“His Grace has it tuned now and then,” Jenny replied, clearing her throat. “No one is permitted to play it—not that any of us could.”
“Can you play, Miss Winter?” Emma asked hopefully.
Maggie nodded, and the child’s face lit.
“Mama was very accomplished,” Emma confided, glowing with pride. “Uncle told me. She played at parties and all. He even said he would sing when she played.”
Maggie blinked. “His Grace sang?”
She could not picture it.
Emma nodded earnestly. “Uncle said Mama played every day before I was born, so I would grow up good at music. After I came, Papa held me by the pianoforte and Mama played.”
Maggie frowned. “But I heard nothing of a music-master for you.”
There was no answer to her unspoken question, which of course was an answer in itself.
So I see,Maggie thought grimly.Emma is not to learn.
She stepped forward, brushing her palm across the seat of the pianoforte stool. A cloud of dust surged away, clouding in the still air, and she sat down.
Jenny gave a low moan. “Maggie,don’t.”
“I am only sitting down, Jenny,” Maggie said mildly.
Emma stood close, eyes shining. “Can you play the pianoforte, Miss Winter?”
“Indeed, I can.”
The child considered this. “When you were at home, had you one of your own?”
Honesty was best. “Once I did,” Maggie said quietly. “No longer.”
“Why not?”
She should have foreseen the question. She felt Jenny’s gaze on her as she set her fingers upon the cool ivory and closed her eyes. “My papa sold it.”
Jenny gasped. Emma shrank a little, dismayed. “Sold it? Why?”
“We had need of the money and less need of a pianoforte,” Maggie answered briskly—and wished she had said nothing.
We had need of the money.How strange that a few simple words could encapsulate the horror of those particular weeks, with creditors banging at the door day and night, the grocer and butcher refusing credit, doors closing in their faces. It was then that Maggie had realised that her ‘bosom friends’, all those ladies who had sworn that they adored her and would never forget her, did in fact have memories shorter than that of a fish.
She hadn’t chosen to sell the pianoforte; she had simply come home to find the instrument gone, a patch of dusty floor in the drawing room the only sign that it had ever been there. She’d wept, of course, but their creditors were silent for a while after that, and they were able to pay the grocer.
It was a sensible choice, really.
“Enough of that,” she said at last. “Shall I play something?”
“No,” hissed Jenny.
“Oh, yes—please,” Emma cried, clapping.
“What shall it be? I must warn you, I am not up in the latest fashionable songs.”
“That’s quite all right. Nor am I,” Emma said seriously. “Can you playGreen Grow the Rushes?”
Maggie thought, then picked out a simple line with one hand. The tone was clear; the instrument answered sweetly.
