself of the uneasy sensation that she was a trespasser. Perhaps it was because she knew in her heart that she was no lady, despite the silk gown and her new affected upper-class accent. Or perhaps it was because her husband seemed to have forgotten her very existence. Each night at dinner he glowered at her across the table, but he never spent time with her otherwise. If they happened to pass in the wide central hall he never spoke, or even favored her with a glance. It was easy to forget that she was a married woman.

Thus, when she saw a riderless bay stallion trotting toward her, it took her a few seconds to associate the animal with her husband. Staring at the horse, she recalled her nightmarish trip from the ordinary to her new home. This was the same stallion, no doubt, for there were no other horses so magnificent in the stable. And Grey was too fine a horseman to have been thrown.

Suddenly concerned, she stepped forward. At her sudden movement, the stallion slid to a stop and eyed her warily. Cautiously, for the stallion was no better tempered than his master, Jennifer spoke gently to the beast. His ears flickered forward. Encouraged, she gathered his reins in her hands, turned him about, and led him back down the path. She would not have dared to attempt to ride him, even in her old indigo gown, for she had never ridden before or since the trip to Greyhaven. In a full hoop skirt it would be impossible even for an excellent horsewoman—which, heaven knew, she was not.

In a few moments she saw her husband’s still form lying on the path, and sudden apprehension filled her. Somehow, despite his skill as a rider, Grey had been thrown, and he might be badly hurt. Tangling the reins around a branch, she rushed forward, only to stop abruptly.

Near Grey was coiled a black snake.

Its body was thick and long. Jennifer was too far away to identify it positively, but she was morbidly certain it must be a water moccasin, a poisonous snake very common this near the river. No doubt the snake’s presence had caused the horse to spook.

The question was, had the snake bitten her husband?

Slowly, so as not to startle the snake into striking at Grey’s outflung hand, she reached beneath her overskirt for the knife she always carried in her pocket. She had never used it in her own defense. Once, in her fifteenth year, a man had caught her outside in the dark as she had made her way back from the necessary house and pressed her up against the clapboard wall of the ordinary, his hands tugging up her skirt and reaching down into her bodice. She had never even thought of the knife, merely submitting quietly, passively, to his advances. She would have been raped had her uncle not happened upon the scene and slapped her for what he termed slatternly behavior.

But then only her honor had been threatened. Now a man’s life was in danger. No matter how strange and remote he seemed, Grey
was
her husband. She drew the knife
from her pocket and threw it as Carey had taught her. Sailing end over end, it neatly sliced through the snake’s head, pinning it to the ground despite the efforts of the writhing body. She strode over to the snake, pinned its head with the heel of her leather shoe, and cut the head off.

When she straightened up, she found Grey sitting up and observing her with a rather bemused expression.

“An excellent throw,” he remarked dryly.

She stared down at him. “Your neck is not broken?”

“Apparently not,” Grey said wryly, “although I am not certain the same can be said for my head.” He rubbed a bruise that marred his forehead and scowled. “I was not paying proper attention when my horse shied. I was careless.”

“More likely you were reckless,” Jennifer said in an uncharacteristically tart tone, recalling the countless times she’d seen him galloping the bay at breakneck speed away from the stable. “And if the fall didn’t kill you, the snake might have.”

At her outburst, Grey threw back his head and laughed. She looked at him in astonishment, having never heard him laugh before. His tanned face suddenly looked much younger, as though the laughter washed away the lines of grief on his features. Abruptly, as if aware of her puzzlement, his laughter stopped, but he was still grinning as he pointed to the snake’s severed head and inquired, “And how would it have done that?”

Jennifer gazed at him, bemused. With the sternness momentarily erased from his face, she realized, he was excessively handsome. His gray eyes shone silver with merriment; his long, onyx black hair had escaped from its queue and fell carelessly around his aquiline features. She felt that same inexplicable tug of attraction for him she had felt before.

With an effort, she tore her gaze away from him and looked at the snake. Its head did not have the characteristic squat triangular shape of a poisonous snake.

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “I thought it was a water moccasin.”

“Hardly,” Grey said, still chuckling. “It was an entirely harmless water snake.”

“Oh,” Jennifer said again. She could think of nothing more to say. She felt deflated and rather absurd. She turned away, deciding to beat a hasty retreat and walk back to the house.

“Just a minute.” His hand caught her elbow, and turning back she saw that he had effortlessly regained his feet. Clearly he was not badly hurt. He was very tall, she thought, gazing at his broad chest, not daring to look up into those laughing eyes. “How is it that you were here to save me from the snake?”

Aware that she was being teased, Jennifer nonetheless answered awkwardly, “I—I like to walk.” Suddenly she realized how it might look to him, as if she had been following him about as a duckling follows its mother, and she flushed. “I walk through these woods every day,” she added with a trace of defiance.

“A long walk,” Grey observed, “especially in this heat. What if you fainted?”

“I ’ave—I have never fainted.”

Of course. She was not one of the pampered women of his own class. Virginia had been the frontier until recently, and women of all classes had worked hard, in the fields as well as in the kitchen. But within the past fifty years the rich had acquired enough slaves so that their women could supervise rather than do the work themselves.

Jenny—Jennifer, as his sister had christened her—on the other hand, was accustomed to backbreakingly hard work, whether in Virginia’s humid summers or in the freezing cold. Of course a simple walk did not cause her to faint! Nonetheless, he reflected, the constricting clothing she now had to wear must make it difficult for her to breathe, let alone exercise. Surreptitiously eyeing her narrow waist, he wondered briefly what it would be like to wear stays. He himself would probably faint before he took two steps, he concluded.

“Why don’t you ride, if you like to amble through the woods?”

Surprised that he seemed to be taking an interest in her, she lifted her eyes to his. “I cannot ride, sir.”

Grey noted for the first time, almost absently, how big her eyes were. Her skin was still a light golden color, due to her enthusiasm for sunshine and fresh air, and against the gold her eyes shone like jade. He had never seen such dark eyes. “You rode all the way from Princess Anne County,” he pointed out, admiring the way her long, unbound hair streamed like honey down her back.

“I had to,” she said simply.

“If you cannot ride,” he said, trying to ignore the brief flare of respect he felt for her courage, and the shock of another emotion that surged through him when her beautiful eyes looked up into his face, “then your education as a lady has been sadly neglected.”