Chapter Twenty-Four
WHEN EZEKIEL ARRIVED, HE WAS less than his jovial self. He made jokes, smiled, and charmed both her and Mrs. Jerden throughout the meal, but Nora could tell something was heavy on his mind.
Please don’t let him have bad news about his mum, Lord. He’s had it hard enough.
“Thank you for my box of chocolates, Mr. Beaumont. I think I’ll take my time cleaning the kitchen and enjoy them while you two work.” Any subtlety Mrs. Jerden tried for was lost when she wagged her brows.
Nora shook her head as she led the way to the piano.
If that woman had her way, there would be a marriage proposal by the end of today’s visit.
Tristan trotted alongside Nora, then jumped to his favorite spot on the windowsill.
As grumpy as Tristan could be, he’d become quite affectionate toward her.
He wouldn’t be happy when Ezekiel took him home this afternoon.
Ezekiel placed a chair next to the bench for her, then started playing one hand of the tune they’d created yesterday. “Would you mind if we talk for a few minutes before working?”
“Has something happened to your mum?”
He jerked back with a blink. “No. Have you heard something?”
“No. I assumed from the heaviness of your demeanor that you’d received bad news.”
“Thankfully, no, but I had a strange conversation this morning with Graham Linville, the librettist for the operetta. When I told him of you, he warned me to break things off because I’m a danger to you and your family, but he wouldn’t expound on why.
Only that my opera connections put you at risk. ”
How would Mr. Linville know that? It made no sense. Father would never befriend a librettist. “Perhaps he mistook us for someone else.”
Ezekiel’s fingers stopped moving over the keys. “I don’t think so. He claimed to care for you and your family more than I do.”
Had Mr. Linville known her parents during their days in the opera? It was the only thing that made sense for why he might care.
“Nora, why does your father think a life in opera would be a danger to you?”
“I’m not hearing any music. I hope that doesn’t mean there’s any unsanctioned kissing occurring,” Mrs. Jerden called in a sing-song voice.
Kissing would be decidedly better than this conversation. “We’re not kissing, merely talking.”
“What a pity. I hope Mr. Beaumont hasn’t brought these chocolates for nothing.”
Ezekiel chuckled and picked up the melody again. “She does know if we were determined, I could play while kissing you, right?”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
“Only the hypothetical.”
“Then I imagine the playing would be so awful she’d still know.”
He shrugged and conceded the point. All too swiftly, his seriousness was back. “I won’t push you to answer, but if you’re in danger, I can’t help unless I know what you’re facing.” He licked his lips and added more slowly, “Graham indicated it might have something to do with your ma’s past.”
“Isn’t that pushing?”
He sighed. “Yes, it is. I’m sorry.” He turned his attention to arranging the sheet music. His disappointment was obvious, but he didn’t press further.
What would it hurt to tell him? It was hardly her darkest secret, and they were courting. He’d find out eventually. If this scared him away, then they weren’t meant to be together.
Ezekiel played the notes but hardly heard them. She didn’t trust him. Yes, trust was something built over time, but didn’t a courtship mean she should have some level of faith in him to care for her needs and protect her? Had she seen how he failed Ma and determined he would fail her too?
“My real name is Eleonora Brisbane. My mum and father are Constanza and Marcellus Brisbane.”
He stopped mid-bar and faced her. She wouldn’t look at him, but studied the floor like a script for her tale, her fingers nervously twisting and roving over the cameo at her neck.
“It is a secret we’ve kept since coming to Cincinnati, and it’s a secret we hope to continue to keep, especially with where Mum is now. The reason we hide is because of her.”
That was understandable. The newspapers would love to publicize and mock her fall into disgrace. She would have no value as a person, merely as a source of lucrative headlines.
“Is that why your mum left in the middle of a performance all those years ago? She suffered a bout of hysteria during intermission?”
“No.” Her hand stilled, and she drew a deep breath. “I was kidnapped.”
She spoke the words with no more emotion than one giving a report on the weather, but the absolute horror of it bashed Ezekiel in the chest. He stared in stunned silence.
Kidnapping had not been one of the proposed reasons by the newspapers for Constanza Brisbane’s disappearance.
No wonder she had ended up in Longview. He would lose his mind too, knowing his daughter had been taken from him and only-God-knew-what done to her.
