Inspired by Grace Page 6

  She glanced up at him and asked, “Why?”

  “It is a music box.”

  “What is a music box?”

  He smiled handsomely, winked at her, and teased, “I thought that your genius would have figured it out by now. A music box is a box that plays music.”

  “By itself?”

  Without answering, he lifted the lid and showed her the inside, where she saw a bumpy metal tube and several pegs and wheels. It reminded her of the inside of a clock. Then he began winding a knob on the back. Gradually the gears started moving, and a beautiful, tinkling music filled the room. She watched in awe as the metal cylinder slowly rotated, striking the prongs in patterned precision to create musical notes.

  “Where did you get this? I have never heard of such a treasure.” Her wonder was noticeable even to her. She looked up at him and saw how pleased he was with himself.

  “I knew you would enjoy it. When I was traveling after university, I found myself in Switzerland. I noticed a small store with pocket watches in the window, and I just so happened to have broken mine in a very classic Gavinism.”

  She couldn’t help but giggle. “You tripped and broke your pocket watch?”

  Gavin laughed as well. “Yes,” he admitted. “But I will have to tell you that story another time, because at the moment, I do not wish to relive it. My pride was far more injured than the watch.”

  Being with him and laughing together was just like it used to be. “You cannot start a story like that and not finish it!”

  “Let us just say that I had help from a sheet of ice and my chin got a good look at some excellent Swiss cobblestones. The result was that I needed a new pocket watch. Anyway, I found this little shop, and there, inside, was this wooden box playing this song. I did not know a word of German, but between the shopkeeper’s broken English and what little French I knew, he showed me how it worked. See, this cylinder is powered by a spring, and the music is a result of the revolving cylinder’s teeth striking these metal pins. It fascinated me to no end.” He took a deep breath, but instead of coming out strong, his voice was deep and soft as he said this last part: “All I knew was that I wanted it so that someday I could show it to you.”

  She turned her gaze to him. What did he mean? Her nature was too direct not to ask him outright. “Show it to me?”

  He reached for her cheek and tenderly brushed the back of his fingers against her face. “Yes. You. Everything I have done is usually with thoughts of you.”

  Her face burned under his touch, but it was the vibrato in his velvety voice that unraveled her. His words came out so comforting, and she had not known how badly she needed to hear that he had thought of her over the last ten years.

  The reality of what he said started to sink in, and all at once, she burst into tears. He did not forget me!

  As the tears started to fall from her cheeks, she was afraid that she had misunderstood him. She forced herself to clarify. “Do you mean you did not forget about me?”

  “How could I forget about you? You were everything to me. Every good thing in my life had you in it. Every memory that I care to remember is about you. There was no one who meant more to me than you. You were my world.”

  Her tears fell with new fervor, and for once, she did not feel self-conscious about them. They were happy tears—healing tears. The years of heartache and loneliness had built a cavern between her and the world. And as he reached to pull her into his arms, closing the gap between them, she was keenly aware of the physical and metaphorical closure. There was no canyon separating his heart from hers. She knew at that moment, as he guided her tearful face to his chest, that the only thing that had changed between them was the passing of time. She wrapped her arms around his chest and held him as if she had never been held before.

  And as she cried, the music played on. Slowly he shifted weight from one foot to the other, rocking both their bodies. He asked, “What made you think I forgot about you?”

  She laid her ear next to his heart and listened to the rhythm while feeling his body move her to the beat of the music. She lifted her head to look at him only to find he was looking down at her, making their faces just an inch or two apart. For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. She managed to say, with the same breath that seemed caught in her throat, “You stopped writing.”

  He stopped swaying and stepped back, holding her by the shoulders.

  “What do you mean, Grace?” Gavin asked with a perplexed look on his face.

  “After the danc—” She blushed, flustered for a moment, before continuing, “I mean, after you went back to Eton. You stopped writing to me.”

  “But I wrote you twice a week for a year.”

  “You did? But I never received anything.”

  “When did my letters stop?”

  “After you returned to school. I was so sure you would at least write to me when my father died, but you did not.”

  “Oh, Gigi, I did write! I wanted to come home that very day! If you only knew how crushed I was that my parents refused to let me leave school. I tried to hire a post chase, but by the time I arranged it, my mother told me you were gone. I did not know where you were.”

  “But I told you in my letters. I sent them all to Eliza. You did not receive them?” Grace’s head was spinning. None of it made any sense.

  “Just one,” Gavin said. “But it did not mention the dance lesson or what happened afterwards. I assumed you did not wish to discuss it, so I wrote back to you that very day and apologized. Then all of a sudden the letters stopped. I thought you stopped writing because you were angry at me. Are you saying you did not get my apology?”

  The revelation that he had written her so long and so frequently confused her a great deal. “Eliza never sent me any letters once you went off to school. You wrote every week?”

  “Of course I did! How could I leave you wondering what I really felt? You were my best friend, and we had crossed some imaginary line between best friends and . . . well, something else.”

