Page 204 of Once an Angel
She giggled, but his own eyes sobered as he gave the valet a furtive glance. Emily knew what he was thinking. How much noise could they make without disturbing Penfeld's slumber? Would he hear the whisper of their lips in the darkness?
Like a thief in the night, he leaned down and kissed her with a fierce sweetness that left her breathless.
He smoothed the tangled curls away from her face. "Don't worry about what I told you. What's in the past is done."
He touched his lips to her brow before slipping back into the shadows. Was he comforting her or warning her? Emily wondered. She licked the bittersweet taste of him from her lips, wondering what he would
do if he only knew how wrong he was.
* * *
Emily awoke the next morning to a deserted hut and the patter of a gentle rain against the thatched roof. She felt a pang of disappointment as she crawled out of the blankets. She had hoped to continue her exploration of the beach that day and had promised Kawiri she'd teach him how to swear in English.
Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, she shambled to the window. A sky frosted in pewter gleamed between dripping fronds. The rain showed no sign of abating. Was Justin safe and warm, crouched before a Maori fire, or was he out there somewhere, shivering in the cool, damp air?
Sighing, she turned away from the window. Should she once again paw through his belongings for some clue to his past? A dull weight settled in her throat. If Justin's nightmare was only the tip of his anguish, what new agony might her search uncover?
She dropped to her knees and reluctantly began to sort through a pile of books and papers. It seemed a waste of time to simply move books from one pile to another, so she began to dust them with a corner of the blanket and separate them according to subject and author. As exertion warmed her, the blanket slid unheeded from her shoulders. Lulled by the cozy drumbeat of the rain, she had fashioned several tidy stacks of books and whiled away half the morning before she realized it. Without books blocking every path, the hut had swelled to twice its size. It was actually beginning to look homey.
Seized by this alarming spirit of tidiness, Emily folded their blankets and decided to drag the table into the center of the room. Fluffy watched her efforts from his perch on the stove without blinking.
"You might help me, you lazy lizard," she berated him. "I ought to light a fire under you." His tongue darted out in disdain.
She tugged at the table. The heavy oak resisted her. Grunting, she gave it another pull. A narrow drawer snapped out, striking her hard across the thighs.
Emily's curse faded in the silence. Was this the secret cubbyhole she had been searching for? She reached slowly into the shadowy recess as if afraid she might find a nesting adder.
Her hand trembled as she drew forth a sheaf of papers rolled into a fat tube. Fearful her knees would betray her, she sank cross-legged to the floor. She sat for a long time, staring at nothing. Claire Scarborough's bright, loving spirit had died with her father. Why couldn't Emily let her go? Why couldn't she accept Justin for what he was? A kind man who had welcomed a naked stranger into his lite without knowing if she was a thief, a murderer, or a pox-ridden doxy from the London wharfs. He might not
have wanted her as a child, but the fierce hunger of his kiss promised he wanted her now. Her fingers toyed with the frayed ribbon that bound the heavy scroll.
She tugged the ribbon. The pages flopped open in her lap. She clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle
a sob of relief. Neat bars had been etched in black from margin to margin on the long sheets. These musical notes were drawn not in the painstaking scrawl of a child, but in the thick, measured strokes of
a man. She flipped through the pages, marveling at their sheer volume.
The enormity of what she was holding struck her like a blow. Justin's life work. He had been holed up
in New Zealand for the past seven years, pouring his soul into this music. She ran her hand over a page, caressing the blots of ink with her fingertips. A tremendous sadness touched her as she imagined him hunched over the table, scratching away in the feeble glow of the lantern until his eyes burned and his vision blurred. Music written in silence and hidden from the world, symphonies that would never know the joyous strains of violin or piano. A world of uncaring ears deaf to their peculiar magic.
She turned the page with reverent fingers. Music had been one of her more tolerable classes at Foxworth's. Every girl had been taught to bang out "God Save the Queen" on the scarred piano in the music room. She squinted at the notes, forcing them to unite in a pattern she could understand.
A smile touched her lips as she began to hum softly. She picked out the melody, bright, simple, and wistful. She was haunted by its beauty, seduced by its innocent genius. Almost of its own volition her voice warbled into full-throated song, weaving a shining thread of sound through the tapestry of the
falling rain.
Justin shook the sparkling drops out of his eyes. He loved the New Zealand rain. In London it had fallen in a dull curtain, heavy with soot, but here it shimmered from the sky, misting the world in radiant defiance of its ordinary colors. It sharpened the greens to a minty gloss and deepened the browns to mahogany. Tramping through the bush on a rainy day almost made him believe the stains of the world could be washed clean. Almost.
He ducked beneath the shaggy branch of a punga tree, chagrined to realize he had made yet another loop past the hut. Thank God Penfeld had stayed behind in the Maori meeting house to nurse a cup of steaming clam soup. He couldn't bear another roll of the valet's expressive eyes.
Why shouldn't he wish to check on Emily? It was nearly midday. With her penchant for mischief, she'd had ample time to sell the hut to passing natives or set her skirt ablaze.
He crouched beneath the shelter of a bush. Rain poured from his hat brim and dripped off his nose, but he paid it no heed. His hungry gaze was locked on the window, on the cozy halo of lantern light that warmed him simply by its existence. He imagined Emily within, her chestnut curls inclined toward a book or some gentle feminine task.
Like skinning Fluffy to make a pair of boots. Justin lowered his forehead to his hand, chuckling at his
own whimsy. At some point he would have to learn to trust the girl. How else was he to teach her to
