Chapter 44
She recognized all the intoxication and the anguishes of which she herself had nearly died. The voice of the woman singing seemed to be but the echo of her own consciousness…
The eve of Hélène’s surgery finally arrived, the night they would attend Lucia di Lammermoor. His sister pleaded with Joseph to accompany her, their father, and Liam to the opera—a tale of star-crossed lovers. “You can translate the Italian for us!”
“You’ve read Scott’s novel,” Joseph pointed out. “That’s in English.”
“The opera changes things!”
“And how would you know that?”
“I’ve read the English libretto,” Hélène admitted. “But we might lose our place!”
In truth, Joseph was eager to experience another opera. In the seven years of his Priesthood, Joseph’s superiors had permitted him a handful of concerts, so he’d heard a few precious arias. These merely whetted his appetite for feasts he would never enjoy.
Following her own theatrical adventures, Hélène would often purchase the score, and she and Liam would attempt to recreate the duets at their father’s piano.
Bellini, Rossini, and Mozart were not mangled; but Joseph knew these renditions were poor echoes of the original.
His sister thought the more delight she took in an opera, the more likely he would be to join her the next time.
Joseph knew better: the more he longed for this entertainment, the more of a sin it was.
The temptation was always there. The New Theatre was impossible to miss: it was on Meeting Street and twice the size of the cathedral.
Joseph passed it often during parish calls.
He would pause to read the playbills and sigh with envy.
The theatre resembled a pagan temple: wide marble steps rose to an arcade, which supported a portico, four fluted Ionic columns, and a pediment.
Only ticket-holders could access the portico.
Once, Hélène had been taking the air with Liam when she spotted Joseph lingering below.
(He’d been trying to catch a few strains of music through the open windows.) His sister had hollered and waved at him, making Joseph go crimson.
The uncertainty of her future had lowered Hélène’s inhibitions more than ever.
His sister could never have endured marriage to a man like Edward; but Joseph had heard Liam laughing.
Surely, after so many years of denial, when this might be Joseph’s last chance to share an opera with his sister, he could make an exception.
Donizetti had composed Joseph’s first opera; it seemed fitting that he should be the creator of Joseph’s final one.
When Joseph asked Father Baker about Lucia di Lammermoor, his pastor looked disappointed—he never allowed himself such pleasures—but he gave Joseph permission to go.
At the last minute, Liam sent a note that he was finishing a legal brief and would join them as soon as he could.
The news did not dampen Hélène’s spirits for long.
She’d been conserving her strength, and God was merciful: her pains were mild today.
The mere thought of the opera was enough to rally her.
May had helped Hélène fashion a new undergarment that was only a distant relation to a corset, and she would conceal her altered bodice with her cloak.
His sister refused all talk of a carriage—the theatre was only three streets away.
Joseph tried not to gape as he, his sister, and their father passed up the marble stairs, through the arcade, and into the vestibule of the grand building. They had no need to pause at the ticket office, since their father had bartered a box from a wealthy patient.
Hélène was leaning heavily on their father now.
Joseph stopped ogling the light fixtures and realized the walk had exhausted her.
They’d nearly reached the end of the corridor (their box was on the far right) when his sister told them she had to rest. She braced a gloved hand against the wall and panted.
“You go ahead, Joseph,” their father instructed, nodding toward the door of the last box.
“I’ll wait.”
“It’s only a spell. She’s had them before. You’ve been on your feet all day. I insist.”
Reluctantly, Joseph obeyed. He was as eager to sit down as he was to see the interior of the theatre.
When he opened the door and stepped through it, however, he realized the box was already occupied.
Hoping the woman had not sensed him, Joseph retreated quickly—and someone slammed the door in his face.
He frowned and grabbed the handle. It turned, but something seemed to be blocking the door. “Father? Ellie?”
In reply, Joseph heard what sounded like a titter, followed by two distinct male chuckles. One of the men was his father. He could have sworn the other was Liam.
Joseph glanced over his shoulder to the other occupant of the box. “I’m terribly sorry; there seems to—”
As the woman turned around, he caught her gardenia perfume. Tessa. She gasped.
