But shewasa swan. Didn’t Edward ever tell her that? She was aphoenix.
Tessa returned her eyes to her libretto. “Have you ever heard of a Teltown Marriage?”
“No.”
“For centuries, they were contracted at the ring-fort on the River Blackwater in Ireland. Some say Teltown Marriagesstillhappen there. After a year and a day, if the new couple were unhappy, they would return to the ring-fort. They would stand with their backs to each other and simply walk away.”
Such was the commitment of pagans. “You have a daughter now,” Joseph reminded her.
“Ihave a daughter, yes. Edward treats Clare like some kind of changeling.”
Joseph’s breath caught. Did Tessa’s husband suspect she loved someone else? Perhaps the man was not his wife’s intellectual equal, but neither was he an idiot. Did Edward know it was Joseph? Did Edward think Clare was?—
Tessa’s voice cut into Joseph’s thoughts: “At least my father-in-law is fond of her. He has deigned to accept a female as Edward’s heir. So my husband has what he wants after all: his family’s plantation.”
Was that why Edward kept silent?
Joseph was spared any further speculation, because the conductor was taking his place. Applause and then a hush rippled through the audience, though someone below them was still cracking nuts. The curtain rose on a woodland glade, and the Prelude began. Joseph closed his eyes and tried to enjoy the music. It began in a soft, ominous larghetto. Muffled timpani and horns underscored the lament of oboes and clarinets. He settled backagainst the sofa. Mindful of the welts on his thighs, his left hand rested on the arm, his right on the seat beside him.
Then Joseph felt a tickle, a brush. His eyelids flew open. Tessa was slipping her slender fingers between those of his own gloved hand. He dared not look down, or he would only drawmoreattention. “What are you doing?” he hissed.
“Shh!” Tessa chastised, though the sound lilted; it was half laughter. Joseph did not need to glance at her to know Tessa was grinning.
His hand twitched. Even through the kid of their gloves, the warmth of her shot straight to his galloping heart. He knew he should pull away, but he couldn’t. Instead, he started—she did too—at a sudden, deafening dissonance of cymbals and strings in the Prelude, like a thunderbolt of doom.
“Look at the people across from us,” Tessa soothed. “I can’t see any lower than their chests.”
Joseph’s eyes leapt to the boxes across the stage. She was right. Surely the reverse was true, and no one could see what was happening on the seat of this sofa. Still he wished they were watching a magic lantern show instead of an opera. The chandelier blazing like broad daylight was entirely inappropriate for misty Scotland. Even if it did allow Tessa to read her libretto.
The huntsmen’s chorus was lost on him. The tenors and basses might as well have been singing Chinese. Eight years Joseph had waited to attend another opera, and Donizetti’s genius washed in one ear and straight out the other. Every one of Joseph’s senses was keyed only to Tessa. He felt only her hand in his. He heard only her breaths. He smelled only her perfume—so heady he could almost taste it. He saw not the burly men of the chorus but only the memory of her beauty.
The baritone entered. Joseph willed himself to concentrate. Enrico Ashton, the heroine’s ruthless brother, sang of his rage against Lucia for daring to love the wrong man. The Ashtons were supposed to loathe the Ravenswoods!
Italian was easier to understand spoken thanbel canto. Joseph caught most of it, but he allowed himself glimpses of Tessa’slibretto, which had the Italian and English side by side. She moved the pamphlet to the edge of her skirt, turning each page faithfully with the hand that did not anchor his.
Enrico vowed vengeance against the lovers. Only Italians could make annihilation sound beautiful. In English, it was: “with your blood I will quench the impious flame which consumes you!”
Enrico and his men stalked off. The glissade of a harp announced that the heroine was coming. And Tessa withdrew her hand. The muscles of Joseph’s arm tensed to recapture her. He managed, barely, to restrain himself. He should be thankful that she had tired of her wickedness.
Below them, the soprano had a pretty face and a lovely voice; but she could not hold a candle to Tessa.
Then, Joseph felt a flicker at his wrist, followed by a tug at the fingertips of his glove. Tessa had unbuttoned it. She was pulling it off! As soon as his hand was bare, she slid her own naked flesh against his. Joseph nearly fainted. He’d tied his choker far too tightly.
It was her left hand, but she was not wearing her wedding ring. Tessa’s daring did not stop there. She kept their fingers locked; but as the heroine sang of her ecstasy, Tessa canted her hand from his just enough to stroke his palm with her thumb. She chose the lines “He brings light to my days, and solace to my suffering…” As if she were underlining the words on his flesh.
Joseph remembered the claim of his Roman confessor, that forbidden fruit was more delicious in the mind than in the mouth. But if Tessa could dothisto him by touching only his hand…
“It seems that when I am near him, Heaven opens for me…” Tessa told him with Lucia’s voice.
If they went on like this, Heaven wouldcloseto them.
The tenor, Edgardo Ravenswood, appeared and told his beloved that he must go into exile. Lucia implored Edgardo to forget his feud against her brother, while he argued in glorious counterpoint.
“Renounce all other passions!” she pleaded as only a soprano could. Tessa traced the words into Joseph’s flesh: “The holiest of allvows is love!” Her voice became lower, impossible to deny, like the beating of a steady heart: “Yield to me! Yield to love!”
At last Edgardo’s voice harmonized with Lucia’s. The couple exchanged secret vows, in spite of all the reasons why their love was doomed. “God hears us,”Edgardo declared. “A loving heart is both church and altar.”
The couple promised: “Death alone shall end our love.” They poured out the agony of their parting in an exquisite duet, each syllable stretching out to bridge the growing distance between them. Donizetti had surpassed himself. Joseph felt their heartbreak as if it were his own.
