Chapter 1 #2
“Think she’s a real contessa?”
“Doubtful,” said Archie, dry.
Italian, he could allow with her luminous brown eyes and olive complexion.
But a contessa?
Not a chance.
Contessas didn’t sing for this crowd.
Rory shrugged. “Who would care anyway?”
An undeniable fact.
Hands clasped so tightly her knuckles shone white, she cleared her throat, thereby silencing half the crowd. She waited thirty seconds more, subtly shifting from foot to foot, clearly hoping the other half would follow the lead of their fellows. They didn’t.
Archie felt his hands clenching in his lap as he grew unaccountably angry. This was nothing short of a crime. To drag this woman on stage and offer her up as ridicule for the entertainment of the public…
She cleared her throat and opened her mouth, and a sound poured forth, filling the air, as voice after voice fell away and all that was left was hers, the entirety of the room suddenly enraptured by her.
Archie couldn’t believe his ears, for what he was hearing was a pure high mezzosoprano without flaw—nothing less than the voice of an angel.
It left him no choice but to sit back in his seat and let her voice flow over him, sink into him, and fill his soul with nourishment he hadn’t been aware he’d been craving all his life until this very moment.
She stepped forward, her voice strengthening in confidence.
No longer was she a hapless magician’s assistant, but a woman in control—of herself, of this room.
Her gaze roved across the crowd as she sang Handel’s “Lascia ch’io pianga” aria.
It was delicate and mournful and pure magnificence.
Then her gaze landed on his, and the breath froze in Archie’s chest.
Eyes locked, the world simply fell away—only him and her, as if he could feel each individual cell of blood flowing through his veins.
Her gaze shifted, and the connection broke, like that.
The aria ended, and she stood before the audience, eyes shining, cheeks glowing, chest heaving. The collective breath held under the spell she’d woven.
Archie felt winded…invigorated…inspired.
He needed more of it.
He needed more of her.
He shot to his feet, clapping like a maniac. Half a second later the room followed on a roar. Everyone understood what they’d witnessed. Talent supreme… Magic.
Archie wanted more.
He glanced over at Rory, who was as awestruck as the rest of the room. “I’ll see you on the morrow for our morning ride?”
A crease formed between Rory’s eyebrows. “You’re hanging up your hatchet already?”
Not exactly, but he’d no intention of explaining to his friend the urges pulling at him. If he told Rory he was heading backstage to meet the singer, Rory would get all nudge-nudge winky-winky and possibly waggle his eyebrows.
And this wasn’t that.
Well, maybe a little. The woman was attractive in the earthy, voluptuous way that, well, Archie rather liked.
But he needed to be in her presence, for other reasons. Reasons having to do with the muse now flowing through him.
He gave Rory a firm nod of farewell and began pushing through the crowd that had begun booing the compère. The audience wanted more of her, and preferably with fewer clothes. Philistines.
Yet…
Why was she singing at the Five Graces? Her technique and stage sense weren’t yet perfected, but she was young and those skills would come with proper guidance.
Didn’t she understand her worth?
While the crowd remained mostly distracted by the contortionist who had taken to the stage, Archie slipped behind the dusty brown curtain, and found himself in the midst of another sort of chaos—tetchy performers hying to and fro as they readied themselves.
Here sat a clown in silent contemplation.
There a dancer shouting for a glass of water while applying a thick coating of kohl to her eyebrows.
“La Contessa?” Archie asked a woman who was combing the fur of the monkey he’d seen take the stage earlier.
The woman silently pointed her comb in the direction of a short, dark corridor, and Archie followed it to a room that appeared to be empty at first glance. Except it wasn’t empty. There, behind a screen in the corner, flickered orange candlelight.
He strode over and peered around the wooden frame. Back to him, she sat before a dressing table. Wig off, she was half undressed, down to chemise, corset, and drawers. He knew from other backstage visits that performers weren’t too fussy about their state of dress—or undress.
“Contessa?” he spoke into the silence.
Luminous brown eyes shifted and met his in the mirror, and he experienced that jolt again. As if a vise had tightened in his chest.
“Buona sera,” he said, choosing to greet her in Italian.
She simply nodded and resumed wiping stage makeup off her face. He sensed he’d been dismissed.
He’d once heard his smile described as pure sunshine. Yet this woman remained utterly, fixedly unmoved. Not charmed in the least.
His intrigue only grew.
He was always intrigued by the ones who didn’t give him the time of day.
When he made no movement to leave, her gaze met his again in the mirror. “Well?” she asked, the single word more demand than question.
Archie knew a few truths at once. The woman wasn’t Italian, and certainly no contessa. But she wasn’t from London, either. With that one well, he had her down as a country lass.
What was a lass from the country named La Contessa doing singing German opera in Southwark?
“Well, what?” He would play along. He liked games. They usually worked out in his favor.
“Are you going to stand there all night? Or make yourself useful?”
He stepped forward, oddly flat-footed. He usually had no trouble making himself useful to a woman—in a wide and imaginative variety of ways, if he said so himself—but with this woman he was flummoxed. “I’m not sure where to start.” Sometimes the truth worked best.
She heaved a great sigh and tipped her head to the side. “You’re not a stagehand, are you?”
“Erm, no.”
Annoyance crossed her face. “No matter. You have hands, don’t you?”
He held them up and rotated as if putting them on display for a prospective buyer.
“Surely you can use them to unknot this dreadful corset,” she said, exasperated.
“I see nothing dreadful about your corset.”
In fact, the corset did amazing things for what was a stunning figure. Emphasizing the curves of her waist. Rounding the generous mounds of her bosom.
She snorted. “You don’t have to try breathing in it, do you?”
“Touché.”
She stood, back still to him, and placed her palms flat on the dressing table. He closed the distance separating them, thinking perhaps he shouldn’t. This interaction wasn’t proceeding at all how he would’ve liked.
He stopped three feet from her and contemplated the rather dauntingly complex system of laces and knots. This corset must date back to the 1750s, well before his time of unknotting ladies’ corsets, which these days were simple stays.
“I’m afraid this may be well outside my level of expertise,” he confessed, buying time, really.
For here was the thing: if he began tugging one knot open, then another, and another, he wouldn’t stop until he had the garment on the floor and convinced La Contessa to join him in his bed—or against that wall over there.
“Then what use are you?” she huffed.
Oh, she really didn’t want an answer to that question. He gave her the answer that fit within the bounds of propriety. “Not much, according to more than a few people.”
Her head canted, and again her gaze met his in the mirror. “You’re a proper nob, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know about the proper part.”
Her gaze narrowed. Clearly, her mind was running a calculation, and one and one weren’t making two. “What are you doing here?”
“Enjoying an evening’s entertainment.”
She shook her head. “Here…with me.”
Now, they were getting somewhere.
“As it turns out, I’m here to ask a very similar question of you.” He made her wait a few ticks of time. “What are you doing here? End of.”