She paused, drawn by this favorite tune. The pianist expertly moved across the keys, allowing the bass notes to counterpoint the higher octaves. Who would be playing at such an hour?
A look would only take a moment. The door was open. She could identify the pianist without losing more than half a block to Anabelle.
One little step into what had appeared to be utter darkness revealed a chapel with chairs lined up on either side. At the front, against the right-hand wall, stood an upright piano with a single candle flickering atop it. No music rested on the music shelf. The lighting would have been too poor to read the notes in any case. The pianist played from memory and with such abandon that he did not appear to have seen or heard her.
Elizabeth could not move, enthralled. The beloved melody had drawn her in, but it was the man at the piano who held her there. Every phrase flowed from his fingers. Every note wrapped around her like a cool breeze, gently ensnaring her. Each line led to another. She did not want to leave. She could not leave.
Rourke had never told her he played.
Someone had entered the chapel. Rourke heard the soft movement, the light steps. A boy or a woman, he judged, too small to cause trouble. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the music. Though his fingers stayed the course, his mind soon drifted. Whoever this person was, he or she had just missed Anabelle. God’s doing, no doubt. Even a woman or boy might tell tales that would bring condemnation on both Anabelle and him. The fact that this person remained silent meant that none of their conversation had been overheard.
Rather than stop at the end of the hymn, he moved straight into another and another. Still the person did not move or speak. The longer he played, the greater the chance that Anabelle would safely reach her husband aboard the Windsprite.
Rourke had cleared the way for their meeting, but it had involved too many players for his comfort. He did not yet know if Benjamin’s groom could be trusted. He’d appealed to the man’s sense of justice as well as the love of a husband for his wife. Though Nathan was not married to his love in the way that whites defined the institution, they had lived as husband and wife for many a year. In every way but law they were a family, with a daughter to show for it. Such a man should understand a husband’s desperate longing for his wife.
What if Nathan didn’t? What if the footsteps Rourke had heard enter the chapel belonged to the man’s daughter? She could betray Anabelle to her master. Charles Benjamin would ensure Anabelle never had another chance to escape. He had sold her mother to a Louisiana planter. The daughter could easily follow. Anabelle could disappear into a place where neither Rourke nor John could ever find her.
At all costs, Benjamin must not discover this plot.
The hymns rose as prayers—for strength, for standing upon God’s promises. Rourke would play through the night if it would guarantee Anabelle’s safety.
By the fourth hymn, a familiar scent tickled his nose. Jasmine. Elizabeth.
His fingers stilled, the last note dropping into the darkness like a raindrop into a cistern. Could it be her? Or were his senses mistaken? No word had been spoken. Another person might use that scent. On the other hand, enough time had passed for Anabelle to have reached the Windsprite.
Drawn like a moth to flame, he turned.
There she stood, in a dress too short and too plain. Her honeyed hair flowed over her shoulders in loose waves. The dying candle bronzed the curves of her face. Her eyes were closed, her face tilted up as if drinking in heaven’s glow.
He held his breath and wished the moment would not end.
Then her lips parted, her face turned to him, and she opened those blue eyes. “You stopped playing.”
Her words reverberated in the empty room, soft and low and deeply felt, almost reverent.
He could not rip his gaze from her. “I reached the end.”
Still she did not move. “You play so beautifully. I did not know. How long?”
“Many years. The boardinghouse has a piano.”
“I’ve never known a sailor to play.”
“Many do.”
“Hymns?”
“No.” He could not tell her that they played in grogshops for a drink or a strumpet’s attention. A woman like Elizabeth should never know the darker side of life. Her father was right to protect her. Rourke must too.
“A pity,” she breathed. “They are so . . . peaceful.”
Peace. That was what he’d seen in her expression a moment ago and what had been missing from it the other night at supper with Finch. “You aren’t at peace?”
“How can I be?”
She looked at the piano with such longing that he wanted to play the song that would bring back her contentment. Unfortunately, a song would only soothe for a short while. Elizabeth needed to heal. He understood such grief, for he had endured it also. “You miss your mother.”
“How can I not?”
Though he knew no words could soothe, he said them anyway. “She was a good woman.”