The Princess and the Pauper by Alexandra Benedict Read Free Book Online Page B

shift in his voice,
more gravelly.
    She corrected, “I haven’t played
for so long a time.”
    She had played for more than
two hours
last night before he’d cut her off and ordered her to
bed.
    “ You will play in shorter
se ssions
hence forth,” he said in a detached tone. “A half hour at a
time.”
    She would play for him
again?
    Emily had sold her own violin a month ago,
the last of her assets. She had played the instrument during her
darkest moments, when loneliness and regret had nearly strangled
her, and after Papa’s downfall, turned to it even more. She
understood its healing power—and its ability to cause pain, to
rouse memories better left buried.
    She wondered what Rees wanted from her
when he asked her to play for him.
    His gaze lifted, locked with hers. To
look into his deep brown eyes and not find the light, the warmth
that had once lived there stabbed at her heart.
    The man in front of
he r wasn’t
the boy she remembered. The broadsheets had published tawdry
stories about his wicked music and immoral behavior. She hadn’t
believed a word of it. Gossip, she’d thought, spread by
gossipmongers. She knew Rees. She knew the soulful boy and his
healing music. But now . . . now she realized the chill in the room
wasn’t coming from the drafty window, but from him.
    As soon as he released her
wrists, she
brought her hands to her chest and rubbed them, but she wasn’t able
to chase away the cold—the cold he had created.
    He studied her hands again, then moved
across the room to the wardrobe and retrieved a woolly black robe.
He returned to her side, holding up the garment.
    She eyed the wide expanse of black fleece,
needing its warmth, but she didn’t want to be buried under his
clothes, under him.
    His expression revealed she had no
choice.
    Slowly she turned around and slipped her
arms into the sleeves. The thick wrapper, too large for her figure,
overwhelmed her as he did.
    Emily tied the stays and faced him again,
but he walked away with a cursory, “I’ll fetch breakfast,” and left
the room.
    Her shoulders dropped.
    Rees.
    She knew she wouldn’t receive a
warm welcome from him, not after what had transpired between
them all
those years ago, but she was still dismayed by his dramatic
transformation. Was there even a remnant of the boy she’d once
known?
    Emily looked away from the closed bedroom
door and to the room itself. The walls were papered in a bold
print, gold and plum paisleys. The bed was large with four soaring
posts and an impressive headboard.
    Moving over to the other doors,
she found a
dressing room behind one and a water closet with modern plumbing
behind the other. She took advantage of the water closet before
returning to the bedchamber. Finally, she examined the violins. A
dozen, at least. She’d avoided them for as long as possible, but
she couldn’t walk a straight line without tripping over an
instrument.
    She bent down and picked up the nearest
one, tossed aside like soiled laundry. Her heart skipped a beat as
she fingered the familiar construction. She collected another
violin and soon realized each instrument looked like the one his
grandfather had made him with a slight variation. Each one was
close, but not one was a perfect replica.
    A sharp pain in her chest,
s he set the
instruments back on the ground. She gathered the music sheets next.
Notes were scrolled in haste, then scratched out. She thought he
couldn’t “see” music if it was printed on paper . . . but so much
had changed about him, she reminded herself, and it appeared his
music didn’t come to him as easily as it once had.
    Rees opened the door and carried in a
large silver tray with an assortment of sweet smelling fares. He
set the food on a small round table near the window.
    “ Come,” he said.
“Eat.”
    She let the music sheets fall to the
floor. He pretended not to notice, but she saw his side-eye glance
when he heard the rustling papers.
    He said nothing about the music or the
violins,