And tears are heard within the harp I touch
“You play, Miss O’Hara?” Lord Campbell-Black said from the threshold of the music-room, a chamber Mama had insisted in decorated in pale green as it set off her hair. She refused to wear a lace-trimmed cap when they were at home at the Priory, though Agatha knew the other ladies of the parish frowned over it. Lady Elizabeth, the daughter of a marquess who’d married beneath her station when she wed Viscount Vereker, had spoken of it, most gently, most politely, but Agatha knew there was nothing to be done. Mama would have her own way and Papa wouldn’t hear a word against her. Prinny had granted him the title himself for his various victories against the French navy, but at the Priory, it was Mama who was lord and master and Agatha thought even Napoleon would quake in the face of her ire.
It was Mama who had decided on the pale green, the cherubs clustered in the molding, the great gilt harp set between the windows, for the light, darling little fool, it’s most flattering.
“A little, sir,” Agatha replied. It was best to say least, she’d found. She’d gotten herself into trouble when she said more and there was no one who promised more trouble than Lord Campbell-Black, whom everyone in the Ton knew to be the greatest rake of his generation. It was said he had a dozen pair of boots from Hoby and had fired a dozen valets for their inability to tie his cravat as he liked.
It was whispered among the unmarried girls making their come-out, that he’d ruined over a dozen gentlewomen, and one had even become a nun.
“I should like to hear what a little sounds like,” he said. He looked the very devil, his eyes dark, his shoulders broad, his fashionable clothes not disguising in the least his form, the dangerous, powerful grace of his every gesture. It was said he only loved his hounds and his stallion Havoc and his old nanny. She ought to find some polite way to excuse herself, to explain she was wanted elsewhere, and she found she couldn’t and wouldn’t and didn’t want to.
She played, from memory, her favorite works, Burns and Dussek, Parry and Bach. Her fingers flew across the strings, the melodies so evocative she forgot herself, forgot demonically handsome Lord Campbell-Black, forgot Mama’s cutting remarks about what a muddle-head she was and Papa’s silence. She played and the harp sang. It was as close to Heaven as one might get in Rutshire in 1811.
“A little more and I’d be in Heaven, angel,” Lord Campbell-Black said, the words intended to be provocative, unsettling, Agatha intended to blush and drop her eyes, flustered and easily plucked, but his tone was reverent, surprised, and his expression, when she glanced up, was serious and impossibly tender.
“That’s heresy, sir,” Agatha said.
“Blasphemy, actually, but we shan’t argue over it,” he replied.
“I’m sure you know better,” Agatha said.
“Perhaps not, angel.”
Posted for @janeuary-month day 2 prompt: harp