“Is it?” he said, amused.
Miss Knightley nodded again. She smoothed her nightgown over her knees and fingered a fold of cambric. “Beethoven is also why my grandfather made me heir to his fortune.”
Adam’s eyebrows rose. “Beethoven? How?”
She pleated the fold of fabric between her fingers. “When I was sixteen, my cousin Frederick Knightley came to visit.” She glanced at him. “The one who inherited the earldom.”
“The ill-bred buffoon.”
Arabella Knightley smiled faintly. “Yes. That one.” She looked back at the pleated folds of cambric. “Frederick and his wife are like Sir Arnold Gorrie: vulgar and puffed-up and full of consequence. They’re quite stout, too.” She glanced at him. “My grandfather disliked stout people. He said it was a sign of weak character.”
“Spoken like a thin man,” Adam
