the curve of her cheek, the graceful slope of her neck revealed by her half-turned head. He watched the movement of her lips—a lovely, full mouth she had—and the way her thick eyelashes swept like feathers to her cheekbones.
She looked up to find him watching her. The hint of a flush spread across her pale skin. With a sudden desire to see that flush darken, Sebastian let his gaze wander from her slender throat down across the curves of her body, her tapered waist, the flare of her hips beneath her full skirt. Then he followed the path back to her face.
There. Color bloomed on her cheeks. Her teeth sank into her lush lower lip. Consternation glinted in her violet eyes. He wondered what she’d look like with her hair unpinned, if it would be long and tangled and thick.
“I…er, I should carry on with my work,” Clara went on, ducking her head. “Tom will be in directly, and there’s a great deal to do. Please, take a muffin, if you’d like.”
Sebastian rolled his shoulders back. A cracking noise split through his neck as he stretched. He realized for the first time that day he’d almost forgotten the headache pressing against his skull.
“Thank you.” Again he experienced that wicked urge to provoke a reaction. “I’m not hungry. Not for food.”
Her lips parted on a silent little gasp, as if she wasn’t certain whether to be offended by his indecorous tone or to ignore it altogether. Expressing offense, of course, meant she’d have to reveal that she had recognized the implications of his words.
She gave a nonchalant shrug and shifted, then held Millicent’s head out to him. “If you please, sir—”
“I please, Miss Whitmore.” His voice dropped an octave. “Often and well.”
He was drunk. Or recently had been.
That didn’t explain why Clara’s heart beat like an overwound clock, or why the rough undercurrent of Mr. Hall’s words heated her skin, but at least it explained him.
She tried to breathe evenly. Although ten years had passed since she had last seen him, she recalled with striking clarity the way his presence had made her pulse quicken. She remembered him leaning over her shoulder as he demonstrated the position of his fingers on the piano keys. She remembered the assured tone of his voice as he spoke of quarter notes and major scales…but he’d been distant then, a brilliant pianist, a dashing young man who already attracted beautiful women, who would one day perform for kings and emperors.
Now the distance had closed. He stood before her close enough to touch. Though he could not be over thirty years of age, he seemed older, diminished somehow. Had he…fallen?
An ache pierced Clara’s heart. Sebastian Hall had always been disheveled, but in a rather appealing fashion suited to his artistic profession.
I’ve no time to fuss, his manner had proclaimed. I’ve got magic to weave.
And he had, with kaleidoscope threads and fairy-dust needles. At dinner parties and concerts, Mr. Hall spun music through the air and made Clara’s blood echo with notes that had never before moved her.
Not until Sebastian Hall had brought them to life. Sleeves pushed up to his elbows, hair tumbling across his forehead, he’d played the piano with a restless energy that could in no way be contained by the polish of formality.
But now? Now he was just…messy. At least three days’ worth of whiskers roughened his jaw, and his clothes looked as if he’d slept in them for even longer than that. Dark circles ringed his eyes. He appeared hollowed out, like a gourd or shell devoid of its essence.
Clara tilted her head to the side and frowned. Although Mr. Hall’s eyes were shot through with blood, they contained a sharpness that overindulgence would have blunted. And his movements—they were tense, restless, none of his edges smeared by the taint of spirits.
She stepped a little closer to him. Her nose twitched. No rank smell of ale or brandy wafted from his person. Only…
She breathed deeper.
Ahh.
Crisp night air. Wood smoke. The rich, faintly bitter scent of coffee. Clara inhaled again, the scent of him sliding deep into her blood and warming a place that had long been frozen over.
“Miss Whitmore?”
His deep voice, threaded with cracks yet still resonant, broke into her brief reverie. Such a pleasure to hear his voice wrap around her former name, evoking the golden days when she had been young, when William and their mother had been alive and sunshine-yellow dandelions colored the hills of Dorset like strokes of