They were a tidy group, kept clean and clothed according to the Hospital’s standards, but they were not beautiful. Many of them bore the scars of smallpox or other childhood disease. Several held a cane or crutch for malformed limbs. One girl in a wheeled chair sang with extra volume, leaning forward as if she meant for her little voice to rise above them all. Their eyes followed Lucasta adoringly.
In the pauses to rest their voices, the girls chatted to their teacher as if to a dear friend, eagerly answering her questions about their lessons, their play, and their general welfare. There was no arguing, no complaining or quarreling, no posturing or henpecking as he had seen girls do. Eliza, head tilted toward thepochette, played with a blissful smile upon her face, lost in a world of beauty that Lucasta had helped create for these girls.
Something twisted and bit at the inside of Jem’s chest. Judith would thrive in this circle, where defects of person were a given, not a sin. Judith was thriving where Jem had put her. But she would never survive in the treacherous world of thebeau monde; she was no more equipped to navigate its shoals than was Miss Lucasta Lithwick.
“I believe we have time for a song,” Lucasta said after the vocal exercises were over. “Have you suggestions, girls?”
“Comin’ Thro’ the Rye!” called an older girl with a strong Scots accent. Giggles erupted at the words.
“Far too naughty, my dear Hester,” Lucasta said, though she grinned. “Matron will bar the doors against me if she hears us singingthat. Shall we have Little Gunver, from the Danish operetta? Eliza, I believe you know the tune.”
She helped the girl run through a sweet, mournful melody, adjusting the placement of her fingers and explaining the techniques for the others. Several girls positioned their hands in the air, mimicking the fingering on imaginary instruments. It would be a rare treat to get their hands on an instrument, Jem knew.
Their schooling was practical, focused on reading, writing, household skills, talents that would earn them apprenticeship into a respectable trade when they came of age. Lucasta was an infusion of light and joy and music into their sheltered world which, while not intentionally cruel, was by necessity not adorned with luxuries.
“Now, who remembers the words? Philippa, come sing them for us, verse by verse. You sing, and we’ll repeat.”
A smaller girl came forward, wearing a birthmark the color of port wine across part of her face, her expression alight with joy at being singled out. She had a charming voice, clear ifthin, and Lucasta chimed in with the correct pitch. As Lucasta conducted the group through the ballad, their pure, childish voices ringing out, Jem felt a deep, calm ease spread through him like medicinal balm.
It had been long, too long, since he sat like this, as within a family circle, singing together, needing nothing else in the world but this harmony that told him every evil and sorrow in the world could be smoothed over with the right melody. That he could again feel his blood run clean and light through him, like a sunbeam, and that humans could not be such terrible creatures if they were able to blend their voices in song.
After a while he realized the story was a haunted one, about a young girl lured to the bottom of the sea by a deceitful merman and then abandoned there, lost forever to the land world where she belonged, and lost to those who loved her.
The tale at the opera last night, too, had been of a woman losing her life to male whim. Jem shifted his pose in the doorframe.
Well, he did not intend to enchant Miss Lithwick, and he did not intend to harm her, either.
He had only meant to lure her, admittedly, into a position where potential harm might befall her.
When the girls finished, their faces alight with joy, Lucasta applauded them, and they clapped for her and each other. “And now,” Lucasta said over their exuberant chatter, “let us ask Lord Rudyard what he thought of our song.”
Jem swept a low bow. The girls wiggled in delight. “A marvelous performance,” he said, and he was honest. The time had flown by. “But I confess I have one request.”
Lucasta’s face also glowed with delight. While she had been deplorably awkward at the ball and wary and guarded at the theater, here among her students she was in her element,relaxed, open, humming with joy. He wanted to see more of this Lucasta.
“I would like for Miss Lithwick to sing for us,” Jem said.
A resounding series of affirmations met this. “Oh, yes, Miss Lithwick! Sing for us? Indeed, you must. We have been very good.”
“This is your time, girls,” Lucasta protested. “You don’t want to spend it listening to me warble.”
“Perhaps it would be instructive of them to hear a trained voice,” Jem suggested.
A shadow crossed her face, a look of such longing that it tugged at Jem’s heart. “I am not trained,” she answered. “Not properly, at least.”
“Do sing, Miss Lithwick.” Eliza held out the pochette and bow, returning the instrument. “We so love to hear you.”
Lucasta sent Jem a veiled look. She knew he was testing her. Jem folded his arms and leaned against the door frame. He would guess Lucasta Lithwick never backed down from a challenge.
“Very well.” Lucasta picked up the pochette and faced the classroom with its rows of eager faces. The girls pressed forward. “I will sing you a hymn I am learning. It is called ‘Blessed Be the Ties That Bind.’ My father would have liked it, and I think Matron can approve of your hearing it.”
She teased a few notes from the instrument, finding a tune, and then she drew a breath and sang.
Jem forgot to breathe.
He had no musical training. He had been raised in a warehouse and the back rooms of a draper’s shop, set to work as soon as he was old enough to run errands. He learned his letters and numbers from the account books his mother kept. When she died, though he was only nine, he began his apprenticeship in earnest.
Constance Dixon had come from honest people, hardworking and upright, and they enjoyed life as much as they could. But they had not thought to give Jem the schooling of a gentleman, not when they depended on his level head and his eye for color to help with the business.
