Her pencil couldn’t jot fast enough when she rushed to pin the song to the staves of her sheet music. She worked until night had fallen and her eyes ached with straining against the candlelight.
She’d written down as much as she could. She could only hope the rest of it would still be there waiting in the morning.
The bedroom Sophie now shared with her younger sister was always in chaos. Julia was intensely disciplined as a musician and utterly careless in everything else, so despite her stated intentions and frequent flurries of tidying, her belongings were usually strewn over floor and furniture as though a giant hand had picked up the room like a toy and shaken it.
They’d had their own rooms in London, but after the move the children had been compelled to share. Robbie and Jasper and Freddie had the larger room, and Sophie and her sister had resigned themselves to the smaller. It felt as though it shrank an extra inch with every day that passed, leaving less and less space for either sister to feel comfortable.
The younger Roseingrave daughter was cramming petticoats and stockings into the wardrobe even now. Sophie began helping her and folding things much more neatly. Julia fixed her with a stern look. “Why won’t you consider doing a concert, Soph?”
Sophie groaned. “Not you, too.”
“Out of all of us, you’re the best on the piano,” Julia was saying. “Father’s started building one again and of course he’ll want to build more—and Mother wants to have Father out of the shop so Robbie can take his place and learn more of the business—but we need a market for our pianos first—and the best way to create a market is to have someone brilliant—someone, for instance, like you—play our pianos in public. In some sort of performance. So”—Julia shrugged—“a concert.”
“Father is building a piano again?” Sophie had missed that somehow.
Julia bit her lip, looking chagrined. “I wasn’t supposed to let on,” she confessed. “It was going to be a surprise.”
The damage from Mr. Verrinder’s crimes was melting away from her father like frost beneath the springtime sun. “A new piano, then a concert, then I go off to court to astonish the royals.”
“Just like Mother did.”
“But I’m not Mother.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well... It’s a fairy tale, isn’t it? Going to court. Impressing a prince. How can that be someone’s life—my life?”
“It’s only a fairy tale if you tell it like one,” Julia said.
Sophie blinked. “Pardon?”
Julia shrugged. “You can make anything sound like a fairy tale if you want,” she said. “Once upon a time there was a poor instrument builder. He went to a concert with a friend one night—and a woman came out on stage. She wasn’t the prettiest woman there—”
“—but when she sang he fell in love at the first note,” Sophie finished. It was how her father had met her mother: he’d been telling the same story in the same way for over twenty years of Sophie’s life.
Julia nodded. “But I asked Mother once if that was how it really happened.”
Sophie’s eyes narrowed. “And?”
“And...” Julia clearly wanted to drag out the moment and her position of superiority, but didn’t have the patience. “Mother said she peeked out into the audience before she started—and there was Father, in the first row, straight as a tuning fork, eyes wide and eager. Starving for the performance. She liked the look of him, so when she went out on stage she aimed her first song directly at him.” Julia’s grin was mischievous and knowing. “She said there was never an easier conquest.”
Sophie chuckled: she could just picture it. Her father willing to be pleased, her mother seeing something she wanted and putting everything into it. “She got Father, and a family—us,” she said. “And now she wants to put me on stage, right where she started.”
“So?” Julia said again. “It’s not like you’ll be doing it alone.”
“I won’t?” A moment ago Sophie had dreaded the prospect of a concert; now the thought that other people would share the stage with her rankled. She pursed her lips and rolled the stockings in her hand extra tight out of injured pride, and irritation at her own inconsistency.
“Jasper and I have been working on our duet forages,” Julia said. “And we have that trio with Robbie, too. Freddie’s still a little young, probably—”
“You’re only one year older,” Sophie protested.
“Precisely,” twelve-year-old Julia went on, undaunted. “And Father mentioned that music society you’ve joined, so we can definitely find enough musicians for a whole program.” She put away the last pair of stockings and nodded in satisfaction—then ruined it by immediately stripping out of her dress and leaving it in a heap on the floor. “You’ll still be the finale,” she said, clambering into bed in her chemise. “Because you’re undoubtedly the most impressive. But you don’t have to fill the whole evening yourself.”
Sophie refused to pick the dress up for her. Absolutely refused. Definitely, positively—oh, why bother pretending? She shook Julia’s frock out and hung it up, then removed her own clothes and put them away as Julia wriggled against the wall to leave Sophie room on her preferred side of the bed. Sophie could only hope Julia took after her and their mother, rather than following in their father’s long and lanky footsteps. She missed being able to sprawl, particularly when she felt restless like this. “Carrisford is not London, but it’s not small, either. The Aeolian Club might have musicians much more talented than me—I haven’t heard them all play yet. I might not look so impressive, when it comes down to it.”
“I can’t wait until you go to court,” Julia sighed, and jabbed at Sophie with her heels. “Just think of all the room I’ll have when you’re gone.”
The news came across the sea, and spread swiftly on the tongues of the weavers and the lace makers and the merchants: Mr. Obeney’s utopia had failed. Apparently when they were assigning jobs to the assembled residents, in true egalitarian fashion, they had assumed the women would continue doing all the usual domestic work of keeping house, washing clothes, caring for children, mending, cooking, cleaning, and so on. On top of the duties women were assigned as full working members of the collective, of course. After all, they couldn’t ask the men to do such petty tasks, could they?
