“Such a lovely piece,” he whispered after the second movement, his breath too close to her ear. “But I imagine your playing will steal the show entirely.”
Abigail offered a murmured response she didn’t even hear herself say. The room blurred around her. Her pulse ticked in her wrist like a steady drumbeat.
The second performance was a string quartet—adequate, uninspired. The third, a young gentleman attempting a transcription far beyond his grasp.
And then Eliza was called.
She moved to the front of the room with poise, her gown was a simple one, her smile reserved but genuine. As her fingers touched the keys, Abigail saw the subtle transformation—the tightening of focus, the immersion into the music. Eliza did not perform to impress. She played because the music was hers.
The room hushed as the melody took form. Notes soared, bright and clear. Abigail glanced sideways and saw Charles transfixed. He leaned forward slightly, unaware of it, his brow softened, his usual quiet dignity replaced with open admiration.
Eliza’s gaze flicked up and met his gaze as she played.
Something passed between them—a glimmer, a breath, a note unspoken. It was subtle enough that no one else would have noticed, but Abigail had seen a similar expression on Charles’s face as he watched Eliza before.
Polite applause rippled through the room. Eliza rose, bowed modestly, and returned to her seat, her cheeks tinged with the flush of genuine emotion. Abigail caught the look she gave Charles and felt a pang of envy—not for the affection exchanged, but for the ease of it. The freedom.
Abigail’s name was called at last.
She stood slowly, smoothing the front of her gown with a practiced hand before making her way to the front of the room. The violin waited for her on its stand like a relic from some former life, its polished wood gleaming under the soft candlelight.
She cleared her throat gently and lifted it with careful composure, the motion one she had repeated dozens of times throughout her life, though it never felt any more natural. She felt the weight of dozens of eyes pressed upon her as she took her place on the dais. A hush fell over the audience as she positioned herself at the centre of the room.
She didn’t require a musical score, such was her memory of a piece she had played thousands of times before. Gently, she raised the bow and began to play.
The opening notes rang out with precision, each one falling into place exactly as it should. Abigail’s technique was unassailable—her fingers moved with crisp confidence along the strings, and the bow glided smoothly across the instrument, drawing forth the expected phrases with flawless timing.
But, in her mind, there was no warmth to the sound, no softness at the edges, no suggestion of pleasure. The music was beautiful in the same way a marble statue is beautiful—elegant, refined, and utterly cold. She played like a marionette—each note executed with careful grace, yet devoid of joy. Every movement was a concession. Every phrase a surrender. Her bow hand trembled slightly, not from fear, but from a desperate, strangled frustration.
This was not her music. It never had been. She did not belong on this stage, beneath these lights, before this audience of appraisers and schemers. She belonged in silence. In thought. In freedom.
She knew how it must appear. From the outside, she would seem serene, graceful, accomplished. Her mother would be glowing with pride, Edward would be mentally adding her musical abilities to the growing list of reasons he believed she should become his wife, and Lady Maria would feel vindicated in having invited her to perform at all.
But within her, a familiar tension coiled tighter with every section she completed. The violin, once a childhood curiosity, had long since become a symbol of expectation. Of display. Of duty. It was never about expression—it had always been about performance, in every sense of the word.
As the final notes of her piece faded into the silence, she lowered the instrument and gave a polite curtsy. The audience offered the expected applause, well-mannered and appreciative, the sort that had more to do with social obligation than any genuine appreciation of artistry. Abigail made her way back to her seat with steady steps, her expression composed, though her thoughts were already retreating somewhere far from the candlelight, corsets and courtship.
***
Arthur had not intended to remain long. In fact, he had not intended to attend at all, but his mother’s lecture and disappointed demeanor had left him with little option if he wanted to have any semblance of a harmonious home life.
He had no intention of courting any of the fawning debutantes in this room no matter how good their prospects or how overbearing their mothers might be. He had attended solely for the purpose of duty. He would do the bare minimum to play his part, make polite pleasantries, and then leave. If time permitted, and the musical performances did not take up the whole of the evening as he feared they might, he might even treat himself to a drink at White’s, so this didn’t feel like an entirely wasted evening.
The very notion of attending a musicale—of crowding into a drawing room to endure overwrought Italian arias and overly ambitious pianoforte solos—had struck him as intolerable. Yet here he stood, planted among silken gowns and murmured nothings, watching the gleam of candlelight catch in a hundred pairs of polished eyes, and wondering, for the third time in ten minutes, why he had not simply remained at his club.
Aside from his mother’s ever-present demands, he knew the answer, of course. He always knew, though he would not admit it aloud—not even fully to Eliza, who suspected everything, knew more than he no doubt thought she did, and said too much.
It washer.
She stepped forward now, poised beneath the glare of the chandelier, the violin cradled beneath her chin like something sacred. Abigail Darlington. Her gaze remained steady, composed, fixed somewhere in the middle distance as she dipped her head briefly to acknowledge the light applause that greeted her appearance and stepped into the light, her skin glowing, her eyes bright.
He had never thought of her as particularly striking, not in the conventional way. Her gowns were never the boldest, her speech never the loudest. But there was a refinement in her bearing, a calm intelligence in her eyes and a dark sense of humor about societal woes that refused to yield to frivolity.
And now, as she raised the bow, he found himself unexpectedly arrested—not by her beauty, but by the certainty that she was about to reveal something of herself that words could not touch. An intriguing secret that was about to be shared with him, with all of them.
The first note rang out—clear, luminous, like a thread of silver unspooling in the air—and Arthur felt his spine straighten without thought. She was absolutely captivating, and he was immediately enchanted in a way he hadn’t thought possible.
Was he softening in his old age? Arthur had never been even remotely interested in any of these musical events before, because they weren’t something which held a shred of interest for him. Even the accomplished performers seemed somewhat bored to be there.
