Chapter 6
“Papa says this room echoes,” Tessa announced as she hopped toward the pianoforte bench, her boots clicking lightly across the polished floor. “So if I make a mistake, everyone in the entire house will hear it. That’d be quite an embarrassment.”
Madeline set her sheet music on the stand and hid a smile. “Then I suppose we must make sure your mistakes are deliberate and charming.”
Tessa gasped as though this was a revolutionary idea. “Mistakes can be charming?”
“If one plays them with confidence,” Madeline replied, lowering herself to sit beside the girl. The pianoforte gleamed beneath the morning light that poured through the tall windows, every key polished, every brass hinge shining. “Now place your hands here.”
Tessa obeyed at once, though her fingers hovered stiffly, as if she feared the instrument might bite.
Madeline softened her voice. “Relax your hands. Yes, like that. Curved, not flat. And your shoulders should drop a little.”
Tessa forced her shoulders down with exaggerated effort, as though she were attempting to hold the entire pianoforte in place by sheer will.
“Like this?” she asked, her voice pitched somewhere between earnest concentration and the pride of performing a great feat of posture.
Madeline bit back a smile. “Much better.”
The girl straightened immediately, her spine lengthening, her small chin lifting with such purpose that Madeline could not help admiring the attempt.
A cascade of curls bounced with the motion, framing her face like a halo of unruly light.
Determination sharpened across her features, tightening her little mouth into a line of focus.
Madeline lifted her hand and pressed a key gently, allowing a single clear note to shimmer into the air. “We begin with middle C,” she said, her tone soft and instructive. “Your thumb goes here. Yes, just there. Now press.”
Tessa lowered her hand slowly, almost ceremoniously, as if she were reaching out to touch something sacred. Her thumb descended, hesitant, then firmly enough to make the key respond.
A soft, pure chime floated through the room.
Tessa gasped, her lips parting in wonder. “Oh,” she whispered, the whole word shaped in reverence. “I made a sound.”
“A lovely one,” Madeline said, warmth threading through her voice. “Now try the next note.”
Tessa pressed another key, then another, her confidence growing with each small success.
The notes did not line up evenly; some chimed too deeply, some too faintly, yet each one rang with unfiltered eagerness.
Her face lit with each new sound, her brows lifting in triumph every time the pianoforte answered her touch.
Madeline’s chest ached sweetly. She would have traded every polished performance she had ever played for the simple joy shining on the little girl’s face beside her.
“Again,” Madeline instructed, lowering her own fingers beside Tessa’s for guidance.
The warmth of the child’s hand brushed her knuckles, a fleeting contact that felt tender in its innocence.
“Slowly this time. Feel the key before you press it. Think of the note as something you’re coaxing, not forcing. ”
Tessa inhaled softly, as though preparing for a grand performance, then placed her fingers with careful delicacy. She brushed the first key with the gentlest touch, as if fearing it might vanish beneath her hand.
Then she repeated the sequence, biting her lip in concentration, her brows scrunched tight. Madeline resisted the urge to smooth them with her thumb.
She did, however, reach out and guide the girl’s wrist gently. “Not so tense. Music needs breath, even from the hands.”
Tessa looked up. “Did your governess teach you to play?”
“No.”
“Did you have a tutor?”
Madeline shook her head softly. “My father taught me.”
Tessa’s hands fell away from the keys and she stared at Madeline in wonder. “Really?”
“Yes.” Madeline’s breath caught in her throat. “He taught me many things.”
“Was he nice?” The innocence of it struck her harder than it should have.
Madeline’s gaze drifted to the far window. For a moment, her father’s smiling face flickered in her memory.
Warm eyes, gentle hands turning pages of books, his voice filling the house with laughter and reassurance. The kind of love that never made a girl feel lacking.
“He was very nice,” Madeline murmured. “He made everything feel… safe.”
Tessa leaned her cheek against her raised shoulder. “Did you lose him?”
“Yes,” Madeline whispered. “A long time ago.”
“I lost my mama a long time ago, too,” Tessa said quietly.
Madeline’s throat tightened.
“What do you remember about your mama?” she asked gently.
Tessa nodded, her small fingers pressing absently on a key that chimed a mournful note.
