She heard the strangest vibration when the last notes of the duet faded, and she wondered why the floor quivered. Judith stood and stepped toward them to take her curtsy, and the gallery shook with thunderous applause. Through blurred eyes Lucasta saw that the audience was on its feet, and her foundlings clapped and whooped with glee. Judith, slipping an arm through each of theirs, sank into another graceful curtsy, and then, still smiling that saintly smile, waved and took her leave.
Lucasta stood rooted to the floor. Signor Marchesi, who was slated next, stepped into the adoring applause, lifted Lucasta’s hand and kissed it with a cheeky wink, and then launched into his aria fromIfigenia in Aulide.Though the song was his alone, he performed it with the gestures from the opera, addressing her as if she were the doomed Ifigenia, and Lucasta collected just enough wit to remember the postures the actress had assumed: her adulation for the posturing Achilles, her despair as she realized her fate.
It was almost too much. She had sung with Judith, and with Jem, before an audience of hundreds. It was her first public performance of this magnitude. And now the great Signor Marchesi was performing next to her.Withher. She might very well die of happiness and be taken straight up to heaven in the chariot of the gods, just like another version of the play. It would be a fitting end.
The night lasted forever, and it was over in moments. The foundlings held up beautifully. Her performers were stellar. The Gorgons had a surprise for her as well: a Boccherini quintet,the one she had heard performed at the Ranelagh Gardens masquerade, with Cici on the cello. They, too, received a standing ovation.
The Abrams sisters, Miss Harriet and Miss Theodosia, brought flowers raining down upon their heads with their transcendent voices. The trio of Philippa, Isadora, and Camilla, with Hester playing the spinet, went off without a hitch. And at the very end, amid another ovation, with calls ofencore, encore!Lucasta heard her name being chanted: “Miss Lithwick!” the audience called, amid shouts for Signor Marchesi. They were being called for together: the great Marchesi, and poor, plain Lucasta Lithwick.
Marchesi took the balcony, throwing his arms wide. “I will sing for you!” he cried, projecting his voice to the far end of the room. “A song I wrote myself, in Italian, but as arranged by Miss Lithwick, who will please me, I hope, by singing the English version she has so admirably translated for me?”
Lucasta moved to the harpsichord in a daze, praying she would not die of happiness until after she had performed a duet with Signor Marchesi.
She knew better than to try to overshadow the famous castrato. Rather she let the English be an echo of his Italian, her voice counterpoint to his, a delicate, supple lilt to his acrobatic contralto. As he repeated the last stanza, he signaled for her to sing the Italian with him, and Lucasta felt her chest would burst with joy as she harmonized with one of her heroes, using her voice to enrich and surround one of the most beautiful sounds she had ever heard.
As the echoes of the song faded into breathless silence, Lucasta closed her eyes and hugged herself, her heart breaking open. This was what she had denied Jem for. It would have to be enough. Itwouldbe enough, in time.
Then there were flowers being shoved into her arms by Selina, and suddenly all the Gorgons were on the balcony, Cici too, distributing flowers to the foundlings. The orphans curtsied and smiled as Lucasta had never seen them smile before, the simple roses the crowning beauty of an evening they would never forget. Lucasta curtsied as well, again and again through the rolling applause, until Annis finally took her arm and dragged her away.
“Let the staff clean up and tuck your foundlings into bed,” she said in Lucasta’s ear. “We are gathering at Arendale House. Jem will bring you.”
“Judith?”
“Will come with us,” Minnie said firmly. “Between Trevor, Ashley, and Frotheringale’s carriage, we’re all accounted for.”
“Ashley,” Lucasta murmured in surprise, but Minnie said airily, “I won’t allow him to stay. It’s just us girls, at Bertie’s invite. Don’t malinger, now, even if you are the star of the evening.”
Jem waited for her at the bottom of the stairs, holding her cape and hat. People moved around them, staff taking the instruments away and the nurses herding their foundlings off to bed, where they would no doubt stay awake well after the lights were doused, whispering about their triumph.
One after another they hugged Lucasta as they passed, and she hugged them back, praising them all for their accomplishment. When at least she turned to Jem, her smile stretched so wide it hurt her face, and her heart was dangerously close to bursting.
“You let Judith perform,” she whispered, leaning toward him as he slowly, gently, settled her cloak about her shoulders. His hands lingered, brushing down her arms, and she breathed in his scent, so familiar, so heady, so potent. There was no force onearth that would make her able to step away from him again. He would have to do it.
His eyes were dark and full of emotion, his voice husky. “I asked myself, why would I allow the possible displeasure of a few small people to keep her from her great dream?”
Lucasta smiled. “And you sang,” she breathed. “You were glorious.”
“And untrained. No match for you, my dear. But I knew no other way to show you I’d come to my senses.”
“What do you mean?” She could barely manage air around the lump in her throat.
He clasped his hands around hers. As always, a tingle darted up her arm, curling around her heart. “Lucasta Lithwick,” Jem said in that voice that was heaven and promise and seduction all together. “Will you sing with me every day of my life?”
Her lips trembled. “In private, you mean?”
“There are many duets I hope we shall have in private,” he said, and his wicked look sent trills of pleasure along every nerve. “But I hope you will sing in public, too. You were a marvel tonight, Lucasta. A revelation. I don’t think you comprehend how you enchanted everyone. To deprive the world of your gifts would truly be a loss. But as I also want you as my wife—” Here he drew her so close that she felt his breath against her ear— “I suppose I shall have to learn how to be the husband of a famous musician, and bear whatever slings and arrows of outrageous fortune result.”
She lifted her chin and brushed her lips along the strong line of his jaw. He shivered.
“Jem,” she said, “I want nothing more. But I would have so much to learn as your wife. There will be attention. There will be—opinions. All my failures will be public and will reflect on you. Your family. I know you don’t want that.”
“I don’t wish it,” he said slowly, wrapping his arms about her. “But Judith is stronger than I thought. So are the others. So are you. I shall have to learn to be equally resilient, and stand rooted in what I know to be true. That is all.”
She raised her hands to either side of his face. She forgot they stood in a dark alcove in a building full of strangers. She couldn’t tell if her feet still touched the earth.
“Jeremiah Falstead. You are the strongest, bravest, most generous, most protective, most—givingman I know.”
“And you are the mostfascinatingfemale.” His lips curved as she giggled, and his breath across her lips made her gasp. “Lucasta Lithwick. Will you be mine?”