Behind her, his father peered around the edge of the next box. “We’re over here. But you two are staying there. Have a wonderful evening.” His father grinned and disappeared.
Joseph gaped. He tried the door again. “They’ve jammed it shut!” Where were the theatre attendants? Had his father bribed them?! The man was fifty-three years old and behaving like a schoolboy pulling pranks.
Tessa was laughing now.
Joseph whirled on her. “Did you know about this?”
“I knew Hélène asked to use Edward’s box. I thought it was strange when Liam escorted me to this one and then disappeared ‘for refreshments.’ I didn’t know you’d be here. And I certainly didn’t know they were planning this entrapment.”
“This is ridiculous!” Joseph cried through the wall of the box.
“If you get peckish, we’ll bring you something during intermission,” Liam called.
Hélène giggled again. That she was not as ill as she’d pretended was a small comfort.
Joseph groaned and leaned against the door.
“You might as well sit down.” Tessa turned back to face the stage.
The only furniture in the box was a single scarlet sofa.
Joseph peered nervously past Tessa, across the wide theatre to the two boxes opposite theirs.
One was occupied by a sedate elderly couple.
The other held a group of young men who had clearly taken an interest in his family’s antics.
Joseph didn’t recognize any of them—they must not be Catholics.
Still he glared at the theatre’s forty-eight lamp chandelier and longed for darkness to cover him. “Someone will see us,” he hissed.
“’Tis too late now to change that.” Tessa kept her eyes on her libretto, but he could hear her smiling. “We shall simply have to behave ourselves.”
Three hours was a long time to stand. His thighs still throbbed from last night.
He contemplated sitting on the floor, but that would look suspicious.
The only box beside them was the one occupied by his father, Hélène, and Liam, Joseph assured himself.
Perhaps a handful of the audience could see him and Tessa together; but at this distance, amidst the cacophony of conversations, no one could hear them.
He must try to act as though this were not an adulterous rendez-vous.
Joseph hung his overcoat and hat next to Tessa’s cloak at the back of the box.
Finally he came to perch on the far corner of the sofa.
Still, he nearly brushed her wide skirt—a cascade of embroidered gold that shimmered in the lamplight.
It reminded him of a gown he’d seen on a statue of the Virgin in Rome.
Tessa did not turn or raise her eyes; and still she made it impossible to breathe. Her perfume surrounded him like an embrace. Only elegant gloves sheathed most of her slender arms. Her throat and shoulders were bare. He’d never seen her shoulders before. They were as white and smooth and round as—
Joseph forced his eyes to the interior of the theatre: the dome and the classical paintings inside; the proscenium with its ornamented frieze and gilded pilasters; the pastoral scene on the drop curtain; the men in the orchestra lighting the candles on the music stands—but of course his thoughts remained on Tessa’s bare flesh.
Surely no other woman on Earth had such exquisite hollows above her collarbones.
He wondered how they might taste if he kissed them.
She was a nursing mother! Yet even this fact did not deter him. It only made him more curious.
Christ had proclaimed in the Gospel of Saint Matthew: “I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery in his heart.” Perhaps the rest of the audience could not see the sins being committed inside this box, but appearances were deceiving.
He and Tessa might as well be naked on the floor.
Joseph swallowed and recalled as a Penance: “This is Edward’s box?”
“Our captors are in Edward’s box,” Tessa corrected with a smile.
Then she sobered and lowered her voice. “I feel him between us, just the same. But he was happy to let me come with someone else. When Edward brings me to the theatre, he is usually asleep by the second act—or he goes out to the saloon and doesn’t return till the end. ”
“He leaves you here alone?”
“I don’t mind. I can lose myself in the story.
” She abided by their unspoken agreement; she pretended to watch the musicians tuning their instruments.
“Edward does love me, in his way. It’s only…
he doesn’t really see me. He—and his father—thought I was someone else, someone they could mold.
Heaven knows I have tried to please Edward, to be what he wants.
But when I defy him or disappoint him, even in the smallest way, he is puzzled, like a man who has bought a gosling and waits and waits for it to turn into a swan.
It cannot, no matter how hard it tries.”
But she was a swan. Didn’t Edward ever tell her that? She was a phoenix.