One
October 1822
Not a day passed in which Lord Atlas Bromley didn’t fall in love. Today the pianoforte in his brother’s music room demanded his admiration. Shiny and sleek, gorgeous legs, a voice to tune a man’s heart. This instrument could bring him joy, string it high in the air and weave it deep into his bones. He closed his eyes, tested a key, thrilled at the pitch of the sweet note. Yes, joy.
Or a new song to sell to the highest bidder. But weren’t those two things the same these days?
He sat on the bench and pinged out a song, something bouncy and bonny just like the instrument. But it couldn’t be about the instrument. It must be about… ah, yes, naturally, a buxom beauty with a grin like the sun. He hummed, picking through words and images, finding a few good ones. A very few.
Then he sang, “No star or sunbeam can compare. No other instrument half so fair.” His fingers froze above the keys. “Bollocks.” He’d have to replaceinstrumentwithlassor some such. Yes, that would work well. He picked up the tune oncemore, humming first, singing after the words poured into his brainbox. “My bonny lass, so shapely. My bonny lass, so smooth. My bonny lass elates me. My bonny lass, my truth.”
He snapped his hands away from the keys, laid his gently curled fingers atop his thighs. Not a perfect rhyme, that, and a bit… nonsensical. What did it mean for a woman to be your truth? He stood and abandoned the music room. Didn’t matter. The song would sell, and no one would ever ask what it meant.
“Atlas.” His brother, Lord Andrew, strode down the hall, glasses perched perfectly on his nose, hiding blue eyes beneath sandy-brown hair. His tiny, intimidating secretary—Mrs. Amelia Dart—bustled just behind him like an extension of his body. “Are you ready?”
Atlas tried to fold in on himself when Drew reached his side. His brother stood taller than most men, and Atlas still eclipsed him. Stood out like the tallest, broadest tree in the forest. Always. When he really just wanted to be lost in the woods, beneath the branches, alone and observing.
“I am.” Atlas set his steps in line with his brother’s, headed toward a small schoolroom in the back corner of the Waneborough Charitable School of Art, an establishment run by their brother, Lord Theodore, and his wife, Lady Cordelia. His brother and secretary were in London for only a short time before returning to Manchester where Drew’s educational agency was located. They were expanding to London and looking for locations, and Atlas had convinced Drew to help him search for a cabinetmaker or joiner to assist Atlas back home at Briarcliff. “I’d like you to do most of the talking.”
Not even a hitch in Drew’s step. “Why? I see no reason. You’re the one who needs an assistant, not me. I’ve got one already.”
Atlas glanced at Mrs. Dart.
She rolled her eyes. Then hopped when she realized she’d been caught, her black curls bobbing. Her cheeks flushed, and she popped her chin into the air. “Lord Atlas, were you playing the pianoforte?”
“Yes.”
“Such a lovely tune.”
“Thank you.”
“Is it one of your own?” She peeked at him as Drew opened a door and glided into the room without them.
“Yes. A new one.”
She smiled. “Ah. I shall be able to say I heard it first.” She followed Drew inside.
Atlas did, too, feeling the squeeze of the frame despite the clear space between it and his shoulders. He always felt too big inside, too rough, a slab of uncut wood, weathered and beaten by time. No elegant drawing room chair, he. More like a sawed-off stump around a campfire.
He looked about the mostly open room. Drew sat at a small writing desk, and Mrs. Dart sat at another smaller one behind him. A chair rested between his desk and the window. For the applicants, no doubt. But where should Atlas sit? He shifted from foot to foot. The chairs were all too small. He’d break one. But he couldn’t plop down on the floor. Perhaps he’d just… hold up a wall.
“Drew,” he said, “how long do you think we’ll be at this?”
“Can’t tell.” Drew didn’t look up from organizing paper, quill, and ink on his table. “Could be half an hour. Could be all day. It depends entirely on the quality of candidates.”
Atlas could stand all day. Hell, he used to march all day, ride all day. Fight all day. But after a half hour or so, his leg would begin to ache. After an hour, it would truly hurt. And by that time, he’d be a bear, growling at everyone, desperate to escape. If he kept moving, the old injury didn’t hurt so much. Or if he satwith his leg stretched out and his weight on his good side. But standing… for that length of time? No.
A chair then. He found the biggest one available and pulled it against the wall at the side of the room. He could watch from here—nap even, if he wished—and leave the talking up to his capable brother.
Besides, in watchful silence, he could better decide whom to hire to assist with the joining work and the furniture. Once he’d put his family’s dower house to rights, he could do what he’d been aching to do since returning home four years ago—leave again. He’d been slowly working through the improvements on the dilapidated house for almost a year. He’d had few resources to move the work along swiftly. The family had only just begun to recover from the financial difficulties their father had left them in. When he finished, though, they could rent out the dower house. Perhaps then he would have finally done enough to lighten the burden of his existence on his family’s shoulders.
He would travel. Not to encounter adventure but to find beauty. To replace the shadows in his memory with moments of joy, to repaint a dark world of death back into color and life.
A body swept through the door. Thank God, Atlas still stood. He wouldn’t have to creak to his feet in front of a stranger.
“Peter Mathews?” Drew asked in his clipped voice, peering over his glasses to a list on the table before him.
“That’s me,” the stranger said, sitting in the chair before Drew.
