Chapter Twenty-One
V incent knocked on Ambrose’s door early the next day. Too early for polite visiting hours but also too early for the blackguard to be out and about. If he had to drag him out of bed himself, he would.
A housekeeper answered.
“Tell Castern that Lord Hewitt is here to speak with him.”
He heard the gasp through the open doorway and strode past the housekeeper.
Lydia was standing in her drawing room, looking as lovely as ever. And she was wearing only a jade-green silken housedress, belted at her slender waist with her golden braid over her shoulder.
“Mrs. Castern,” Vincent greeted her pale face. “Where is your husband?”
“You cannot simply burst in here,” she began. “It goes against all civility, and at this early hour. Why, it’s not yet ten.”
“Civility be damned. Neither you nor that plagiarist you married know anything about the word. Call for Ambrose, or I’ll go upstairs and wake him myself.”
She pursed her lips. Pretty pink lips that he had spent half a year kissing. Half a year trusting the lies that came from them.
“My husband had a concert last night, a very successful one. The Queen herself called for encores.”
“And I just bet he gave her one.”
“I did, indeed,” came a familiar voice.
Slowly, Vincent turned. There was no way he would ever see Ambrose Castern without first seeing his old and dear friend for the briefest of instants.
They’d met at Harrow and also attended Trinity College together. Their paths were similar since they were both pianists. Yet Ambrose had never been much of a composer. He ought to have had a successful career in an orchestra playing other people’s work. Instead, the scroof had decided to have a successful and lucrative career as a soloist playing Vincent’s work.
There were times when it still seemed like a bad dream. If only he would awaken to find his compositions still strewn about his conservatory and salon at Mirabel where Lydia had stolen them during her single visit. If only he had published them sooner under his own name, rather than continuing to polish them to perfection.
“Your encore was mine,” Vincent pointed out.
Ambrose’s eyebrows rose. “Now you are making a jest, and a poor one at that. Just because you believe some of my pieces have a passing resemblance to some of yours, you cannot go claiming every work as your own. I haven’t been near your home for years.”
“You didn’t need to.” Vincent would not go over the old accusations that had led nowhere. Ambrose had always refused to speak the truth even when the two of them were alone. Instead, he focused on the current egregious theft.
“You simply found my latest piece, mistakenly published, and are now passing it off as your own. I suppose you have spies out to all the music publishers and shops awaiting something anonymous you can sink your claws into.”
Ambrose laughed, and Lydia joined in. It was infuriating. The only saving grace was that she hadn’t ended up as Vincent’s wife. Whether she actually fell in love with Ambrose in the brief time the three of them were together at Mirabel or whether she saw in the ambitious pianist something she didn’t see in Vincent, he would never know. All he knew was that she left for London along with anything he had ever foolishly transcribed onto paper.
A month later, Ambrose had his London debut, playing to great acclaim. “A masterful composer and superb pianist!” screamed the headlines in capital print. Of course, Lydia was always there, basking in the adoration of her husband and of the audience to whom he never failed in introducing her. She loved the limelight as much as, if not more than, her husband.
“A friend of mine published one of my sonatas recently, and apparently, you are now playing it in concert and passing it off as your own.”
“Preposterous,” Ambrose said. “I wrote every note.” But Lydia didn’t look so convincing in the way her eyes widened.
“You had a piece published anonymously?” she asked. Then she shook her head, rolling her eyes as if it served him right to have it plagiarized.
Vincent liked to think she had some morals, somewhere deep down, a little shame for what she’d done, unlike his former friend, who would never admit to anything.
“If that is why you came, merely to hurl more wild accusations like you did three years ago, then you wasted a trip.” Ambrose relaxed onto the sofa, showing his lack of manners by sitting when his wife still stood.
“I let the other infractions go,” Vincent started.
“There were no other infractions,” Ambrose declared, “and there was nothing you could do if there had been.”
“Vincent,” Lydia said softly, snagging his attention. “Music was meant to be played and heard.”
Vincent laughed, not hiding the bitterness in his tone. “Is that how you live with yourself?”
Shaking his head, he crossed the room to the door. “Stop playing it, Ambrose. You have blundered this time. I can prove the piece is mine. I won’t even make you publicly renounce your authorship. Just stop playing it.”
Ambrose rolled his eyes and looked away. Vincent looked at Lydia. What could she do? He stormed out, hoping Ambrose took him seriously. If not, he was prepared to fight.
Brilliance was shocked when Belinda tapped on her door and told her who was downstairs in the drawing room.
