According to Clara Bellwether, no less a person than His Royal Highness Prince George, whom Lucasta had unexpectedly run across when she called at Carleton House with an errand having to do with the charity concert, remarked her a veritable diamond. Nothing more was needed to make Lucasta Lithwick an unqualified success.
This afternoon, Jem had taken his siblings off with the promise of fishing instruction. But how, Lucasta wondered, had a draper’s son learned to fish? And how did a man with a business to run, a man whose taste ruled the current caprices of London fashion, find the time two or three afternoons a week to ferry about his sister’s musical tutor?
She enjoyed their lessons and the easy rapport she had developed with the Falstead girls. Judith was steady and true, completely artless, though she had a buried sense of mischief. Bertie had been raised more conscious of her status as a marquess’s granddaughter, and even out from under her mother’s stern eyes, she moved as if wary of her apparent freedom.
And then there was Jem. He was a completely different man among his family than the dandy who strolled society drawing rooms with studied elegance, whose approval was sought, his reprimands crushing. The man she met and occasionally danced with at evening soirees was not the man she sat beside on their drives to Little Chelsea, snugged under a blanket to keep the dirt of the road from her skirts.
She could not, in good conscience, charge for musical instructions when she was being welcomed as one of the family. Not even she was that grasping.
Which meant she was not building her savings for the musical conservatory she would open when she returned to Bath. She was spending all her spare time planning the benefit concert. Time, that was, not spent parading around town on the arm of Trevor Pevensey taking Cici to her entertainments, while the Baron watched with sharp eyes, overseeing this courtship that was not a courtship.
Trevor was amusing, courteously attentive, and completely uninterested in Lucasta, who meant nothing to him beyond a foregone conclusion. She doubted he would make a stir to recover her once she made her feelings clear.
But if the Baron began pressing for a wedding date while Lucasta was still in London—while she still needed his goodwill, and her aunt’s, to take part in the concert she was single-handedly planning—she would find her back to a wall.
And there was no accommodation in any of her plans for a brown-eyed, whiskey-voiced draper’s son who kept a hidden family and ran a clothing empire. No room at all.
“Yes, Galatea.” Lucasta located a simple Mozart concerto that Judith could try. “I’ve read the story. So disgusted was the sculptor Pygmalion by the changeable and unreliable nature of women that he made himself a companion out of ivory, kissed and caressed her, and draped her with silks and jewels because she pleased him as no mortal woman could. And when the goddess of love took pity on him and made his ideal woman take flesh, he adored her all the more because she was so innocent in mind and body that she depended entirely on him. Ovid doesn’t tell us what happened if Galatea ever developed a will or desires of her own, or whether poor deluded Pygmalion could handle sharing his life with an actual living creature.”
“Peace!” Bertie cried, laughing. “You are no man’s creation, Miss Lithwick. God forgive us if we ever make such a suggestion again.”
“I only mean to say that book ten of theMetamorphosisis devoted to doomed and painful love,” Lucasta said. “Orpheus and Eurydice. Atalanta and her prince. Pygmalion and Galatea.”
“But also about transformation,” Judith said. She ran her fingers over the raised musical notes of the concerto, reading the music. “Have you secured the performers for your concert?”
“I have a roster beyond my wildest dreams,” Lucasta said with a happy sigh. “Miss Harriet and Miss Theodosia Abrams have agreed to sing a duet. Margaret Kennedy will sing as long as she might wear a gown. She says she is weary of playing breeches roles—it’s what most contraltos are consigned to. And Mrs. Cecilia Young has promised to make an appearance, though she does not sing in public anymore.”
“And?” Bertie prompted.
Lucasta laid a hand over the neckerchief filling in the neckline of her day gown. “Signor Marchesi has consented to perform.” Her heart pounded at the thought. “He had very kind words about my English version of his Italian song, which I arranged for the harpsichord. I sent him a copy, with my compliments.”
“You should sing a duet,” Bertie suggested.
Lucasta laughed. “I, sing with the great Signor Marchesi! You have taken leave of your senses.”
“I hope you will sing, Lucasta,” Judith said.
“I have no intention of doing so. I will conduct the choir of my foundling girls and accompany some of them in their smaller pieces, but otherwise, I shall be silent.”
“Not to be borne!” Bertie cried. “You ought to shine as well. It is your night.”
“On the contrary, it should look as if I were pushing in.” Aunt Cornelia might have approved Lucasta’s part in organizing the concert—a properly genteel pursuit, after all—but the grand chapel of the Foundling Hospital could hardly pass as an acceptable private venue in which Lucasta might perform.
However Aunt Cornelia chose to dispense with her fortune—and Lucasta did not for a moment credit the Baron’s belief that it would all come to her—Lucasta owed her aunt for her support after her parents died, and her tuition and board at Miss Gregoire’s. Which was to say, she owed Aunt Cornelia her life. Complying with her great-aunt’s prohibitions on singing in public, while a hated restriction, was the least she could do to show her gratitude.
“You could sing a duet with Jem,” Judith suggested. “That was such a beautiful air you performed when you first visited. You brought tears to my eyes.”
Lucasta cleared her throat. “Perhaps I might ask your brother to sing. But certainly I cannot think of doing so myself. The night is for my foundlings, not my own display.”
Her throat ached with longing around the denial. How she would love to sing. She dreamed of it.
Judith lifted her chin. “I’ll play if you will perform a song.”
Bertie, in her cushioned chair, opened her mouth in surprise. Lucasta shared the sentiment. Judith did not venture beyond her quiet street. This suggestion came out of the blue.
“I would accept in a moment if I thought there were any more chance of your brother allowing you to perform than of Aunt Cornelia giving me permission to sing.”
Judith ran her fingers over the music, back and forth across the lines. “I don’t wish to be put on display all by myself, the poor little blind girl. I couldn’t bear that. But I am so weary of always sitting on the sidelines while life goes on around me. I want to help the foundlings, and I want you to sing. So, I will play if you take the stage with me.”
