Light Fantastique Read Free Page A

theatre’s lighting system so it could be used once Edward made enough aether gas—whenever he figured out how—Iris suspected he protected Edward out of sympathy for his mental state. She’d come to find the Irishman liked to exaggerate for dramatic effect, but also to shield those to whom he was fiercely loyal.
    â€œYes,” Bledsoe said with a sigh, “have you heard the Symphonie Fantastique by the late Hector Berlioz?”
    â€œOnly the snippets they’ve been rehearsing for the production.” Iris imitated the disapproving look on her former headmistress’s face and intoned, “Young ladies do not listen to scandalous music from the continent.”
    The musician’s beard made his smile seem all the wider and emphasized the evenness of his teeth. “So you’re getting an education in many things these days.”
    And many things I’m not. With that thought, Iris placed her books on the hall table but didn’t enter the parlor so she at least wouldn’t be unchaperoned in the same room as a bachelor with a rake’s reputation. Her current living situation had caused her to become good at finding loopholes to Victorian convention, particularly since the French had a tendency to flaunt silly societal rules. So she continued to talk to him from just beyond the doorframe and fidgeted, wanting to ask him but not wanting to seem foolish.
    Finally, she blurted it out.
    â€œWhy hasn’t Edward kissed me since Italy?”
    All right, it was a clumsy way of asking, but she’d got it out.
    â€œDoesn’t he still love me?” she clarified. She wouldn’t meet Bledsoe’s eyes, and the music she focused on blurred so the notes slid across their scored terraces.
    â€œI believe he does still care a great deal for you. You know his limitations,” he said, but his tone was gentle, not chiding.
    â€œEverything seemed fine when I went back to England for father’s funeral. And Jeremy Scott’s,” she added. “But when I came back, Edward was different, distant. Was it because I went to Jeremy’s funeral? I didn’t want to tell him, but I promised I’d never lie to him ever again, and…” She had to stop and breathe. She could understand Edward’s reticence on some level. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t shake the feeling that if she had handled the situation differently, the odious Lord Jeremy Scott would still be alive and with a better understanding of her. Intellectually she knew his death at Edward’s hands was the best possible outcome—aside from Edward having a part in it, of course—and that he would have never ceased pursuing her, but she couldn’t shake the memory of his heartbroken family.
    â€œYes, you had to tell him you attended Lord Scott’s services,” the musician said in a gentle tone. “Edward broke the strictest of his rules in the underground temple, and it’s taking him a while to recover. Radcliffe said that sometimes when someone has experienced a great upheaval, they snap back to their previous way of being in spite of progress made.”
    â€œBut how long is it going to take before he returns to how he was?” Iris chewed her lip and reminded herself not to. It was a bad habit she’d picked up since coming to Paris.
    â€œHas another young man caught your fancy?” Bledsoe asked.
    â€œN-no,” Iris stammered. Although she thought his beard quite dashing, she didn’t feel that way about Bledsoe. And the young French men in the archeology institute generally ignored her in favor of the few French women there. She didn’t mind—she was accustomed to being an outsider—but she was glad for the holiday break.
    â€œYou’re sure.”
    Iris blinked, but not fast enough to keep the tears inside her eyes. She wiped them from her cheeks, which stung from the salt sliding across the sensitive