Page 46 of Mistaken

She nodded at Abdul. “Go ahead, and we’ll see what happens.”

He had already thought her voice beautiful. But after nearly two hours of working on that one Italian song with her, he realized she was also a perfectionist. By now he’d lost count of the times she’d made him stop and back up so they could repeat a particular phrase over and over, with her trying one tiny variation and then another, doing whatever she could to make her singing both technically flawless and full of emotion at the same time.

Oddly, the process felt almost exhausting to him — he, who had never been physically tired in all his very long life. However, if Sarah could keep at this without flagging, then he would do no less.

After all, practicing with her had been his idea in the first place.

Eventually, though, she sent him a weary smile and said, “That’s probably enough for now. Want to break for lunch?”

He did. Sitting there and playing had been more of an exertion than he’d expected, and his stomach told him it was now well past the noon hour, and they probably should have stopped to eat long before this.

“On the patio?” he asked, and she nodded.

“I could use some fresh air.”

They went outside. While he was often fine with preparing his meals, there was no way in the world he would exert himself now, not when they both needed to eat as soon as possible. Instead, he summoned a pitcher of iced tea and a salad fresh with mandarin oranges and chicken and almond slivers, a dish Sarah dug into almost as soon as it appeared in front of her.

“How did you know this was exactly what I needed?”

“Because it was what I needed as well?”

She looked up from her plate then, a smile touching her full mouth. Today she had been in such a hurry to come out and see what he was doing in the music room, she hadn’t bothered to put on even the faint cosmetics she wore at other times. However, he didn’t think she needed them, not when both her lips and her cheeks were flushed with happy color, an obvious byproduct of their time spent practicing.

Yes, he thought some part of her was beginning to come alive again, and he could not help being cheered by that.

“Maybe so,” she said. “You did an awesome job accompanying me today. Sorry about all the fits and starts.”

At times, it had been somewhat frustrating. Then again, he’d also found himself fascinated by all the nuance she’d drawn out of the simple piece, the way it sounded so completely different when they’d finished than when they’d begun. Up until now, he had been a consumer of music and nothing other than that, and he knew he would always be grateful to her for showing him how it could be so much more.

“There is nothing to apologize for,” he told her. “This was practice, not a performance. It was very educational.”

Her nose wrinkled as she reached for her glass of iced tea. “I suppose that’s one word for it. All the same, it’s not like we have to go at this day and night. If nothing else, my voice will need time to rest and recuperate. So, what should we do this afternoon?”

Something warmed in him at how she’d so casually said “we,” as if it was understood that they would spend the afternoon in some kind of shared activity rather than going their separate ways until dinner. Not so very long ago, he would have laughed at the idea that he needed any kind of companionship…let alone human companionship…to fill the empty hours.

Now, though, he could only be glad that Sarah seemed to enjoy being around him just as much as he enjoyed being around her.

“Perhaps we could explore the labyrinth?” he suggested. “We did not have enough time yesterday after we got back from our ride, but you did say you wanted to see it.”

“I do,” she said at once. “That sounds like a great way to spend some time outside. If,” she added with an ominous glance up at the sky, “the weather cooperates.”

As they had for the past several days, clouds had begun to gather to the south and east. However, Abdul guessed they were still far enough away that they should not interfere with his and Sarah’s visit to the labyrinth, an excursion that should not take them more than an hour or so.

“It will be fine,” he replied.

She seemed to be content with that reassurance, because she only nodded and returned to her salad.

He did so as well, glad that he had come up with a way for them to spend even more time together.

Now all he had to do was continue to make her happy.

The labyrinth was larger than Sarah had expected, stretching at least a hundred yards across, if not more. This wasn’t a maze out of some English garden — or like the crazy obstacle course in that one Harry Potter book — but rather rows of rocks carefully laid out in the sandy soil. She would have thought it would be easy enough to find her way out without any tall bushes blocking the line of sight…and then she realized navigating through the complex pattern was a lot trickier than she’d first believed.

“Have you been through this before?” she asked Abdul after they had to go back to the beginning for a third time.

“I have,” he said in the grave way of his, the one she thought was more charming than she wanted to admit to herself. “But I did not want to give away the secret.”

“If we keep going around and around like this, I might have to wheedle it out of you,” she replied with a grin.

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