My aunt rose from her chair and swept across the floor toward us.
“This is so exciting,” she declared. “Mr. Adams has high hopes for her. He said that Lily is quite talented.”
I was already aware of that, however my aunt’s definition of talented did not include escaping a burning building, pickingpockets, or a vocabulary of curses that would have made the most common street person envious.
Brodie and I were working on that one with her. However, there was a saying that you couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. While I did not consider Lily to be the latter, I was convinced that she had no use for the silk purse part of it. At least not the part that included music and voice lessons. Bravo, I thought.
“This should be most interestin’,” Brodie commented as he escorted me across the salon to our chairs.
I was to remember that, along with a dozen more things afterward, in what followed.
Mr. Adams had Lily start with a piece from Beethoven that I recognized, then a piece I was not familiar with— in consideration of my own rebellion at her age.
“Mozart,” my sister whispered. “I’ve always loved this piece, and she is quite good, don’t you think?”
Quite bored, came to mind as I watched her fingers fly across the keys, her mouth thinned.
While I thought her efforts quite exemplary, I saw the explosion coming.
“Oh, dear,” I whispered.
“What is it?” Brodie replied.
There was no time to explain, only the sound as Lily’s hands pounced on the piano keys.
Pounced was certainly the right word. She then launched into a different piece, complete with colorful lyrics.
“There was a girl from Halifax who went about in her garters;
She charged six pence for just a look, and more to share her quarters…”
I thought the esteemed Mr. Adams might have apoplexy, as Lily then moved on to another equally colorful verse.
Brodie made a sound, his hand over his mouth— he might have been clearing his throat. However, I could have sworn there was a smile there, that dark gaze meeting mine.
“A tune you’re familiar with?” I whispered as Mr. Adams attempted to end the recital.
“I havena heard it in a while.”
“From your time as a boy on the streets of Edinburgh?” I asked with equal amusement.
I glanced over at Lily. I could have sworn there was a triumphant smile in that dark gaze with that glint of blue about the edges that I had seen before during that inquiry case in Edinburgh.
All the while she pounded the keys of the piano, in spite of Mr. Adams’ best efforts to encourage her back to Mozart, and swung into a bawdy chorus— that was the only word for it— her dark hair dancing about her shoulders.
“There is another part of it she hasna gotten to yet,” he commented, then cautioned. “Ye might want to intervene before one of her ladyship’s acquaintances faints from the experience.”
Good advice, I thought. I rose and crossed the salon. I laid a hand on Lily’s shoulder.
“Most entertaining,” I complimented her, struggling to keep the laughter from my voice.
“Do ye like it, miss? There’s more to it,” she replied.
According to Brodie there was a great deal more to it, however with a glance about the salon I wasn’t at all certain that the others would survive it.
Except for my aunt, of course, who struggled with her own amusement. As for my sister, she had closed her eyes and simply shook her head.
“I think refreshments are in order,” my aunt announced as Mr. Adams attempted to apologize to her for Lily’s lack of “proficiency.”
