False Colors Read Online Free PDF Page A

thought he should probably choose the more humane. “My mother did not approve of it. ‘Snare of the devil,’ she said. It was not played in our house.”
    “Your mother did not approve of music ?” Donwell had clearly been very startled indeed; his face only now began to change from boyish openness to the urbanity of an adult. In all the layers thus revealed, John was startled to see pity.
    Instantly his temper flared. “Why should she? Is it not used to set the scene for debaucheries? Balls, where young people may lose their innocence. Theatre and opera and dancing that dazzle the senses and make the heart forget true morality? It would be a more steadfast, sober world without music.”
    In his zeal, John stepped forward. Donwell did not retreat, but stood there, apparently relaxed, his thumb moving gently over the curve of the flute. “And a poorer one.”
    Fists tightening almost against his will, physical fury swept through John, clear and glorious as the music. Breathing hard, he could almost feel the smack of his knuckles into Donwell’s mouth, where a small, startled smirk turned in the end of the man’s lips. Infuriating! How dare he? How dare he laugh at me? They stood so close he could feel the warmth of Donwell’s thigh against his own.
    Watching that little knowing smile light up Donwell’s smoky amber eyes, John breathed in sharply and turned away, fighting down the urge to wrap his hands around the other man’s neck and choke some reason into him.
    What the…? Where had such violence come from? Shame flooding him, he stepped back, head bowed, appalled at himself. It wasn’t even as though he didn’t agree.
    “Forgive me. ‘And a poorer one, sir .’” Donwell too retreated, hopping up to sit on his cot, ceding John the two paces of floor and the sea-chest seat.
    For a man who has given in, he looks altogether too triumphant, John thought, sitting down on the chest with trembling legs and a tender conscience. “You might be right.” As his racing heart slowed, he attempted a reassuring smile. God alone knew what Donwell must think of him! He himself had no idea. “Though it shows a filial impiety in me to allow it.”
    John’s mother disapproved of many things in which he himself could not see the harm. Had the music not—only a moment ago—made him feel closer to God? Prompted him to worship? How then could anyone say it was a snare? It disturbed and grieved him that she made her life more unhappy than it needed to be, but at times it was hard to avoid the thought. “I do sometimes fancy it is ungrateful—in our quest for purity—to disallow ourselves the things which were created to give us joy.”
    Alfie licked his lips. Cross legged, sheet music bundled in his lap to hide his inappropriate state of arousal, he tried to get his breathing under control. Just for a moment there, he’d thought…. Oh! How glorious to find that the captain’s uncertainty covered such passion. Misdirected passion, true. But that could be remedied. “I couldn’t agree more,” he said at last. “Would a good God
    have created an appetite within us and then forbidden us to satisfy it? Would he have given us no choice but to hunger and then demanded that we starve? I think not.”
    “My mother would say the appetite itself was debased.” John looked up. The blaze had died from his eyes; they were now dark grey as his wig, from which all the powder had been blown by the morning’s breeze. The right hand side-curl unraveled, strands hanging down to brush his jaw. “‘Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.’”
    Alfie tugged his shoes off and dropped them over the side of the bed. He wriggled his toes in luxurious freedom, digging them into the coarse wool of his blanket and smiling at the tickle. The cot bumped against the hull as his movement set it swinging, and he wrapped his hands around the supporting ropes to still it. From here he was