Chapter One

       Porth Karrek, Cornwall —September 1823

      Every minute mattered now that the school’s opening was upon them. Eaton pushed up his sleeves and gripped the oak table. At the other end, his headmaster, the renowned composer Cador Kitto, gave a nod and, with a mutual grunt, they lifted the heavy table. Around them, workmen painted and swept with feverish urgency. School began in three days and some students would arrive early to be on hand for the open house in two. The past few days it had been all hands on deck, even his—especially his. Eaton didn’t believe in leading idly. He refused to stand back, shouting orders to others, without lending his own efforts to the project. Besides, staying busy made it possible to forget other unpleasant realisations, albeit temporarily; that Richard Penlerick was dead, life was short and there was nothing he could do about either.

      They manoeuvred the table into place at the front of the room and set it down with a relieved thud. Damn, but good oak was heavy. Eaton swiped at his brow and Cador laughed. Eaton groaned. ‘Did I just smear dirt across my forehead?’

      ‘Yes, but no matter. There are no ladies about to see you.’ Cador winked.

      ‘Just for that, you can unpack the books.’ Eaton chuckled.

      ‘Oh, no, I’ve got instruments to oversee.’ Cador wiped his hands and nodded towards the door at the arrival of Eaton’s secretary. ‘Looks like you’ve got business to attend to.’

      Eaton turned, stifling a sigh. He far preferred physical labour to the never-ending tedium of paperwork, especially when there was so much to get done, so much to forget. It was too easy for his mind to wander into difficult territory when he was doing paperwork. He found a smile; it wasn’t the secretary’s fault. ‘What is it, Johns?’

      ‘There’s someone asking to see you, my lord.’ Johns was young, hired to help with the record-keeping and correspondence at the school, and today he looked every inch of his mere twenty years. Johns shifted from foot to foot, his cheeks tinged a fading pink which Eaton didn’t think was due to the exertion of the stairs. Whoever was waiting had been quite insistent.

      ‘Do they have an appointment?’ Eaton looked about for a rag to wipe his hands on. Johns would have to learn how to be a better gatekeeper.

      ‘No, my lord.’

      ‘Has one of the boys arrived early?’ Eaton gave up on a rag. His mind was already working through options. There were rooms ready on the third floor if needed and the cook could be called in to prepare food a day earlier than planned, although provisions weren’t expected to arrive until tomorrow...

      Johns cleared his throat. ‘It’s one of the patrons, my lord. One of the widows.’ Johns’s tone was urgent now. Some of the insistence that had been pressed upon him by the unexpected visitor was now being relayed.

      Eaton relaxed, although he did wonder what had upset his secretary. Two of the school’s patrons were wealthy widows and he couldn’t imagine either of them being the source of such angst. ‘Is it Mrs Penhaligon? Has she come to see that her piano is properly installed?’ Austol Penhaligon’s widow had donated her expensive Sébastien Érard double action keyboard piano, much to Cador’s delight. The other, a Mrs Blaxland, was an extraordinarily rich woman from Truro, whom Eaton had never met. He’d assumed her age, which must be considerable, had brought about an inability to travel. Her husband, Huntingdon Blaxland, had been sixty-five when he died and that had been five years ago. She likely let her money do the travelling for her these days. Thanks to her generous donations, the boys would have the finest music instructors Cador Kitto had been able to find, acquired from the Continent on his summer honeymoon.

      Soft fabric rustled behind Johns, giving Eaton his only warning before no-nonsense female tones announced, ‘No, not Mrs Penhaligon, I’m afraid.’ Apple-green skirts and shiny chestnut hair swept past Johns with an imperious air that smelled of peach orchards and vanilla, the very best and last of summer. ‘I’m Eliza Blaxland.’ She ran a gloved hand along the surface of the oak table, collecting dust on the pristine tip of one finger. ‘And you, Lord Lynford, have some accounting to do.’

      Eaton gave her an assessing stare. This haughty virago was Eliza Blaxland? What had the elderly mining magnate been doing with a woman like her? She was no frail grey-haired widow, practising philanthropy from her armchair. This was an elegant, sophisticated woman in her early thirties with decades of life and fire still left to her, a woman who valued being in control. If so, she’d have to adjust. He was more than happy to take her money for the school, but not her orders. He was the Marquess of Lynford and his deference was given sparingly. He could not be bought, nor could he be intimidated. ‘Accounting, Mrs Blaxland? In what way? I was unaware we had an appointment, let alone any accounting to do.’ He was usually the one who did the intimidating. How interesting that she thought the interaction might go differently. She needed to learn that her cheques did not allow her carte blanche in the school and that included showing up two days early for the open house.

      She was not daunted by his cool reception. Instead, she returned his assessing stare with one of her own, making him acutely aware that she was entirely his antithesis. While he stood before her sans waistcoat, jacket and cravat, shirtsleeves wrinkled and rolled with a belatedly remembered smudge of dirt on his forehead, she was all elegant summer perfection in her apple-green walking ensemble of India muslin, matched head to toe from the brim of her green-crepe chapeau Lyonnaise to the peeping toes of her green half-boots. ‘I disagree. You are two days from opening and this place is a madhouse.’ She held up the dusty finger of her glove in reminder. ‘My money did not pay for chaos.’

      Eaton summoned up a smile from his repertoire, the one known for successfully impressing older, more conservative women who occasionally found his love of adventure a tad too liberal—until they tried it for themselves. ‘I assure you, all will be in order for the open house.’ She was not convinced. Her gaze roved about the room, taking in the painters, the movers, the sweepers, casting doubt and disappointment wherever her eyes landed. Eaton grimaced. He needed to get her out of this room. There were plenty of spaces that were finished. It was too bad she hadn’t found him in one of those. ‘Might I offer you a tour, Mrs Blaxland?’ The woman was likely to poke her nose into all the rooms on her own—at least this way he could keep an eye on her. He could control a tour, although it would cost him an hour of work to squire her around. Still, better an hour of work lost than a lucrative patron. Disappointed patrons often bred other disappointed patrons. ‘On our tour, we can discuss whatever it is you’re doing here.’ It was a subtle reminder that she was the one in the wrong, the one who’d shown up uninvited.

      He gestured to Cade, giving her no chance to refuse. ‘Let’s start with an introduction to our headmaster, Cador Kitto, lately from Vienna. He’s composed at the Hapsburg court.’

      Cade, with his wavy blond locks and Continental élan, bowed over her gloved hand with a courtly aplomb that made Eaton envious of the man’s slender elegance. ‘A pleasure to meet you at last, Mrs Blaxland. Our students will benefit greatly from your patronage.’ A little dose of Cade could go a long way in smoothing ruffled feathers—at least that was what Eaton was hoping for, particularly when he didn’t know what had ruffled her feathers in the first place.

      ‘What you describe as chaos, Mrs Blaxland, I consider