‘Phineas had his suspicions.He’s my son-in-law.’Lawrence nodded back at the townhouses.‘Nothing gets by him.He possibly spotted it before she knew herself.We haven’t known what to do.Whether we should ask or leave her be.She’s headstrong, like my daughters.And my wife.And Iris, come to think of it.’He looked back over his shoulder, gazing at the street as if, for the first time, he was seeing a common thread.‘He hasn’t told anyone outside of the family.Seems a hard blow for someone like her, to lose so much at once.We just want her to know… I don’t know.That we are here, perhaps?That we care?My maintenance man, Harry, he lost his hearing from working in a factory, then promptly lost his position.Barely spoke for three years after.And Odette loves…’ He waved his cane in a vague circle at the street, the park, the world beyond.
‘Everything,’ Cassius finished.‘She loves everything.She likes living here, doesn’t she?’
‘We all do,’ Lawrence said.‘For all its quirks, it’s quite the place to call home.’
Home.
The word caught him like a fist to the chin.Cassius peered up the stairs, past the opulence, traced the white gable of the villa against the inky blue of the evening sky, and tried to take in the magnificence of the house she had bought because her friend lived next door and a cat had invited her to stay.Not just her house.Herhome.
He’d been adrift for all his life.He’d slept in houses, so many houses, even manors and castles while he played to ever-changing crowds of nobles—bored, enthused, intrigued, complacent, eyeing other women, eyeing other men.So many houses.
But a home?
What was home to him?A broken memory of music and hard words, a place that had faded to a memory long before Agnieszka had died.And Odette’s was not much more than his.Yet, she had made a new one.
And all he had wanted to do was take her from it.
‘I am about to leave London,’ Cassius said.‘I have a position conducting in Vienna.Will you and your wife and the others look out for her?I don’t know if she’ll keep singing after this show.Can you make sure she doesn’t cut herself off from the world?’
‘Aren’t you and her courting?And you’re leaving?What’s wrong with you?’
‘She deserves better than me,’ Cassius confessed.‘She deserves everything.I’ll get her through opening night.But after that, she’ll need her friends.Can you…’
‘Of course,’ Lawrence said.‘We always do.’
Cassius threw one last look up at the house.No, not house.Her home.
He had no right to try and take it from her.To keep her for himself.
The best thing he could do for her was to walk away.
Chapter 21
Anunwelcomeslabofsunlight slapped Odette.She squeezed her eyes closed as she flung an arm across the empty side of the mattress.Her fingertips found cotton, and she pinched a soft edge, then dragged a pillow over her face.Cassius had gone.The doctors could not fix her.She had no reason to leave her bed.
‘Nora, I told you last night.I do not need to be woken today.I am not going to the theatre.I will stay home.’
Water splashed into the ewer.Odette groaned.The woman was like an automaton.Once set on a course, she was almost impossible to adjust.
Odette raised the pillow from her face so that her mouth was free but her eyes still very much covered.‘Take the morning off.Go to the market.Or the park.Do whatever you like.’
Dear Lord, that squeak—that was her wardrobe opening.Odette threw the pillow aside as she sat up, fuming, blood pounding through her temples.‘For heaven’s sake, will you leave me be!’
Wilhemenia Hempel looked at her from where she stood before Odette’s wardrobe and frowned.
‘I hope that’s not how you speak to your staff all the time,’ she said, her voice thick with disapproval.
‘Only when they don’t answer me.On the third ask.Which Nora never does.’Odette sank back against the pillows.‘Why are you in my rooms?’
‘Daniel said you were still abed.It is past eleven,’ she chided, her tone laced with parental firmness.As if the hour of the day explained why she was in Odette’s bedchamber.
‘Is this how you wake your children?By badgering them?’
‘Not the little ones.They are up at dawn.The older ones would sleep past supper if I let them.There is no middle ground at Number 3.’The bed sank as Wilhemenia sat on the edge.‘I did not come here to badger you.I came to ask for your help.I am worried about Iris.Will you come with me to see her?’
‘It’s not proper to visit a house in mourning,’ Odette scraped out.
Wilhelmina pulled back the sheet with a sharp tug.‘And since when did we become adherents to propriety in this street?’
