Chapter Twenty-One
Isabella spent the rest of Thursday afternoon at the pianoforte, laboring over Beethoven’s Sonata no. 14. There was no beauty in the music. The soft lamenting first movement, the stormy third, sounded equally flat and lifeless, the notes sliding from beneath her fingertips with one dull clunk after another, the hammers and strings making noise, not music.
Finally she gave up. She bowed her head, resting her forehead on the pianoforte, and closed her eyes. What am I to do?
A knock on the door jerked her upright. Rufus woke abruptly, scrambling to his feet, shedding the two kittens who’d been dozing on his flank.
“Yes?”
“The Duke of Middlebury,” her butler said.
“Julian?” She stood as abruptly as Rufus. “Here?”
“I took the liberty of showing him to the library, ma’a
