She stroked the cat between the ears, and Spencer cocked his head to one side, his purr rumbling.
‘I thought we should come to an understanding of how our courtship ends.In case someone asks questions.’
‘You had better come inside,’ she said, and rose to her feet.The door opened as she approached it, held wide by Daniel.From what Cassius had observed over the years, Odette kept a light staff.While maids and other servants changed between eachmusicale, Nora and Daniel remained familiar fixtures.Both had been with Odette almost from the beginning.Nora had been a costumer once, no longer able to work when a terrible burn from an iron disfigured her hand, and Daniel… only Odette knew where she had found him.Something in his stance echoed the military, but Daniel’s attention to his dress and the way he tugged at his cufflinks resembled the aristocracy, whose mannerisms Cassius knew only too well.In the past, Cassius had scrutinised their interactions for any hint of romance, but he’d never landed on anything certain.Whatever the precise circumstances of his employment were, Daniel protected Odette like a zealot.
‘Have you had supper?’she asked.
‘A little.’Cassius removed his hat and gloves.‘But I wouldn’t refuse the offer of more.’
Odette whispered something to Daniel, and once Cassius had stepped inside, the man closed the door and left the room.Odette strode down the hallway, and Cassius followed along the familiar path into the dome room, where she held her famedmusicales.Invariably, she would demand he play the piano during these soirées so she could sing.Clasping his hands behind his back, he paced the room while she divested herself of her coat and gloves and handed them to Nora, who dutifully appeared as if she existed solely for just that purpose.He wandered from sculpture to sculpture, enjoying them without the throng of guests and friends who normally crowded her parties.He craned his neck to study the ceiling, eyes tracing along the mosaic and plasterwork, skirting over the elegant crenelations to the dome, and finally settling on the window to the sky.
Odette tapped his side.She held out a flute of champagne.He took it.
‘Supper,’ she announced.
Cassius huffed a small laugh into his glass, then took a sip.‘I don’t think I’ve been in here without a crowd before.I didn’t realise how beautiful it is, but also, so…big.What made you buy this place, instead of somewhere smaller?’
She pressed her flute to her cheek, toying with her response.He’d meant it as a provocation—to see if she made a claim either way as to how she’d come to own her villa, whether she maintained the myth or confessed to a different story.Her expression cracked into a smile, and she swayed, the perfect coquette.‘I told you.Spencer invited me to stay.’
‘Does Spencer pay the mortgage?’
The smile erupted into ready laughter.Why had he not taken every chance to make her laugh like that?‘Lazy, philandering rake that he is.I would be in debtors’ prison if I relied on him.’
‘Why?’he pushed, desperate to know.‘Why all this, when a simple townhouse would do?’
‘Why not?’she flung back, then took another sip from her glass.‘Tell me, Cassius.Why not?Because I should be practical?Reserved?Modest?All the things a woman should be?I bought this house because Ilikedit, and because it is like the opera.Extravagant.Opulent.Perfectly crafted.Built for no other purpose than to be beautiful.And in it, I enjoy beautiful things.My sculptures, my paintings, and…’ she turned and held out her glass, almost in a toast to the piano, ‘the music.The acoustics in here are exceptional, are they not?’
‘They are.’He could not deny it.They were the best of any of the grand houses he had played in, throughout his entire life.
‘Isn’t that enough of a reason?That I would like to enjoy something beautiful?’She crossed to the piano, flipped the fallboard open, and tapped a scale along the keys.‘You should enjoy them before you leave.’
‘I told you, I am no longer a pianist.I am a conductor.’
‘Other conductors play.Joseph Joachim never stopped playing the violin.Some stay musicians.Isn’t that where the first conductors came from?The musicians who could keep a beat and terrify the rest of the orchestra into following their lead?’
‘I am not terrifying!’
‘No, terrifying is not a strong enough word for you.I don’t think English has a word for you.Maybeformidolosus, like they say in Latin, is better suited to you.’
Cassius stroked the curved lid.‘You have plenty of men to play her.’
‘They hurt my ears.No one makes her sing like you can.Come.Open her up.Play her, one last time.Not like there is an audience or an orchestra or princes or a patron.Like it is just you and me.Like before.’
He met her eyes, and the word sat heavy in the empty space between them.Before.Before princes and dukes and payments and accolades, before matrons and madams and countesses and conniving, before they had become playthings in a world of power they could visit but were never permitted to stay in.
‘Like when we were hungry musicians,’ she said, as if their thoughts were connected and she remembered those days with the same burning force as him.‘Like when we were sitting in the basement, drinking vodka and playing.’
The wood ran warm and smooth beneath his palm as he stroked the piano’s curves.‘They did not have a lady like this in the basement ofthatplayhouse.’He set his champagne on the floor, then lifted the piano lid and propped it open.If she was going to sing, she might as well have full lungs.
Cassius sat.He clenched and unclenched his fingers, wriggling them loose and agile.What to play?Mozart, her favourite?Beethoven, who was his?Or one of the parts she’d not been offered, to annoy her?
But when he laid his fingers on the keys, they did not find the notes of Chopin or Rossini.Not even Offenbach, for which she’d received a mediocre review that had flung her into a dramatic fit at the time.Instead, his fingers sought out the notes of the song he’d played back then, in the basement.The song where he’d arranged the notes to skip over the broken strings and discovered the melody that exercised her entire range.Slowly at first, one note after the other, then faster, lither, Cassius flowed into its gentle undulations and cadence.The tune was scrappy at the start until it filled and found its pace, it was sweet and then dark with thumping chords and shifting pedals, it whispered, then gave a shout.He closed his eyes, and the music was in him, gliding from his heart and along his veins, into his fingers and back again.And although he felt her brush against his side as she sat beside him, it didn’t disturb him, didn’t matter, because nothing mattered.
Because it wasn’t her song.Nor was it his.It wastheirsong.It was a song for lost homes, homes they only knew from other people’s memories turned into stories, homes that didn’t exist, homes lost to time and ruled by another country’s boots.It was a song of forgotten hopes, one that wept for all the people they should have made memories with, who were now nothing more than lint and dust.
Odette hummed a few notes.Then the hum turned to words that she sang low and under her breath.
And though I willkraj
