11. Chapter 11
When Odette had arrived in London fifteen years ago, it had been as a third-class passenger on a steam train that huffed and puffed its way into Paddington Station with a belch.
That same morning, she’d boarded a steam ferry in Calais, which had trundled across the Channel and deposited her in Dover.
She’d left a trunk of clothes behind her—painstakingly built up with money raised from performances and street shows. The small carpet bag she carried was all she could manage alone… because, since her grandmother had died a week earlier, that’s what she was.
Alone.
Unwilling to stay in France because it hurt, and with no home to return to, Odette had done what they always did—she moved on.
They’d been heading west, so she continued, landing in London on a promise and a prayer, determined that her voice would help her find her way.
Other singers thought of fame as an abstract possibility of faint hope and maybes.
Not Odette. Odette wanted the world because that’s what Babcia had told her she deserved.
The woman who’d buried a daughter and a husband in the same week had been as hard as the gravestones they’d walked away from, and every spare coin they made from singing and selling flowers—be they drachma, sous, florins, or lira—had been spent on lessons for Odette.
Deportment, language, reading, mathematics, instruments…
but mostly, singing. Her grandmother had never doubted Odette’s potential, and out of loyalty, Odette had believed in it, too.
She adored her grandmother too much to resist the work, and not only because she filled her young mind with dreams of glorious stage roles and regular meals.
Babcia protected her. She wielded her walking stick as a weapon, and any man or theatre manager who looked at Odette for too long received a sharp crack around the kneecaps and the promise of a slit throat if he dared to make any advances.
That was how Odette had learnt she was beautiful—through an odd combination of ogling and threats of violence.
London had begun as London often did for weary travellers—as a disappointment.
Dreary and grey, doors closed in her face when she asked about auditions.
A growling stomach, empty after a long day without eating, forced her to pause and contemplate her options.
Right then, right there in Soho, a man stopped to ask if she was well.
For reasons she still didn’t understand, she blurted out the truth—no.
With his dark hair, dark eyes, Jonah Worthington moved through the streets almost like a mailman.
A recognisable outsider, he picked up and passed on knowledge or snippets of information and was greeted by all yet owned by no one.
He had given her a penny for some soup, apologised that she was not suited to modelling for him in his current artistic season, then told her of someone who might have a spot in a performance that would make her a little money.
Hardly the West End, the theatre was in fact very much off the West End, but any stage was somewhere to start.
And at least two people came to see the terrible show without walking out partway through: Jonah Worthington himself and his good friend Albert Abberton.
Now, Odette reached out to pat Albert’s tissue-thin skin, tugging the blanket higher over him.
They sat side by side on his favourite sofa in his sitting room.
His mouth always hung half open these days, like he could not remember how to shut it.
Odette, meanwhile, was turning the pages of the score one by one, commenting as she went.
‘And in this song, I run from the evil Seigneur d’Artois, fearing for my virtue.
’ She chuckled, imagining the sound of his laughter joining in.
Of course, when she paused for it, she found only its absence.
He watched, however—a little sleepy, but still watching.
‘I like the song. He is a good composer.’ Odette hummed the tune, light and fast, following the notes on the page.
‘Do you like it, old friend? Do you think it is good?’
Music had been able to reach him for so long. But today, Odette felt like she was shooting arrows off a headland into the sea, hoping to spear a kraken.
They had always shared a love of music. Both of them had lost families, albeit in different ways, and both of them had lived lives that demanded the keeping of secrets.
He had not been her first friend, but Albert, trader and world traveller, had most certainly become her dearest. She hadn’t been entirely truthful with Cassius.
The archduke hadn’t bought her Sobieski.
She had purchased it herself so that she could live next door to her friend.
After all, they both appreciated that a fenceline shared by mutual interests was a fenceline protected.
Part of the story was true—the archduke had been her first lover.
Not on closing night, as most speculated, but some weeks later, when he’d been direct enough to ask and she’d been bold enough to say yes.
She had been curious about bedroom antics, but also, disposing of her virginity seemed like an astute thing to do.
And apart from some small discomfort at the very beginning, she’d enjoyed that first time.
By morning, after having been guided to climax by a caring lover, she’d really enjoyed it.
Most women were diminished by the loss of their virtue, but for women of the stage, the right rumours created mystique.
They gave her power. Power to say yes or no, power to accept or refuse gifts.
She’d paid a courtesan for lessons, both on giving and receiving pleasure, and took lovers only when it suited her.
She decided, even at twenty-one, that she would be mistress of what happened in the bedroom.
She did not beg for a touch.
She did not wait for permission.
She did not sing on command.
God damn Cassius.
Odette smoothed the sheet music, the dry paper anchoring her in the room.
She had come to spend her Sunday with her friend to distract herself, not to let herself be carried away by thoughts of the conductor.
Tomorrow, he would be immersed in rehearsals with the orchestra, on his podium, and she would be centre stage.
By tomorrow she would have gathered herself, pushed him from her mind, and stopped her ridiculous fantasising about what the rest of him might feel like.
What it would be like to have him beneath her, or to be naked in his bed as he showed her the tricks that made all his lovers so grateful.
With her usual lovers, there was always some other exchange beneath the fun—notoriety for reputation, jewellery for the right to gloat.
But the power balance of their pretend courtship felt wholly unfamiliar, and it threw her off-kilter.
One simple command, and she had surrendered with a whimper.
‘Odette? Do you have a moment?’
‘Always for you, my darling.’ Odette reached out to Iris, who was hovering in the interconnecting doorway between the small sitting room and her office.
Iris shot a look at her father, and Odette nodded, already rising to her feet.
Whatever Iris wanted to talk about, she clearly did not want to say it in front of Albert, even in his state.
Placing her score on the table, Odette gave Albert a peck on the cheek, and crossed the room.
Iris pushed the door almost closed behind them, leaving a small gap through which they could still hear Albert’s heavy breath and occasional movement.
She moved past Odette and made her way to the other side of her desk.
For a moment, she seemed ready to sit, but then she threw a look over the papers and manilla folders stacked before her in neat piles, and hovered halfway between her seat and the corner of the desk instead.
She looked at her fingers. Blinked away tears. ‘I… I… umm…’
Odette crossed the room in three confident strides, held out her arms, and drew her neighbour against her chest. When Odette had moved to Honeysuckle Street, Iris had been a fifteen-year-old girl with an energy and spirit to match her brilliant red hair, full of smart retorts and a love for all the good things in her life.
The years that separated them had compressed as Iris grew into a woman, but at times, Odette could not shake the memory of the wiry girl who climbed trees and threw conkers at her friend Hamish in the park.
Even this room, which had once been a playroom with bears and lions painted on the walls, echoed with the memories of that girl and her life.
Iris folded against Odette’s chest, heaved a breath, and released a fractured sob.
As her chest shook, Odette, a little shorter now than her friend, braced herself against the crying.
She stroked the girl’s hair. Splayed her feet beneath her to hold firm and allowed the tears to flow until Iris was spent.
‘I’m sorry,’ Iris said at last. She stepped back and wiped her cheeks, leaving behind iridescent streaks.
‘It’s just… so much. There’s so much. With the new tour offering…
and then Hamish’s father wants to visit, and Hamish keeps trying to put him off, and I don’t know if that’s because he doesn’t want to see him or if he hasn’t even told him about the company…
And I’m too scared to ask because the answer might be one more thing I’ll have to manage.
On top of that, there’s the winding up of Abberton and Co.
with Phineas, and then Papa, as he is…’ Iris collapsed against Odette once more, her chest heaving. ‘I miss him so much.’