Dark Symphony by Christine Feehan Page A

piano. You took my breath away, and you had not played a single note."
     His voice moved away from the window, toward the door. Antonietta's heart beat loudly in reaction, terrified he would leave her and not return. She knew almost nothing about him. Byron. Man of mystery. The man filling her dreams. "My hair is streaked with gray, and I'm hardly beautiful, Byron, but thank you for the compliment." Her hand fluttered to her throat to hide her rapidly beating pulse. He said the sight of her robbed him of breath, yet his words alone left her breathless.
     He laughed. It was a shocking reaction and the last thing she expected, given her precarious emotions. "Why would you think your hair is streaked with gray? Your hair shines like a raven's wing. If there is silver, it only adds to the depth and richness of your color. No one else has such beautiful hair. Surely you know that."
     Antonietta squirmed under the sincerity of his words. She searched on the nightstand for her dark glasses, feeling more naked without the eye covering than with the lace barely skimming her body. Byron didn't help her as he normally would have. He was always the perfect gentleman, opening doors and placing her things close to her fingertips without a word.
     "How is my grandfather?" She should have asked him immediately instead of reacting to his presence like a schoolgirl. She needed a way to get the spotlight off of her and her all too noticeable reaction to him. "You spent a long time with him."
     "Don Giovanni is fine. I removed the poison from his body, and he is sleeping peacefully. I also examined the other members of your household."
     Behind her dark glasses, Antonietta closed her eyes, feeling more foolish than ever. She could walk onto a stage and take command, but here, in her own home with this one man, she felt foolish. He had the strangest effect on her. She didn't want to think of him alone in a bedroom with her cousin Tasha. She fought to keep her voice cool. "Had any of them been poisoned?" She fought to keep from imagining Byron bending over Tasha in her bed when so many men were so vocal about her cousin's perfect body.
     "Strangely enough, yes. Your cousin Paul had traces of the same poison in his system. Very small amounts. He also had been drugged just as Don Giovanni, and, I suspect, you had been. Not that it makes him innocent. In fact, it is interesting that he was drugged yet not dragged to the cliff."
     Byron was closer to her. She couldn't stand being in bed, sitting there helplessly while he prowled like a great tiger around her bedroom. She tossed the covers to one side, intending to stand up, but with the terrible silence of a stalking cat, he was at the side of the bed. She could feel the bulk of his body, feel the heat radiating from him. Her hand accidentally brushed the hard column of his thigh. Her entire body clenched in reaction. Heat spread and pooled into a sweet ache. It was just possibly the worst night of her life. At the very least, the most embarrassing.
     Antonietta swallowed hard. "Paul was drugged and poisoned? Are you certain?" She was uneasy with the soft growl to his voice when he said Paul's name. He sounded almost threatening, and it frightened her.
     "Yes he was. I want to check you, not only for the drug, but for poison. I think you are going to have to consider that this was a personal attack on both you and your grandfather and possibly Paul, although why he was not thrown into the sea I cannot fathom. He would represent more of a threat than you, I would imagine. I also searched the palazzo. Someone went through the drawers in your office, leaving everything a mess, but I suspect it was to keep the police from finding out that what really happened here tonight was an attempt on your lives."
     "I was awake still, I do remember being sleepy, although normally I go to bed in the early hours of dawn." She couldn't prevent the faint blush stealing into her cheeks. Byron would know her