Composed (The Art of Love #7)

Chapter 1

ONE

“Janice! Have you seen my cummerbund!”

The shout from Robert Hawthorne, patriarch of the Hawthorne family, rang out in the hallway of the family wing of Hawthorne House so loudly that Nally burst into laughter in the middle of shaving.

And promptly cut the side of his jaw.

“Dammit,” he hissed, though he continued to laugh as he dropped his razor and grabbed at the loo roll beside his small vanity. He loved his parents, really, he did, but they did have a way of causing small disasters everywhere they went.

Not that Nally cutting himself shaving was much of a disaster.

Or at least it wouldn’t have been on any other evening.

But the big gala premiere of To Serve Him was in London that night, and since all of the exterior shots for the potential blockbuster film had been shot at Hawthorne House the year before, the entire family was getting all dolled up to attend.

“Has anyone checked the time?” Nally’s brother, Ryan, who had recently returned to the bosom of the large and eccentric Hawthorne family after a long stint in Milan, building his fashion career, bellowed down the hall a moment later.

Nally dabbed at the spot of blood on his jaw, pressed a wad of toilet paper over it to stop the bleeding, and picked up his razor to finish shaving.

He didn’t really need to shave all that often, if he was honest with himself.

It annoyed him that at twenty-three, he still looked like he could plausibly be in sixth form.

He was the baby of the extensive Hawthorne family, but he didn’t need to look like it that literally.

“We’re fine for time,” Nally’s mum’s voice rang down the hall. “I have your cummerbund here, Robert. Nally, darling, do you need help with your cufflinks?” his mum asked at last as she stopped by the open door to Nally’s small flat.

“No, Mum,” Nally called back through his half-open bathroom door. “I’ve got it.”

A second later, his mum pulled the door open all the way and stepped straight into the room, regardless of the fact that Nally was dressed only in his pants.

“Mum!” Nally gasped, nearly cutting himself a second time.

“Oh dear, sweetheart,” his mum said, completely unfazed by her youngest’s state of undress. “You’ve cut yourself.”

“Yes, Mum, I noticed,” Nally said with a slightly hysterical giggle. He wanted to snap at his mum and tell her to go away, that he wasn’t a child anymore, but it was physically impossible to be cross with Janice Hawthorne, no matter what the situation.

“Let me see,” Janice said, looping the cummerbund over her shoulder like a suffragette’s sash and grasping Nally’s chin with one, graceful hand.

She turned his face to her, scrutinized the small, bleeding spot, then burst into a smile and planted a quick kiss on his other cheek, despite the remnants of shaving cream.

“We’re so proud of you, darling,” she said.

Nally melted. His mum could do that to anyone, but it felt especially wonderful to hear those words from her. “I didn’t really do anything,” he said, turning on the sink and rushing to rinse his face once his mum let it go.

“Didn’t do anything?” Janice asked incredulously. “You composed the entire soundtrack for To Serve Him all by yourself.”

Nally blushed as he patted his face dry.

She was right. It had been a whim on the part of Heath Manfred, one of the executives of Silver Productions, the company that had produced the film, and Miles Ferrier, the director, to hire Nally to take over composing duties when the big-name composer they’d originally signed had a scheduling conflict.

Nally had never composed on commission in his life, let alone for a film.

He’d spent months in a constant state of being freaked out as he’d attended story meetings, discussed mood and nuance with Miles, and written more music in a shorter period of time than he ever had in his life.

Then he’d recorded the score with a razor-thin deadline.

It was the first time he’d heard a major symphony orchestra play his work.

Now here they were, less than an hour away from piling into the family cars to drive into London so they could attend the premiere of a film that would have Nally’s fingerprints all over it.

He’d already seen the industry screening a few weeks before, and it had thrilled him, but tonight would be the first time he’d be part of a real audience seeing the final product.

“Nobody pays any attention to a film’s soundtrack at the premiere,” Nally said, searching for a better solution for his cut. “People go to premieres to ogle the stars.”

“Why not let them ogle you?” Janice said, sweeping a cheeky glance down his unclothed body.

“Mum!” Nally laughed. “Gross!”

