“Is there any way I might influence his decision?You have a beautiful voice, and I think it should be shared with the world.”
“Thank you, but a public life on the stage is not for me.”
“If not on the stage, what about a private life in music?”The inspiration she’d provided Sunday and yesterday had given him a few measures to toy with.If he could gain permission for her to join him during some composing sessions, he might meet his deadline.“Would your father be opposed to you helping me bring music to the stage?”
“I’m not sure what you mean by helping you, but I can guess he would be opposed.You underestimate his aversion to opera and music.It’s so bad that I’m banned from attending performances orsinging when I might be heard.We don’t even participate in the hymns at church.”
“But you sing at the asylum, and you attendedOlivetteand sang at church.”
“Father doesn’t know about my lessons with Mum, and Theresa surprised me with the performance without Father’s permission.As for Sunday, it was the first time I’ve sung at church in years.Maybe ever.”
That explained why so much of her soul had poured into her demeanor and voice.The songs of her heart had finally broken free.Knowing her father would dam them up again raised Ezekiel’s temperature.He could understand the ban on performances.It wasn’t unusual for plots, costumes, or dialogue to dance back and forth over the line of propriety.But to ban Miss Davis from singing, even in church?No one should have that right.Someone needed to rescue Miss Davis from her silent dungeon and return her to the world where music sang in partnership with her every heartbeat.He didn’t want to put her at odds with her father, but something had to be done.Maybe if he better understood what led Mr.Davis to this point, Ezekiel could win the man’s favor and help him to see reason.
“He married an opera singer.What happened to make him hate music so?”
She was quiet, the weight of her answer forming rare creases in her brow.Eventually, words came, quiet and hesitant.“I don’t think he hates music so much as he fears what it will do to our family.When Mum was a performer, she made some colleagues jealous ...and they wanted to put her in her place ...even if it meant harming her family.”
Her gaze wandered away, and Miss Pelton’s words of warning came back to him.“Be gentle with her ...She had a harrowing childhood.”
If she’d come to harm at the hands of jealous colleagues, it would explain a great deal.“You needn’t tell me anything more if you don’t wish to.”
He hoped she would, but she merely gave him a soft “thank you.”Assuming she was the daughter of Constanza Brisbane, then perhaps he could ask Graham what he knew of the circumstances surrounding the family’s disappearance.There had been plenty of speculation, but no reason was ever publicized as to why she hadn’t returned to the stage that night.
“I know you said it unlikely your father would allow it, but I was hoping you might be interested in being my muse.”
“Your muse?”
“Yes.I’m friends with the librettist Graham Linville, and he’s commissioned me to compose the score for his newest operetta.”
She twisted toward him until her knee touched his, and Tristan yowled at the sudden shift.“You’re a stage manageranda composer of operas?”
“I compose more than operas, but yes.However, composing has been significantly more difficult since—” He stopped short of saying since he found Ma.The only person who knew, aside from Ma’s doctors, was Graham.
“Since your mum entered Longview for her melancholia?”
If he wanted her to trust him with her story, he needed to trust her with his.“Ma isn’t at Longview just for her melancholia.She purposely ingested rat poison.”
Miss Davis stifled a gasp.“Oh, Mr.Beaumont!I’m so sorry.”
He might as well get the whole story out, even if he couldn’t look her in the eye while doing so.“She’s suffered from bouts of melancholia my whole life.When she was happy, she filled our house with music.When she wasn’t, it was a struggle for her to get out of bed.I can remember many times sitting at the foot of it and doing everything I could to make her smile.Play my violin or clarinet.Sing songs that I made up as I went.I even performed some of the most awful skits you’re glad to never have heard.Pa and I did everything we could to make life easier for her so she could enjoy it with us.It got harder once Pa got sick.She started having more bad days than good.After he died?The good days felt like lost memories.I could neverdo enough.She sank lower and lower.The only reprieve for us both came through my music.
“Ma enjoyed listening to my compositions, and when I became stuck, she’d offer suggestions, encouragement, or a good thwack over the head.Especially if I was overly dramatizing my certainty that a piece was utter drivel.”The memory of the days when she engaged in life, engaged withhim, gouged the always-tender wound.He missed her.Music had been the one area that, no matter how bad she felt, could draw her out.But eventually even that hadn’t been enough.
“I was working on the piece from Graham’s libretto where the insurrectionists clash with the guardsmen, but I was stumped on how to best express the last few lines.Ma slept most afternoons, but she never minded if I woke her.”
The moment played through his mind as clearly as he’d lived it the first time.He’d risen from the piano, leaving the pages of his messy notations standing in the music rack.Variations of the tune had played through his head as he jogged upstairs, and he’d even knocked on her door with a possible rhythm.When she didn’t answer, he entered her room—and his music world crashed into silence.
“I found her on the floor, a glass of milky water tipped over, and the tin of rat poison on her nightstand.Thank God she’d not drunk enough to kill herself, but she did suffer complications that kept her in the hospital before being transferred to Longview.I keep wondering if I hadn’t been so focused on my work with the operetta and the opera house, would I have realized what she’d planned and been able to stop her?Could I have saved her from all this if I’d just been a better son?”
Miss Davis set Tristan between her feet and took Ezekiel’s hands.“Look at me, please.”
Her initiation of touch surprised him, and he obeyed without thought.
Wet compassion displayed unabashedly on her cheeks.“It wasn’t your fault.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but she silenced him with a look.
“You couldn’t have known her plan, and I doubt very much you could have prevented it.If there is one thing I’ve learned through Mum’s illness, it’s that her choices are hers alone.We can do everything in the world to protect our loved ones—put rules in place, hide them from the dangers posed, shield them from pain—but we were never meant to bear the burden of saving them from themselves.We cannot even save ourselves.”
