Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] Read Online Free PDF Page B

my sake.” Miss Beatrice was one of several artistically inclined Westbrooks, not so forward with her opinions as Miss Viola, though she might well get there given time. “I hope he would value my dedication to the study of music, and not wish to see me give it up.”
    “I might have expressed that same sentiment when I was seventeen.” The Westbrook matriarch directed a nod at her second-youngest daughter. “But feelings can change, sometimes in ways you would never expect. I passionately loved the theater, and I have not the smallest regret over leaving it to marry your father and bring you all into the world.”
    “Well said.” Mr. Westbrook raised his wineglass to his wife, and grinned a challenge at Miss Viola. “Does the counsel for the prosecution care to make a response?”
    The truth was, the Blackshear dinner table had been a sad, staid, lifeless affair in comparison to the Westbrooks’ argumentative warmth. Father, on those occasions when he’d emerged from his study like an owlventuring out from its hollow tree, had never goaded them in any way; never demanded to know the boys’ opinions on any matter, let alone the girls’. Not that he’d meant to discount or discourage their thoughts. To be sure, it was more a matter of—
    “Mr. Blackshear.” The voice came from his right, soft enough to be confidential, and his thoughts pulled up hard, like a horse refusing a jump. Much as he might have believed himself absorbed in the conversation, or in his reflections on dinner tables gone by, some delicate spider-silk strands of awareness had run all the while to Miss Westbrook, and she need only make the slightest tug to have his full attention.
    He turned. She was looking up at him, grave eyed, no trace visible of the flippant manner she’d worn a minute before. A single line of unease creased her brow. His thumb twitched, restless to reach out and smooth the worry away.
    Hang his idiot body. His brain knew he’d never be anything to her; knew, moreover, that outward beauty was the shallowest of reasons for admiring a woman; the poorest signifier of her merit. And still his pulse
would
stutter when she spoke to him, and his thumb and every other fool part of him would poise themselves, puppet-like, to do her slightest bidding.
    “I have a favor to ask of you.” To her credit, she didn’t look as though she expected him to dance on her string. She kept her voice low, and it occurred to him she’d been waiting to address him under cover of such energetic conversation as now occupied the others—Miss Viola having launched into an impassioned denunciation of all debaters who would employ “You’ll understand when you’re older” as a trump-card argument.
    “I’d be glad to grant it, I’m sure.” His words came out cordial but distant. The response of a man who didn’tdance on strings, never mind the runaway thumping of his heart.
    “When we’re in the parlor after dinner, will you speak to Rose?” She sank her voice even lower. He had to lean in a bit to hear. She smelled faintly of some flower.
    “To Rose? On some particular topic?”
    She shook her head, flicking a glance to the end of the table where her youngest sister sat. “Any topic, excepting school if you please. Perhaps you might ask her to sing as well. She’s had a difficult day, and I think the attention might be a comfort.”
    She
had
been very quiet through dinner, Miss Rosalind had. He inclined his head, suffused already with the warmth of a shared good deed. “You may rely on me. I shall make it my mission to cheer her, beginning by asking her to sing.”
    “Thank you.” Her lashes swept down. “You’re a good friend to this family.”
    To that he made no reply. This was their odd little charade, his and Miss Westbrook’s; the pretense that there’d never been a time when he’d hoped to be more than a family friend.
    But everything on that head had worked out for the best, really. Now that she’d turned back to