“You are objectively handsome, my boy,” Janice said, opening the medicine cabinet behind Nally’s mirror and taking out a small box of bandages. “All of my children are dazzlingly beautiful. Of course you are. You have my DNA.”

“Mum.” Nally shook his head.

“Speaking of which, where’s that young man that’s been courting you lately?” Janice went on.

“Sam? He should be here by now to drive into London with us.”

The fact that Nally’s date for the evening wasn’t there yet was just another concern to add to his list. Along with the fact that the bloom had kind of gone off the rose of his budding relationship with Sam Walters. Tonight was shaping up to be a test of whether they should keep trying or give up.

“If Sam doesn’t appreciate you then you shouldn’t bother with him,” Janice said as she took one of the small, spot plasters from the box, opened it, and applied it to his jaw, like he was still ten and had scraped his knees again.

The part of Nally that found the whole thing indignant took a backseat to the part of him that loved his mum, his whole family, really, and appreciated how much she cared for him.

“There you are,” Janice said when she was done, kissing the plaster for good measure. “Now run along and put on that suit Ryan picked out for you. I told the others that we have plenty of time, but that was a lie. I heard the traffic report on the radio. We should have left five minutes ago.”

“Mum!” Nally gasped, then dashed past her and around the corner to his bedroom.

“Ten minutes!” his mum shouted as she headed back out into the hall. “I want you all down by the cars in ten minutes or we’ll be late!”

Various shouts and curses echoed up and down the hallway.

Hawthorne House had been a grand, eighteenth and nineteenth century manor house that had once housed something like fifty massive bedrooms. In the twentieth century, those rooms had been converted into dormitory rooms for the school that had been formed when the family could no longer afford to live in pre-modern splendor.

And in the last twenty years, after the school had gone defunct, the rooms had been cobbled together to form completely independent flats.

The entire family and a few cousins lived in those flats now, but ironically, that gave the entire wing of the house a dormitory feeling all over again.

Nally rushed to dress and stomp his way into shoes that were so new he was certain he’d have blisters by the end of the night.

Knowing that, he popped back into the bathroom to stuff more plasters into his pocket before hastily brushing his unruly hair.

Once that was done, he zipped back into his bedroom to grab his jacket and a tie, then ran through his flat’s main room, picking up his phone and wallet along the way, then joined the frantic stampede of his older brothers and his sister, Rebecca, as they made their way downstairs.

“Don’t you look nice tonight, mister star of the show?” Rebecca teased him as they thundered down the stairs to the ground floor, meeting even more family along the way.

“I’m hardly the star of the show,” Nally laughed. “That would be Sawyer Kingston and Matt Bloom.”

“Psht,” Rhys, Nally’s eldest brother, scoffed as he followed them down the stairs, hand-in-hand with his partner, Early, who was dressed in one of the gorgeous, vintage gowns from Hawthorne House’s clothes room.

“The actors would be nothing if not for the beauty of the soundtrack playing behind them.”

Nally laughed as they all turned the corner and headed out to the family car park. “Hardly,” he said. “People only notice the soundtrack if it’s bad.”

“That’s not true at all,” Early said. “Would Schindler’s List be the same without its soundtrack? Or Indiana Jones? Or Star Wars?”

“Those are all John Williams,” Nally said as they stepped out into the chilly March afternoon. “I’m nowhere near as accomplished as John Williams.”

“Not yet,” Rhys said, thumping his back as they paused by the cars.

Nally laughed, but a shiver of excitement and promise whipped through him at those simple words.

It had never dawned on him to seek out a career as a film composer.

He loved composing, but he’d mostly focused on orchestral and chamber music.

He thought maybe he’d submit his works to contests, attempt to catch the eye of a music director for one of the world’s leading orchestras, and teach composition classes at the Hawthorne Community Arts Center until his big break came along.

He hadn’t expected that break to come so soon.

Truth be told, he loved the idea of writing more commercial music.

He loved music of all kinds, but the world was changing and the way people consumed music with it.

Yes, he had a few independently recorded pieces up on various streaming platforms, but they didn’t bring in much in the way of income.

He didn’t really need to make a lot. The family lived for free at Hawthorne House.

But it would have been nice to contribute to the family’s finances.

And to reach a larger audience, of course.

Who didn’t want to hear their music randomly playing on some stranger’s radio someday?