My Wealthy Client Demanded Absolute Silence — So I Destroyed Her Dinner Party With A Vicious Masterpiece
Part 2
Dan Hughes vaulted out of the carriage directly onto the flooded pavement.
He wasn’t holding his whiskey glass anymore, and he hadn’t bothered to put on an overcoat.
Dan stood in the pouring rain in his formal evening wear.
His pristine white shirt front instantly absorbed the dirty water.
I stared at him, my wet hair plastered to my cheeks.
Instead, I was too exhausted to be intimidated.
“Are you following me?” I asked, my teeth chattering.
“Yes,” Dan said, closing the distance between us.
Under the harsh street lamp, the bruised shadows beneath his eyes looked even heavier.
“Why?” I snapped, pulling my wet shawl tighter around myself.
“Did Brenda send you to demand the return of the dinner rolls I didn’t get to eat?”
A short, harsh laugh escaped his nose.
“Brenda is currently requiring smelling salts because you damaged her piano,” he replied.
“I didn’t damage the piano,” I said.
“It’s just never been played before.”
“I noticed,” he said, looking down at me.
He was nearly a foot taller, a looming shape blocking the wind.
“You are freezing,” he stated.
“Get in the carriage.”
I shook my head.
“It was not a request, Miss Clark,” he said, the rain dripping from his eyelashes.
“I am not letting you walk in a freezing downpour.”
“But I don’t ride with strange men,” I countered.
“It is a very quick way for a woman of my standing to end up floating in the Thames.”
He stepped closer.
The smell of sharp whiskey and rain-soaked wool overpowered the street.
“If I wanted you dead, I would have let Brenda’s footman beat you in the alley,” he said.
“I want to hire you.”
The cold rain suddenly felt very distant.
“Hire me?” I asked.
“To play waltzes?”
“If you ever play a waltz in my presence, I will throw you out a window,” he said.
He gestured sharply toward the open carriage door.
The interior was lined in dry, dark velvet.
I looked at my chapped, trembling hands and thought of my unlit room.
Instead, I walked past him and pulled myself up into the heat of the carriage.
It smelled of clean linen and dry leather.
He climbed in after me and shut the heavy door.
Dan tossed a crisp linen handkerchief onto my lap.
“Wipe your hand,” he said, staring out the window.
“You’re bleeding on the velvet.”
I wrapped it tightly around my thumb.
“You owe me the wage I lost tonight,” I told him.
He reached into his pocket and tossed two heavy gold sovereigns across the carriage.
They landed on the velvet cushion next to my thigh.
Two pounds was a month’s rent.
“I don’t take charity,” I said, my voice tight.
“It isn’t charity,” he said, leaning back against the cushions.
“My wife died three years ago.”
The words were flat, brutal, and finalized.
“Since she died, the house has been a tomb,” he continued.
“Everyone speaks in whispers.”
I watched him, recognizing the specific geometry of his grief.
It wasn’t sad.
That was furious.
“You don’t want music,” I said softly.
“And you want an exorcism.”
His dark eyes snapped to mine.
“I want someone to break the silence violently,” he said.
“But I will pay you two pounds a week to sit in my library and play until your hands bleed.”
It was a scandalous offer that would ruin me permanently.
But sitting there in my wet clothes, I was already ruined.
Would I really sell my soul to play violently in a grieving stranger’s silent house?