“How do I look?” she asked her maid. “Never mind. That is of no matter.” She paused. “But how do I look? I wish I’d worn a brighter color today.”
“Peach suits you, my lady. You look beautiful.”
“Thank you. But I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not like you would ever say I looked dreadful. Would you?”
And then she dashed from the room, trying to slow her steps so she didn’t appear to be hurrying to see Vincent. But her heartbeat was not cooperating, beating more quickly the closer she came.
“Good day, Lord Hewitt. To what do I owe this unplanned visit?”
“Good day, Lady Brilliance. I am here to ask a favor.”
A favor! He had some nerve. She would give him that. He had all but thrown her out of his mother’s birthday party. Regardless, she wouldn’t stoop to uncivil behavior.
“I am happy to speak with you. Would you care to take tea with me?”
“No, thank you.”
She took her favorite seat at one end of the blue sofa. “Won’t you sit, please?”
He did, taking the wing chair opposite.
“I am surprised you are here.” Brilliance squirmed slightly, wishing they had tea service after all, so she had something to do with her hands apart from wringing them on her lap.
“Frankly, I am surprised to be here, but I think you are the only one who can help me. I know I have behaved badly toward you —”
She raised her eyebrows at the understatement.
He looked grim. “I apologize and take full responsibility for not being in better control of my temper.”
“Before you say any more, my lord, while we are both calm and have our wits about us, I must apologize once again for taking your music from your lap desk in the salon. I folded it and tucked it into a pocket tied to my petticoat. I must have known I was doing something naughty and unwise, or I would have asked you if I could send it to London.”
While she wished he had handled it differently, and not been so quick to become livid, Brilliance had thought a great deal about how she would feel if someone took something of hers. Even for a good purpose.
“Will you forgive me truly and put it behind us?” she asked, trying to still her hands in the fabric of her skirts.
After a brief pause, he said, “If you will accept my apology, then yes, my lady, I will. Besides, you could not have possibly understood how I felt because I never told you about what happened in the past.”
“I have time now,” she offered.
He nodded and tugged at his necktie. “Will you believe me, that is the question?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Then Brilliance recalled with reddening cheeks how he had already made some statements about his music that she had refused to believe.
He must have recalled those instances because he shrugged. “Because it sounds fantastical, even to my ears. How could I expect you to accept what I tell you on faith?”
Brilliance made a decision. “Because we are friends, I shall accept what you tell me.”
Vincent stared at her unwaveringly through his spectacles while a small muscle jumped on either side of his closed jaw. Then he nodded.
“I have been lied to by someone who professed to be my friend before. My closest friend, in fact, turned out to be my worst enemy.”
“Ambrose Castern?” she asked.
“How did you know?”
“When his name has come up, each time you’ve grown exceedingly cross.”
He nodded. “The short of it is that we’ve known each other for years. He had access to my home. And at the first opportunity, he arranged to steal every scrap of music that I’d committed to paper.”
Brilliance couldn’t help the gasp that escaped her. “How awful.”
“Since I had never played any of it publicly, he could claim it as his own.”
“Even ‘The Hummingbird’?”
“Yes,” he croaked and then cleared his throat. “That piece, my ‘Sonata in A’ made his reputation as a brilliant composer.”
“And it is yours,” she said softly.
“It is.”
“Yet you cannot prove any of the works he plays are yours.”
To her amazement, Vincent gave a half smile. “Because of you, I believe I can.”
“Me?” Brilliance managed finally to release her fingers and still her hands.
“The piece I played at my mother’s birthday, the same that you heard Castern play in concert — that’s the one you took from my salon and published.”
She gasped again. “Oh no!” Then she closed her eyes. “I feel sick to have betrayed you.”
He rose to his feet and came over to sit beside her on the sofa. In a quick movement, he stripped off his gloves and took one of her hands between his.
“We have moved beyond that, haven’t we?” he asked.
She nodded, trying to quell her tears of guilt.
“As it turns out, it is only because you saw the handwritten sheets in my home and then sent them to London that I can prove prior ownership. It would be better if you had declared me the composer when you gave it to Boosey & Co., but at least you gave him my name and address as the owner.”
“And I can vouch that I took the music from you. I didn’t even know what it sounded like.”
“Which brings me to this.” Vincent released her hand, which was a shame because she was enjoying his touch very much. He withdrew folded pages from his pocket. “I brought the music, which I call ‘Il Rinnovo’ and you called ‘The Starling.’”
“And which Mr. Castern called ‘An Enchanting Dream.’”
