“How about this?” She brought it back to the piano and spread the music across the stand. “Mrs. Barrington hated the opera—she couldn’t understand why anyone wanted to listen to people bellow for hours in a foreign tongue. But she loved Gilbert and Sullivan. They at least speak plain English.” Beth opened the music to the ditty that had made Mrs. Barrington laugh the most. She’d made Beth learn it and play it over and over. Beth had tired of the bouncy rhythms and the absurd words, but now she was grateful to Mrs. Barrington’s tastes.
Ian looked at the paper without changing expression. “I can’t read music.”
Beth had leaned over him without thinking, and now the rosette at her bosom was level with his nose. “No?”
Ian studied the rosette, his eyes taking in every facet of it. “I have to hear it. Play it through for me.” He shifted slightly, giving her about five inches of space on the bench. Beth sat down, her heart hammering. He wasn’t about to move, and his body was like a solid wall. This close she felt the hard muscle of his biceps, the length of his thigh against hers.
His amber eyes glittered behind thick lashes as he half turned his head to watch her.
Beth drew a breath. She stretched her arm across his abdomen to reach the lower notes, clumsily played through the intro, and then sang in a shaky voice.
“I am the very model of a modern major-general...”
Chapter Five
Ian studied Beth’s nimble fingers as they tripped across the keyboard. Her nails were small and rounded, neatly trimmed, her only adornment a silver ring on the little finger of her left hand.
Her soothing alto flowed over him, though he didn’t bother to make sense of the words: “I’m very good at integral and differential calculus; I know the scientific names of beings animalculous. . .”
The blue rosette at her bosom rose and fell as she sang, and her elbow slid across his waistcoat as she reached up and down the keyboard. Light blue silk flowed across her lap—no more drab gray for Beth Ackerley. Isabella must have taken her in hand.
One curl fell across her cheek as she sang. He watched it bounce against her skin, watched her mouth pronouncing the lively words. He wanted to take the curl between his lips and pull it straight.
At last the tune lilted upward with her voice: “I am the very model of a modern major-general.” A few tinkling chords, and that was the end.
Beth smiled at him, out of breath. “I haven’t practiced in a while. I have no excuse now, since Isabella has this excellent piano.”
Ian laid his fingers on the keys where Beth’s had been.
“Is the song supposed to make sense?”
“Do you mean to say you’ve never seen The Pirates of Penzance? Mrs. Barrington dragged me to it four times. She’d sing along with the entire performance, to the dismay of the audience around us.”
Ian went to the theatre or opera when Mac or Hart or Cameron took him along, and he didn’t much care what he saw there. The thought of taking Beth to this show and having her explain it appealed to him.
He recalled the notes exactly as she’d played them, and they came tripping out of his fingers. He sang the words, not caring about meaning.
Beth smiled as he performed his trick, and then she joined in. “With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse . . .”
They ran through it, Beth singing in his ear. He wanted to turn and kiss her, but he couldn’t stop in the middle of a piece. He had to play it to the end.
He finished with a flourish.
“That was—“ Ian cut off her praise by cupping the nape of her neck and taking her mouth in a hard kiss. Beth tasted brandy, felt the burn of his whiskers. He laced his fingers through the hair at the base of her neck, fingertips finding sensitive skin.
He kissed her like a lover, as if she were his courtesan. She imagined glittering, overly sensual ladies melting like ice on a hot sidewalk when Ian touched them. He feathered kisses onto Beth’s cheekbones. His breath was hot, and she felt her body loosening, flowing like water.
“I shouldn’t let you do this,” she whispered.
“Why not?”
“Because I think you could break my heart.” He traced his ringer around her lips, outlining the cleft of the top lip and the roundness of the lower. His gaze remained on her lips as his large hand moved to her thigh. “Are you wet?” Ian whispered, teeth on her earlobe.
“Yes.” She tried to swallow. “If you must know, I am quite, quite damp.”
“Good.” His hot tongue circled the shell of her ear. “You understand such things. Why you need to be wet.” “My husband explained on our wedding night. He thought that ignorance on the woman’s part was the cause of much unnecessary pain.”
“An unusual vicar.”
“Oh, Thomas was quite the radical. A thorn in the side of his bishop, with all his modern views.”
“I would like to explain even more,” Ian whispered.
“Someplace more private than here.”
“That’s a mercy.” Beth laughed a little. “It is fortunate I am not a delicate, shielded lady. If I were, I’d be on the ground in a state of unconsciousness, with Isabella’s servants trying to fan me.”
His eyes flickered. “Does what I say anger you?” “No, but never speak like that in a drawing room full of ladies and fine china, I implore you. There would be quite a mess.”
He nuzzled her hair. “I’ve never been with a lady before. I don’t know the rules.”