Her.

Chapter III

"So, what do you surmise of Erik?" Henry asked just after the man left, he probably hadn't even gotten in his carriage at that point. Not that it mattered to the two about to talk of him.

"He is immensely talented," she breathed out, her more articulate and promising words far too stuck in her mind.

"That is true..." Her father added as though he may be fishing for yet another comment on the man she only knew for a few hours. Their short acquaintance was nothing for her to judge what she thought of him, yet she couldn't help but want to tell her father what she felt.

"I'm enamored father, truly enamored with him." It was as if she hadn't control over her mind, and her heart had taken a steady stroll through the larynx and spoken for her.

Henry raised his suspicions higher as he questioned the young woman in his presence. He knew that she was very captured by his music, but he hoped that it had only been for that. "He's much older than you, and I brought him here not for you to-" there was a knock on the door, "be enamored with him."

"Yes, but papa, I find him intriguing and I wish to know as much as possible about the man who can just... Play! As if the notes are nothing and music is his second language!" Haya exclaimed as she eerily watched her father take an envelope from the man at the door, and then he opened the parcel just as slowly.

"A letter?" She wondered curiously.

Henry smoothly took the parchment and read over the few lines there seemed to be, yet he looked over the print twice before wiping the disconcerted look from his face and smiling at his daughter.

"Nothing but a letter!" He exclaimed and put it in a locked drawer. He clicked the lock, smiling the whole time as though it was sheerly not important, yet Haya had to think differently at his initial reaction. Hopefully he wasn't hiding anything. He only ever used the locked drawer for keeping coins when they weren't stored safely in an account.

"Anyways," she remarked widely as the letter stung the back of her conscience, should she ask about the way he looked at it? Was there a problem she ought to know of? Putting it aside for what was most probably both their benefit, Haya placed a stray, black curl behind her ear and continued against better judgement about Erik. "There's just something about him."

"And what is that?" Her father offered prolifically as he reached for his tea left from earlier.

The saucer was a very nice china, something bright-white and printed with delicate lace-printings on the edges. The cups had the same texture occurring, and the handles were like lace themselves made out of what looked like spun and weaved little metal works. It was an astounding mixture of the two, and Haya had picked them out herself when her father insisted his wife's china be put away in the cupboard and never used again.

She'd accidentally broken a plate from the old set once when she was small and but a toddler, so he thought it best to be safe.

"Well, everything about him. The mystery that holds him, the key that seemingly holds an enchantment to music, the way he heals one so quickly, his voice, his strange sense of humor... The fact that for the first time in my life I was yet to be ogled at like a prize to be won over or an oddity to be sent away. No, I was shrugged off like any other common-place woman should be."

"Erik has seen many places," her father replied, non-sealant as he may be, the conversation was wearing on him, obviously making him anxious at that point. Though... It could also be that letter.