Ignoring that, he asked, “Do you have a piano?”
“Why, yes.” Jumping up, Brilliance said, “Follow me.” And as she took him through the house, she realized she ought to have had a chaperone instead of speaking alone with him, but it was too late for that. If one of her parents were home, it would be a different matter.
“In here, Lord Hewitt. It’s not really a conservatory, but my mother occasionally still tries her hand at the piano, so she keeps it. My sister, Purity, is quite good and used to play it often before she married and moved out.”
Looking at the instrument now, always dusted and polished by their household staff, Brilliance hoped he didn’t find it too inferior.
“It is unlikely to be in tune,” she added.
“That is no matter. You will recognize the piece, I think.”
He spread the first two pages out on the piano’s music cradle and without hesitation began to play.
She remained silent through the piece, realizing he hadn’t turned the pages, but finished the movement from memory as he had at his parents’ home.
“Yes, that is what Mr. Castern played,” she said, feeling morose at having had a part in the nefarious pianist getting his hands on Vincent’s work.
“I know. I went to his concert last night after I had already been to see him. I told him in no uncertain terms that he must stop playing this piece. It is too late for the rest of my work but —”
“Why do you say that? I think you should use this latest act of plagiarism to force him to admit to the rest of it.”
He shrugged. “I think people will always believe my work is his because they have heard him play it on the stage. That goes a long way to validating his ownership. It made you think so.”
Guilt pinched her again. “Then you must play it, too,” she declared.
He started to shake his head. Losing her temper, she stomped her foot. “I won’t let him get away with this. I shall demand he confess.”
To her surprise, Vincent smiled. “I only want him to cease playing this latest piece. ‘Il Rinnovo’ is important to me. That is why I came today. Although I demanded he remove it from his repertoire, he played it anyway. I am hopeful you will accompany me to consult with a solicitor. I believe you can swear to a statement about what you know, and then we’ll present it to Castern. If he knows what’s good for him, he will listen and do as I have asked before I take him to court.”
“It is infuriating,” Brilliance said. “But your music, ‘Il Rinnovo’ and ‘The Hummingbird,’ —”
“It is not ‘The Hummingbird,’” he protested.
“Very well, your ‘Sonata in the Hay.’”
“Sonata in A,” he corrected. “That means I wrote it in the key of A.”
She blinked and smiled sheepishly. “I thought it was a romantic piece about two lovers in the hay. I could tell you a story about my eldest sister —” Brilliance broke off, clamping her teeth on whatever she was saying, knowing her cheeks were turning bright red.
“What were we talking about?” She frowned. “Oh, yes. You cannot let him keep the rest. All the music Mr. Castern plays, all of it has a certain similar quality.”
“Because it all came from my brain,” he reminded her. “Similarly, you can tell a piece by Beethoven or Mozart or Haydn just as easily.”
Brilliance bit her lip, then released it with a squeaky sound. “You perhaps can tell them apart, and many other learned people, too, I am sure. But I cannot.” She wished it wasn’t another failing to add to her list, right after fishing. “And do you have more music?”
“Nothing transcribed. I am ashamed to say I destroyed the few pieces that I found still in my home. Burned them in the hearth.”
She shook her head at the horror.
“I know it sounds drastic,” he explained. “But I was crushed to learn all my compositions had walked out the door. At the time, it seemed the only way to protect those that remained. After all, the music is still in here.” He tapped his head.
She sighed. “Better it was out here,” she reminded him. “The point of music is not to drive you insane playing over and over inside your head. It is to delight the listener, whether moving us to smiles or to tears.”
“Mrs. Castern said something similar. To excuse her husband’s plagiarism and betrayal.”
Brilliance wanted to confront the woman on Vincent’s behalf. “That is no excuse for stealing.” She recalled the concert. “Mr. Castern paid tribute to her as he has done at each of his concert’s I have seen, which numbers three in the past two years. He always looks up at her in the box and mentions her name and claps along with the audience.”
“I guess he loves her very much,” Vincent said, rising to his feet. “I will make an appointment with a solicitor if you agree to come.”
“Tell me when and where, and I will meet you.”
“With a —”
“With a chaperone,” she promised. “I will behave properly.”
Being an earl’s daughter wouldn’t hurt either, Brilliance mused. And best of all, it seemed she had her friend again.
She only wished, when he had taken his leave, he’d given her some small indication that the events of the past hour would put them back upon the path they had been on before. One in which they gave each other their hearts and decided to live a life together.