“Papa says I was only a few minutes old,” the girl continued. “She died after giving birth to me. I never got to know her.” Tessa plucked another key that carried in its tone a high sweetness. “Maybe she liked to play the piano or sing. What do you think, Miss Watton?”
Madeline felt the ache deep in her chest. An ache for a child never given what was hers by right.
“I’m certain she would have sung to you,” Madeline said softly, her voice warming with an ache she could not hide. “And held you close every day.”
She brushed a gentle finger across the edge of the sheet music, shoving away the gloom that was forming.
Tessa shifted on the bench, her small shoulders lifting as she leaned closer, curiosity brightening her eyes.
“What about your mama?” she asked suddenly, the question tumbling out with innocent boldness, unaware of the storm it could summon.
Madeline stilled. Her hand stiffened mid-movement and curled slowly into her skirt, gathering a fold of fabric between her fingers as though she needed something tangible to anchor herself.
A faint tremor passed through her breath before she managed to speak.
“My mother…” she began, but the word caught. She swallowed hard, her throat working as she forced her expression into something calm, something composed, though the tension at the corners of her mouth betrayed her. “My mother is alive.”
Tessa blinked up at her with wide eyes. “Then where is she?”
Madeline’s breath thinned, rising shallow and tight. She smoothed her skirt as if brushing away fragments of a memory she wanted no part of. When she finally lifted her gaze, her smile was soft, but it wavered at the edges.
“Somewhere far away,” she said, the gentleness in her tone at odds with the strain beneath it.
Tessa studied her as her brow furrowed. “But don’t you miss her?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper, as if afraid she had stepped somewhere delicate.
Madeline shook her head slowly, the movement small but heavy. Her lashes lowered as her gaze dipped toward her hands.
“Well… my mother and I aren’t on the best of terms,” she murmured, the confession slipping out like something fragile and long buried.
Tessa’s head tilted, curls brushing her shoulder as confusion mixed with sadness on her face. Her little fingers crept toward Madeline’s sleeve, brushing it in a hesitant attempt at comfort. “What does that mean? Does she not love you?”
Madeline inhaled sharply but kept her voice steady through sheer force of will. Her hand drifted down, smoothing the fabric of her dress over her hips, a habitual motion she did not seem to notice. Her lips curved into something that was not quite a smile, not quite a grimace.
“She loves appearances,” she said softly, her eyes flickering away to the window as though the cold light there could shield her. “That is what I know for certain.”
A beat of silence followed, quiet and trembling, filled only by the soft tick of the clock and the distant hum of the house.
The truth had slipped out too easily, too starkly, and she wished she could take it back. But Tessa only blinked, absorbing it with the simple acceptance children possessed before the world taught them suspicion.
The girl looked down at her hands, her gaze drifting to the faint white scars on her cheeks reflected in the polished instrument.
“Do you think people don’t like me because of my face?” she asked in a small voice.
Madeline nearly broke. Tessa’s question hit her like a soft blow, and when she finally spoke, her voice came thin and shaken.
“Who told you that?” she whispered, leaning in without realizing it, her hand hovering just shy of the girl’s shoulder.
“No one,” Tessa said quickly. Her fingers twisted into the fabric of her own skirt, knotting and unknotting it as she looked down.
“Not with words.” She bit her lip and scrunched her brows.
“But I can see. When governesses came for interviews, they always stared at my scars for too long. Or too little. They smiled too hard or not at all.” Her voice dropped to a wounded murmur.
“And sometimes they said they couldn’t stay because the house was too far from their families, but Papa says that was not true. ”
Madeline’s heart squeezed painfully. She reached out, slow and tender, and tucked a stray curl behind Tessa’s ear. The girl looked up immediately, eyes wide and soft, her lower lip trembling with the effort to remain brave.
Madeline stroked the curl gently, then let her hand rest lightly at the girl’s cheek.
“People judge what they do not understand,” she said, her voice low and warm, each word carefully chosen.
“Sometimes they look only at the surface of things because they cannot bear to look deeper. But their opinions…” She brushed her thumb lightly along Tessa’s cheekbone, “…do not define your value, my dear.”
Tessa blinked rapidly, her lashes fluttering as though fighting the sting of tears. “You speak like you’ve felt the same, Miss Watton. Do people judge you too?” she asked, her voice small but earnest, tilting her chin up to read Madeline’s expression.