Page 99 of Regency in Color

Frank rolled his eyes. They’d both just finished telling him about how their children were all but grown, so they could surely handle a night without their fathers. Unless a great deal had changed, the both of them likely still spent most nights in the gaming hells anyway. “Where’s Mother?” Frank asked, looking around. If the night was going to be awful, he might as well get it over with now.

“With Albert,” Fritz supplied, referring to their third brother. “She’s dining at his house this evening to give us the chance to set up. Felix should be along anytime.”

Frank nodded. The party was well underway already. Dozens of guests in opulent clothing flocked between the rooms. In her new orange and white dress, Lulu was lost among them. “I’d better find my daughter,” Frank excused himself.

Walking through the house again was a peculiar experience. Everything looked the same but felt completely different. He no longer recognized anyone. Even his brothers felt like strangers to him.

That was down to them, really. When he’d at last returned from his Grand Tour—which had, admittedly, gone about nine years longer than most—they’d expected him to set his music aside to fulfill his “duty to the family.” As the youngest son in a family of six, there was very little “duty” left to be fulfilled. All the others had married and promptly had children, taking their places in society exactly as their mother had instructed them to. Frank too had a child, but not in the right way; his mother expected him to set Lulu aside.

When he’d refused to send her away, his mother had stopped speaking to him. When he used his savings to purchase a disused theater in the East End, she’d started telling people he was dead.

That was when Frank started dressing up as a corpse. Over time, the role had stuck.

I shouldn’t be here. This was a mistake.

Then, quite suddenly, he heard it.

It was the opening notes to his favorite aria from Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice. The voice was so clear, it sent a cascade of chills through his body. A string quartet joined the voice, and the guests slowly started to make their way into the music room. The voice stopped him in his tracks, bringing tears to his eyes with its beauty. He stopped in the doorway and just listened.

Every note, every trill was perfection. It almost sounded like—

Oh no.

Afraid to look, he peered around the door. Sure enough, Andie stood at the far end of the room, but this was not Andie as he’d ever seen her before. In a gown of sparkling silver and white, she looked like his every fantasy of a woman come to life. Unlike like borrowed clothes she wore to rehearsals, this dress actually fit her properly, and it skimmed her every curve in a way that made his mouth water. There were three camellias in her artfully arranged hair, and three strings of pearls around her long, graceful neck.

She sang with her eyes closed, almost smiling. She was doing it from memory and loving every second of it.

Frank closed his eyes, letting the music pull him out of himself. For a minute, they were back at the theater, and she was singing just for him. They were at the Theatre-Royal as she opened to a packed house; they were in Paris, Brussels, and Vienna. She could sing anywhere she wanted to, and he would follow her there.

Except they weren’t in some distant opera house or empty Elizabethan theater; they were in his brother’s house, Frank’s childhood home, and he was feeling more out of place by the minute.

Turning to leave, he stopped a passing gentleman. “Say, who is that singing?”

“What, you don’t know?” The man snorted a laugh. “That’s Andromeda Archambault.”

Andie Archer.

Frank could have kicked himself.

Andie wasn’t only a lady; she was part of one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the city. Her father Boniface was a legend, a French marquis and war hero who’d fought alongside the Chevalier de Saint-Georges and General Dumas. When Napoleon had attempted to bring back slavery in 1802, he’d reportedly camped out on the beach of St Croix with a cannon for two years until he was certain the threat to his island had passed. One of his sons was an abolitionist, and another captured slavers in the West Africa Squadron. The family would have been more controversial if people didn’t like them so very much.

Frank’s heart dropped. Disgraced as he was, he’d known he didn’t have much of a chance of anything serious with her being lady, but Andie was not just any lady. As far as society was concerned, she was very nearly royalty.

Devastated, Frank left the room and went in search of his late father’s liquor.

* * *

Andie finishedthe song with her eyes closed, wanting to prolong every perfect moment.

When the audience had responded so positively and settled down to listen, she’d relaxed, singing for the joy of it. The air was charged with a familiar energy that reassured her and made her tingle from the inside out. Closing her eyes, she could almost feel Frank there, watching her with wonder as he often did from behind his piano. She sang it for him, counting the minutes until she could return to The Crow’s Nest.

When it came, the applause was louder than she expected. Andie curtsied and went in search of water. Her mother stopped her briefly on the way. “There’s a director from the Theatre-Royal here tonight.” She nodded toward an elderly man in a powdered wig. “You impressed him.”

Andie shared an excited smile with her mother. She’d forgotten all about the Theatre-Royal. As much as she would still like to sing there, she had unfinished business in Shoreditch first.

As she glanced up toward the drinks table, Andie spotted someone out of place.

Lulu was leaning against the wall with a glass of lemonade. She was so still, Andie thought she imagined her.