‘Just one season.One month where we don’t have to dodge…’
‘I’m sure there’s an explanation—’
‘It’s all right there!’
‘Maybe it will blow over?’
Lawrence Hempel scuffed his feet against the doormat, then stepped inside, shaking his coat and his head.His daughter Rosanna and her husband Phineas followed.Rosanna was rocking their daughter Betty against her chest, but passed the child to Phineas to remove her coat.The baby promptly wailed and only stopped when Rosanna scooped it back into her arms.The child snuffled, then settled.
‘First these two’—Lawrence waved a newspaper from Iris to Hamish and back again—‘then Arley.Then you two.Businesses don’t have to work like this, putting out fires and avoiding scandals and debacles.They can just dobusiness.’
‘We did not cause a scandal,’ Phineas said, tight and indignant.‘I made sure of it.’
‘Johannes?’The light drained from Iris’s face as her fingers tightened around the folders.‘He hasn’t done something he shouldn’t have, has he?I told Elise it was a risk to let him go travelling with Florence.Were they spotted doing something… indecent?Something that would reflect badly on his work or the business or… or…’
‘Not Johannes,’ Rosanna said.‘Miss Delaney has made the papers.’
‘I am always in the papers,’ Odette snapped, even though dread curled in her stomach, so cold it robbed her of all breath.
‘Not like this.’Phineas tugged the newspaper from Lawrence’s grasp.It was already folded open to an article.
After so many years onstage, Odette’s fingers no longer trembled with fear.Her heart, however, struck up an uneven pace, thumping fast and hard against her ribs.Her eyes focused and unfocused on the bold print, skimming over the smaller serifs beneath.Then the words slipped from her fingers as Iris drew the paper away, and her small, pained gasp broke the silence.
Darling Iris, whom she’d known for so many years.
And now her eyes were glazed with worry as one more arrow pierced the very heart of her dream.The dream of running her own company, a public venture where the reputation of all its investors meant so much.
Hamish, Benton, Lawrence, Rosanna, and Phineas stared at Odette.Even baby Betty’s eyes were fixed on her, wide and unmoving.
‘They will not do this to me,’ Odette said, stiffening with resolve.‘I will fix this.I promise.’
Chapter 4
Wouldleavinghaveprovedharder if the old theatre hadn’t burnt down?If that ramshackle, patched-together, hastily extended relic that had morphed shapes for over a century still remained?If he were walking intothatbuilding one last time—the one teeming with echoes of applause, with songs humming through its walls and notes vibrating in the floors—would he hesitate to go?
Cassius shook his head.He’d probably be moving twice as fast to dodge the memories and loose floorboards.
Throughout the last performance, he hadn’t missed the old theatre, so there was a good chance he wouldn’t miss this one either once he was hundreds of miles away across the Channel.After all, the last theatre had played a far more important part in his life.There, Karl had given him his first real chance as a pianist, in the same opera that had catapulted Odette into fame.And after that performance, Karl had taken him aside and told him what others had never bothered to put into words or been brave enough to say.That, as a piano player, Cassius was technically exceptional but lacked the soul to become a star.
Which was, of course, what happened when the prodigy was forced to practise for seven hours a day, and when the family’s fortunes rested on his skill.When mistakes were punished with tirades, when any lack of discipline ended with a backhand.The prodigy lost the flow of the music, and all that remained were the sharp shapes of its chords.Cassiusthoughtevery note before he pressed the keys, instead of feeling his way like when he’d climbed onto the piano stool while he was still learning his letters.Rules and demands had extinguished all curious, childish love.
Or maybe his playing would have turned out all the same, regardless of the pressure.Cassius had always been partial to controlling his world.He liked to line up his few small possessions with the same distance between them, and while his father often scolded him on many fronts, he never needed to tell him to make his bed or fold his clothes before putting them in his travelling case.Perhaps the roots of his orderliness lay there—in a childhood spent drifting between noble manors and cheap inns.Both places offered an audience, and both provided food and a bed in return for his music, and sometimes a little coin.Once he grew tall and his father could no longer pass him off as a child maestro, the inns increasingly replaced the castles, and soon, he played less for lodgings and mostly for vodka.
Karl’s truth had come as a brutal relief.In one sentence, he released Cassius from the pressure of becoming a star of the stage, but with the next, he outlined a heretofore hidden talent, and an opportunity for them both.
Don’t fight it.Embrace it.
As you’ve mastered yourself, master others.Lead them.Conduct them.
It had suited Cassius to give up the keys.Conducting came with its own peculiar type of infamy, of fame wrapped up in anonymity.Most audiences didn’t pay any attention to the man who spent the performance with his back to them as he directed the musicians, but concert hall and opera house owners knew what a good conductor could do.While the audience remained mostly ignorant of his name, he became well known to the men who booked the shows and awarded contracts.They recognised him as the maestro capable of controlling all those messy musicians and folding them into one harmonious orchestra.His reputation had made it easy to settle into theatres for short stints or longer spells, depending on what suited, although signing a three-year contract with Karl had been lazy folly.But how was he to know Vienna, of all places, would come knocking?
He trotted down the stairs, moving deeper into the subterranean backstage world.Hopefully, Karl was already in his office and had signed the early termination to release him from the final year of their agreement.Over the next few weeks, Cassius could finish organising transport for his things and finally be on his way.
He tapped the plaster as he turned a corner and wandered past the dressing rooms, where Odette’s name still clung to her door, then past the green room, and by the stairs that led to the stage.These walls would soon soak up their own music and song.Their own fights and love, their own energy and anticipation.
Or maybe, in a month’s time, she’d burn down again.It happened.
Either way, he would be gone.Long, long gone.