  She smiled at his lack of description for what happened. “Well, I agree that we crossed the line into that ‘something else’, but I still wanted our friendship to continue. Why did your sister not send you my letters? What if . . . what if your parents found out that Eliza was trafficking letters between us? Your father––”

  He finished her sentence, “––would have stopped it immediately if he knew.” He seemed to be pensive for a moment, and she took a moment to ponder what had said.

  Grace was so grateful to know that he hadn’t abandoned her, that he still cared for her, but something was still aching inside. He had expressed how important she was to him—as a friend. Was that all she was to him? For just a moment, it felt like something else, but then the feeling had vanished. What did he say he had written in his letter? An apology? For the dance lesson?

  The music stopped and so did her heart. He regretted it.

  She walked to the music box and did what she had seen him do, twisting the knob on the back to buy herself more time to think. He felt remorse for that last dance lesson. He had not meant to cross into that “something else”; it had been an accident, a mistake.

  Her fingers continued to turn the knob as she debated in her heart how she felt about that. She had already decided that as long as she had her best friend back, friendship was enough. As the music began, she realized it was playing the very same song they had danced to at their last lesson. She was taken back to that moment.

  Grace thought Gavin had improved a great deal over the four weeks of dance lessons. In fact, she had to admit he had never been so graceful. The music made him elegant. They had gotten to the point where the dance master, Mr. Moser, would play at the piano and call out corrections rather than call out the steps. At times, Grace forgot they were rehearsing and imagined herself at a real ball. Although, in a classic Gavinism, Gavin had lost one of his gloves in the mud that afternoon. Mr. Moser grudgingly permitted them to dance with bare hands, jus
t this one time.

  “Lord Gavin, lighter on the ball of your toes. Miss Iverson, chin up,” Mr. Moser instructed from across the room.

  Grace did as she was told, and the dance brought them together again. Gavin quickly whispered, “Gigi, I need to speak with you. I leave in two days, and I cannot go without telling you what I meant when I said I would marry you.”

  Her heart started racing. When he had first said that someone big and brave would take her away from him, she had grown cold in her heart. No love could ever be worth having to give up her best friend. She was not sure she wanted to discuss it, but this was Gavin; she held nothing back from him. “There is nothing to explain,” Grace whispered. “I have decided I shall never marry if it means having to give you up.”

  “No, that is not what I meant. Someday you will fall in love. Real love. Not the kind of silly love that your sister reads in her ladies’ novels. You are simply too special for men not to see your worth.”

  She whispered back so that Mr. Moser did not hear, “Truly, it is all right. I have a plan. I shall be the governess to your children. We will still be able to see each other every day.”

  Gavin’s response was far too quick. “I do not want that.”

  At first his words hurt, but then he explained, “I do want to see you every day, but I cannot employ you. I care too much for you. Gigi, I love you. When I said I would marry you, I meant it. Not to save you from being a spinster, but because you are the only one my heart wants. I thought I was content to be just best friends. I thought that was enough. But I am more convinced than ever that it is not.”

  Grace nearly tripped in her steps, and she heard Mr. Moser call out, “Focus, Miss Iverson. Now take his hand and promenade down. Quick-step, kick, slow-step. That is right.”

  Grace turned to look at Gavin. “You want to marry me?”

  “I think it is the only option I have. I cannot give you up; you are far too dear to me. I cannot imagine greeting you as Mrs. Monroe or Mrs. White. You will always be my Gigi. Mine. I am too selfish to let someone else claim you.”

  Just then his mother came into the room, and Mr. Moser stopped playing to speak with her. Gavin halted and turned toward Grace. The moment was more than she could have asked for. “Gavin, we are too young to know whether the kind of love we have for each other will really cement a lasting marriage. Marriage should be based on friendship, but it needs more than just that.”

  Mr. Moser interrupted their discussion and called out, “The duchess needs to speak with me for a moment. You may relax until I return.” Both Gavin and Grace watched them leave. The discussion was all too private as it was, but now there was something tangible in the air.

  Gavin took her hand and asked, “Tell me, Grace. What else does a marriage need?”

  Grace may have been only fourteen, but she was pretty confident in her ideas. “To make a marriage work, there has to be that ‘something else’. A man needs to love a woman enough to make her insides melt. He needs to be able to make her knees go weak with a single kiss, and—”

  But before she could finish describing what she had read about, he took her face in both his hands and placed his lips on hers to silence her. It was no small act. Without conscious thought, her lips responded in kind, and she felt her mind lose all coherent thought. It was as if time had slowed down, and she could feel each and every heartbeat as a distinct thump in her chest. LUB-DUB. LUB-DUB. The sound got louder and louder as her lips caressed his, making her very insides melt and her knees go weak.

  He pulled away, and she opened her eyes to see his chestnut brown orbs shining down at her. The corners of his mouth pulled up, and he said, “Is that what is missing between us?”

  He still had his hands on each side of her face. He held her so close that his breath cooled her heated, swollen, wet lips. She reached up and kissed him again. This time, he let go of her face and pulled her into his arms, but before the kiss could get heated, they heard Mr. Moser’s voice and they both jumped away.

  “Miss Iverson! I think you should be getting home. Now.”

  She looked over at Gavin. He was not even pink. She was blushing from the tip of her toes to her ears, and he had the confidence to act as if being found kissing a girl happened every day! Gavin grinned and said, “I will walk you home.”

