“I am here on business,cara. I bring you gifts.” He reached into his coat and, with a smile that began slowly and grew wide, retrieved something that rustled promisingly.
He held it out to her.
She tried not to be too eager about snatching it. She realized at once the stack was a good deal thinner than she’d anticipated.
“Seven pounds! That’s... only a third of what you owe me! Did you think you’d blind me with a smile and I’d forget how to count?”
“Mariana, believe me when I say I wish I could pay you all now, but I have only been paid for part of what I am owed, and it is... it steals my sleep. I am truly sorry. I cannot yet pay you all of it.”
She believed him.
Mostly.
“And wewillmake it all—it will rain down like leaves in autumn, the money—ifyouwere singing. But La Fleurina... she is not you. While she once was the queen of all sopranos, she no longer has the range, and certainly not yours,mi amore. And my beautiful opera, it needs it. And she is”—he lowered his voice and whispered, as if confessing a shameful secret—“gettingold.”
“Well, so are all of us. So is the audience for opera, for the most part. Surely they can’t see a line or two in her face from where they sit.”
She could feel herself aging as she sat there, no closer to diva-hood than before, or to that one thousand pounds a season Elizabeth Billington once made. No closer to ever being employed again.
He put his fists up to his eyes and mimed looking through them. “With the... how you say...costosa...”
“Expensive glasses.”
“...sì, the expensive and beautiful opera glasses.”He mimed a rich audience inspecting the singers on the stage. “They can see if I miss a whisker beneath my chin.” He scraped his hand beneath his chin illustratively. “They will see her lines in her face, and the powder she covers over them with, as she sings of being an innocent virgin, and they will not be kind in the papers. And they will mock. She does not deserve it, but neither do we.”
“It’s a beautiful score, Giancarlo, but I’m hardly an improvement at the moment, am I? They will throw fruit and worse things and hiss at me. They might not go at all if I’m in it. They will not hear a word of your beautiful opera or all the controversy—‘trouble,’ that word means, that is—”
“I think they are all now deciding to, how do you say... pretending you never were?”
He said this appalling thing so blithely.
“Shunningme?” she said weakly.
Her heart flipped.
This boded ill for any more ticket sales for the Night of the Nightingale. Or any other work of hers, for that matter. It went a long way toward explaining the quiet, though.
“So I have heard. They do not want to kill you or maim you, just ignore you!” he said brightly. “But soon they will forget it happened, and then I can hire you once more. You are my muse, my angel.”
“Forget it happened? Are younewto London, Giancarlo?” She was a little frantic.
“Someone will shoot someone else soon enough, and they will forget,” he said confidently. “For now, Mr. Tanniger will not allow me to hire you. Heagrees that you are best for the role, but he thinks it will be very bad for business.”
Mr. Tanniger, a wealthy businessman, was financing the production.
She was speechless.
“Do not look so sad, Mariana. You have still your glorious talent, and I... have another gift!” he said wheedlingly.
From his pocket he retrieved what appeared to be a very plump letter.
“It was sent to you at the theater, and I retrieved it. It’s from Signor Roselli in Paris.”
Signor Roselli was the director of a smaller opera company there—she’d met him. A kind and respected man. Her heart picked up a beat. Paris!
“Thank you, Giancarlo.”
“Prego.Oh, Mariana,” he sighed. “I have missed you. You turn winter into spring. It is always sodullnow. No one is like you.”
