“Are you offering to give me lessons?”
The question caught her off guard.
Am I?
Rune had taught his brother. Alex was an eager pupil, happy to let her lead. She doubted Gideon would subject himself to such a thing.
“I …”
“A girl like you has better things to do with her time, surely.”
She didn’t. Not during the day, which was full of dreary social calls: picnics and luncheons and carriage rides, all so she could wring gossip from her friends like drops of water from a wet towel, desperately hoping it might help her save one more witch.
But he didn’t really seem interested.
“You don’t have to deflect,” she said. “You can simply say you don’t want to dance with me.”
He glanced sharply toward her. “That’s not …”
This time, he stopped walking. When Rune turned to face him, she found his jaw clenched. He rubbed a hand over it.
“I have a counteroffer: you could accompany me to an actual party.” He glanced back in the ballroom’s direction. “There will be no ball gowns. No hired musicians. No songs with ridiculous steps …”
He trailed off, studying Rune in the flickering light of the gas lamps throughout the hall. Remembering himself, he shook his head. “A girl like you wouldn’t be caught dead dancing with riffraff in disreputable locales.”
The idea of it thrilled her, actually.
Though it definitely shouldn’t.
“Who says I’ll get caught? Name the date, and I’ll be there.”
The frown creasing his forehead deepened. “Careful, Miss Winters, or I might call your bluff.”
“Are you so sure I’m bluffing?”
Again, his mouth twitched. As if he wanted to smile.
It felt like victory.
Rune let the subject drop and led him up another grand staircase to the third floor, where two double doors led into the second-largest room of the house.
“This is Alex’s favorite room.”
Gideon followed her into the dark expanse, which carried the faint smell of stale tea and old books. In front of them, windows stretched from the floor to the ceiling three stories above. The panes faced Nan’s gardens and, beyond that, the cliffs leading down to the sea. In the distant water, the moon’s reflection was a white candle flame flickering in and out of the waves.
Rune lit the gaslights, illuminating the room, and watched Gideon walk a slow circle, taking in the walls of shelves lined with books, the balconies on the second and third level, the spiral staircase rising to the top of it all.
“Any spell books in here?” he asked.
Rune’s heart tumbled over itself.
After the New Dawn, the Good Commander declared all objects used for witchcraft to be contraband. Finding a spell book in a citizen’s possession was enough to accuse them of sympathizing with witches.
“Feel free to look,” she said, hiding her panic behind a smile. She’d hidden all of her spell books in the casting room. “I won’t stop you.”
Gideon seemed about to say more when a large silhouette near the window caught his eye.
“Is that …？”
It was a grand piano. Alex had his own piano now, but he still preferred this one. He often spent all day here, practicing on it.
“No wonder Alex spent so much time here.”
Alex had been coming to Wintersea House nearly every day since he was eleven years old to play piano. Rune had hated her lessons, hated practicing, hated even the sight of those black and white keys. But Nan refused to let her quit. Alex was not only desperate to play, he was actually good at it. It was a shame that his family couldn’t afford to give him lessons. So Rune blackmailed her tutor into giving Alex hers, and by the time Nan found out, months had already passed.
Gideon strode over to the instrument, walking around it before coming to stand on the other side of the bench, facing the keys.
“Do you play?” she asked.
“Not at all.” He pressed down on a single ivory key. The E note rang, smooth and clear, through the room. “My brother is the musical one.”
Rune nodded. No one played as beautifully as Alex. Even Nan had come round to him in the end, wooed by his raw talent.
“The day his acceptance letter came from the Royal Conservatory, he hid it from our parents.” Gideon pressed down on another key—A this time—and the note hummed from deep in the piano’s heart.
Rune frowned. Alex had never told her that. “Why?”
“Our family could barely afford rent, never mind that kind of tuition. He didn’t want them to feel ashamed.”