  “No,” Mr. Moser quickly said, “I think I will accompany Miss Iverson home. Lord Gavin, I think you should redirect yourself. Perhaps something physically diverting.”

  Gavin then reached for Grace’s hand and kissed it. “What a beautiful way to end our dance lessons. Have a wonderful day, Miss Iverson.”

  It was the first time he had ever called her “Miss Iverson”, instead of “Gigi” or the occasional “Grace”. He seemed to have matured in the last few minutes. Where she once knew a boy, now she saw a young man who would someday soon be a grown gentleman. A gentleman who had just made her insides melt.

  She let him kiss her hand, and she curtsied. Gavin had kissed her hand before, of course—acting out Romeo and Juliet or some other play—but this time the kiss lingered; his lips pressed in a way that meant something more.

  She knew it, and she knew that he knew it. They had just crossed from best friends into “something else.”

  *****

  Gavin sensed that Grace was pondering what to say as she stood by the music box with her back to him. He thought he had expressed himself well enough. He had told her how important she was to him, and she had dissolved into a ball of tears in his arms. Happy tears, right? He thought so. He hoped so. After all, he had been hopelessly in love with her for the last eleven years. Listening to the song they had danced to playing from the music box, he recalled that kiss from long ago. The memory had not faded in the slightest; it had kept him warm during the cold nights at sea.

  Every woman he had ever met had been measured against Grace and found lacking. Perhaps that is why he used to prance around with a different girl every week. One lady might have her charm, but none of her spirit and flare. Another, her drive and determination, but no compassion. Some were sweet, but not clever; others were clever, but not sweet. And so the search went on year after year.

  Grace rewound the music box, and the song began again. He felt like he should say something. What was she feeling? What exactly had caused her tears? Ten years ago, before their kiss, she had said they didn’t have that “something else”. Did she feel “something else” when he kissed her back then? Did she feel it now?

  After that kiss, he had been sent to Eton a day early. They never even got a chance to say goodbye. All these years, he had wondered what she felt about him crossing that line.

  “Grace?”

  She turned to him and smiled. “This is the last song we danced to,” she replied. “I remember Mr. Moser had to play this part slower because it was the hardest part of the dance.”

  “Now you understand why I had to show you this music box,” Gavin said.

  “I do. It was the last time we were together. You left early for school, and we never even got a chance to say goodbye. Month after month went by, and there was no word from Eliza. She never even answered the letters that I directed to her. I found that rather odd.”

  Gavin agreed. “I know that if Eliza had received letters from you, she would have found a way to get them to me. She knew how important you were to me. Do you think that Mr. Moser told our parents what happened?”

  “It would certainly explain why you were rushed off to Eton the next morning. Do you think that the letters were intercepted?”

  “It is the only explanation. You know how my father felt about you. As long as you were simply a playmate, there was little harm in us spending time together. But if Mr. Moser told him about that last dance lesson, then my father would have done anything to keep me away from you. Unfortunately he is not around to ask anymore.”

  “Your mother is.”

  Gavin nodded but there was something more pressing on his mind than trying to discover the mystery o
f the missing letters. Gavin had declared himself ten years ago. He had told her he wanted to be more than friends. And he had just told her tonight that she meant the world to him, but she still did not say how she felt. It would be easy to leave it unspoken, but after ten years of not knowing, he was not going to waste another minute.

  “Gigi, please, I have to say something. That day I kissed you . . . I was selfish and impulsive. I am so sorry. I know it was wrong of me. I am worried that I painted over all those years of friendship with a brush of my lips. Is there any way you can forgive me?” Grace’s reaction confused him, and he faltered for a moment. But he had to know if she loved him too. “Grace, what I am trying to say is, can we ever be—”

  “Of course, we can be friends,” she replied flatly. “And I will always forgive my best friend.” Her stiff spine and thin lips made it clear she was angry with him. But why?

  He was a moment too long in responding, and she turned to leave the room. He quickly reached after her and took her elbow, pulling her to him.

  “Dance with me,” he asked.

  She glared at him. “Why?” she asked tersely. “So you can apologize for it later?”

  Awareness dawned on him, and he realized where he had gone wrong. There was only one way to make it right. He wordlessly placed her left hand up by his neck. Then he took her right hand. He stepped closer to her and moved his hand to her waist. It was the position of the waltz.

  As the music played, he twirled her around the room in the three-step pattern. The waltz was a new style of dancing, one they hadn’t practiced in their dance lessons. He relished holding her in such an intimate embrace.

  She began to protest when the music stopped, but he shushed her and kept dancing. There was plenty of music playing inside his heart. If she won’t let me say how much I love her, I will show her. Gavin let his mind work through his confusion, and things started to become very clear. No doubt, it was because she was in his arms.

  One thing he knew was that just as he had tripped her the day before on the street, his bungled apology tonight had stung her and tripped her emotionally. He hadn’t meant to hurt her—he was trying to explain that he was still in love with her—but he could see her emotional walls going up again, brick by brick. If he pushed her too far, if she felt threatened, she would pack up her trunk and be gone by the morning.