The Arrangement. Lyn Stone

black fluid down the side of her face.

      Jon still stared, his mouth open. Good God, it was her! For a long moment, he feared he had conjured her up out of his imagination. How the hell had she gotten in? He looked around, seeing the open casement, feeling the cold night air for the first time. The candles in the broken candelabra next to him threw their wavering shadows on the peeling wallpaper.

      He looked down in horror. He was sitting on the floor in his short flannel drawers, surrounded by a mountainous tangle of ink-scribbled papers. His lute, an ancient lyre and the Stradivarius lay about like scattered bodies on a battlefield. Frantically he snatched up the violin, worried she might step on it.

      Hair tumbled across half his face, several frazzled strands caught on his lips. Jon winced, thinking how wild he must appear in this condition. Sweat from God knew how many hours of work wafted its scent upward from his body. He cringed. What a story this would make. Nasty, mad musician assaults female reporter with inky nib pen. He felt sick, and swallowed hard.

      “Don’t be afraid,” she said softly, inching toward him. “I’m a friend. It’s all right now. Just be calm.” He recoiled as she crouched down and gently touched his bare foot.

      Jon made himself meet her eyes. They held no sign of recognition, only compassionate warmth. Well, except for his size, he couldn’t possibly bear any resemblance to the man she had watched perform. The dark wig, nothing like his own light hair, was safely tucked in the armoire with his suit. He recalled scrubbing off the itchy powder and shucking his clothes to go to bed. But then the “ladies” had called him downstairs. At the memory, he stroked the Strad’s strings—it was his treasure of treasures, his most inventive lady, the most beautiful of his harem.

      Maybe the woman thought him an interloper like her. She might take him for a village lad who’d broken into the main house to play with the instruments. Hope flared. He swallowed heavily again and nodded like an imbecile.

      “You poor fellow. He keeps you here, doesn’t he?” Her voice held a wealth of pity as she patted his ankle.

      Jon wiggled his foot, sniffed loudly and looked away. The dust from his hair made him sneeze. So, she thought he was mad. He fully agreed with her.

      “You’re the one who makes up the music, aren’t you? I listened to you singing and playing. It’s all right to tell me about it. I know you have to be the one who creates it. No one, even Chadwick, can match what you just did.”

      What a hypnotic voice she had. And she looked even lovelier than he had realized when he was trying to intimidate her. Her hair, loose from its pins, rippled over her shoulders like a mass of fine gold filament. She had very wide, dark-fringed eyes that reminded him of rich Dutch chocolate. He licked his lips at the thought. The eyes held such pity, though, that it was hard to meet them for any length of time. Her skin gleamed like porcelain, just the right amount of sheen to it. Her small breasts heaved with indignation now—for him, he realized—or at least for who she thought he was.

      Jon shook his head to break the spell, but it didn’t work very well. When he squeezed his eyes shut, all he could see were the slender curves of her hips and legs in those too-tight breeches as she crouched beside him.

      “No need to pretend with me,” she said sweetly. “What is your name, dear? Can you tell me your name?”

      “Pip,” Jon answered reluctantly. It was the first thing that popped into his mind, his father’s childhood name for him, one he hadn’t heard since he was eight years old.

      The woman obviously believed him some sort of idiot, from the way she spoke to him. Small wonder. If he had come upon somebody wallowing in the middle of a cavernous ballroom, dressed—no, undressed—the way he was, and in the throes of a musical stupor, he would have thought so, too.

      Oh, God, how was he going to get out of this?

      No recourse now but to play out the scenario and hope to hell her sympathy was genuine. First, he had to find out how much she had already uncovered about the public Chadwick’s background. This could be tricky, but the alternative of a full admission would definitely be disastrous.

      He plucked idly at the Strad’s strings with two fingers. “Where’s Jon?” he mumbled.

      She looked vastly relieved that he could string two words together. “Gone again,” she said. “At least his coach was gone when I got here. The place looked deserted, but then I heard you playing, so I came in.”

      Ah, so she’d seen the hired conveyance leave, he mused. She’d braved his den believing the bear had left. He wondered for a moment if she might be after more than his life story. The only thing of great value here was his collection of instruments. Only a few knew of his “ladies” and fewer still would know how to go about selling such traceable treasures once they took them. No, she was probably just what she appeared to be, a female writer from a third-rate publication devoted to gossip.

      His only hope was to persuade her not to print anything too derogatory. As it stood now, she would either expose him as a horrible pockets-to-let slob with delusions of grandeur, or as a pompous fraud who had enslaved a gifted simpleton and used him to ghostwrite his music. The situation didn’t look good, to say the least.

      Play dumb and think. He drew his knees up and rested his head on them, letting his tousled hair curtain both his face and the violin.

      “By chance, is Jon your brother? Your eyes look like his.” She explained her assumption with a tender smile. Jon started violently when she touched his head. “Don’t!” he muttered, jerking away.

      “I won’t hurt you, Pip,” she crooned. “I can help you.” He faked a shiver. “Go away,” he whispered. With feeling.

      She responded immediately by scrambling to her feet. He hoped she would take herself on back to London now and let him be. It would be his word against hers if she guessed the truth. He would sue her frilly drawers off if she printed a single word of this.

      And he would still be ruined. Jon sighed heavily.

      “Don’t you worry, Pip. You’re coming with me! Come on, get up now. We’re going to find you some clothes and get you out of here. Your brother’s very wrong to make you stay in this dismal place.” She shivered, more with disgust than from a chill. “Aren’t you cold? Are you hungry? Did the wretch think to feed you?”

      Jon waved toward a discarded rind of cheese and the remainder of the coarse bread loaf Grandy had left for his midnight supper. He kicked at the empty wine bottle peeking from beneath the first page of the overture. “You eat?”

      “Oh, you dear thing! You’d share it, wouldn’t you?” She sighed and squatted down again to lay her hand over his. He thought he detected tears swimming around those rich brown orbs. “Oh, Pip, how can he do this to you?” she moaned.

      “Jonny likes me,” he said defensively, thinking a large lie from him was no more damning than allowing her to make up her own. And it was a lie. He certainly didn’t like himself much at the moment. On second thought, he didn’t like himself at all.

      She pulled a wry face and sniffed. “No doubt he likes you very well, since you’re making a bloody fortune for him. I simply can’t believe this, even of someone like him.”

      Jon felt a small swelling of warmth in his chest at the thought that anyone would really care if he was used and mistreated. Even though she thought him a half-wit, he could tell she meant what she said and wanted to do all she could to right the situation. It had been so long since anyone bothered about his feelings. He couldn’t even recall the last time. However, he reminded himself, in this case he was also the villain of the piece.

      The whole predicament was so ridiculous, he felt like laughing. Until he remembered his whole career hinged on whether he could keep up the Pip act and retain her sympathy.

      Jon needed to get rid of her so that he could think about this. Keeping his thoughts straight was proving difficult. Lack of sleep and that marvelous scent of hers were making him dizzy.

      Lilacs.