His stomach roiled at the turn of his thoughts.
What had been done to her? She couldn’t have been more than a girl in pinafores at the time.
He choked out the question. “Were you . . . harmed?”
“Not in the physical sense.”
She didn’t expound, but she didn’t need to.
The traps in her house. The claim to be a sharpshooter.
Even those knitting needles she always seemed to have, whether accompanied by yarn or not.
They all screamed of the fear she carried.
Her sense of safety had been forever ripped from her, and the injustice of it welled up a desire both to shield her in his arms and to find and punish the man. “How long were you held prisoner?”
She frowned as she thought. “I don’t know. A few hours? He took me before intermission. I think during the first scene. The night patrol was still out when I escaped.”
“The police didn’t rescue you?”
She huffed. “If I’d waited for the police, I’d be dead. Winston was ready to kill me when I stabbed him and ran.”
A harrowing childhood didn’t begin to cover what Nora had been through. No wonder she went to such measures to defend herself. No child should face evil, let alone without anyone to count on but themselves.
His thoughts snagged. “Wait. Winston? Wasn’t that the man your ma warned me about?”
“Yes. He and his partner, Ursula, were never caught. Since they were fellow singers Mum said she upset, my parents have always feared they’d try to take me again.
That’s why we moved here and changed our names.
To keep our secret, Father forbade us from acquaintances with those connected to opera and from drawing attention to ourselves by singing. ”
Mr. Davis’s stringent rules now made sense, and Ezekiel couldn’t fault him for them, even if he didn’t agree.
“If your ma really is Constanza, why don’t you just tell Dr. Chalfant?” It seemed cruel to leave her there for believing the truth.
“Telling Dr. Chalfant won’t get her released. She attacked an innocent man during a bout of paranoia. Father believes we’d be in danger if word got out Mum is in Longview.”
“Do you think Winston and Ursula still seek to harm you? That was a long time ago.”
“Maybe not Ursula, but Winston likely does. Wherever he is, he has one less eye and is very angry about it.”
One eye? Sickening realization burned in his throat.
Adler was Winston. It explained Adler’s insistence to know more about Ezekiel’s encounter with the Brisbanes and Graham’s certainty that Ezekiel was a danger to Nora.
If Adler was Mrs. Reed’s brother, did that mean Mrs. Reed was Ursula?
Was that why Graham cautioned against the lessons?
“There’s more. Mum wrote a libretto to help her process what happened.
Her heroine was Katherine Yates, the woman she now claims to be.
I don’t know if she’s succumbed to delusions or if the libretto is connected to the guilt she so desperately wanted to be free of.
In her libretto, Katherine was a criminal who betrayed her partners after witnessing one of them murder a maid.
“In some ways, I feel like I’m going mad.
” Her gaze darted away, and she clutched her cameo so tight that her knuckles whitened.
“I don’t know what to think or believe. Is the libretto just a story?
Or is it a confession of Mum’s past that my parents have kept hidden from me?
Are Winston and Ursula more than jealous colleagues who really would still be hunting me?
Or has fear locked us all in cages of paranoia? ” Raw vulnerability strained her voice.
She stroked the top page of the libretto on the piano’s top.
“I want to sing. I want to attempt a life on the stage to see if it’s what I really desire or if it’s just the childish idealization of a life stolen from me.
But I’m afraid that if I sing or go on a stage, Winston will find me and finish the job he failed to complete. ”
“That’s a little long without music again. I only have one piece left,” Mrs. Jerden’s sing-song voice called.
The last thing Ezekiel wanted to do was play music.
Before him stood a woman of incredible strength struggling beneath the weight of overwhelming fear, yet daring to hope for a future in the very world that had stolen her sense of security.
How long had she carried this burden? Did her friends know the full weight of it, or had she hidden it from them too?
Well, she wouldn’t be alone anymore. He scooted until he half hung off the bench and patted the narrow space next to him.
He had no idea what tune his hand took up, but as soon as Nora sat, he cradled her against him where he could convey with more than words that he was here for her and he always would be.
It was a precarious balance, the two of them on a seat meant for one, but by the way she clung to him, there was no danger of either of them falling.
He kissed her temple. “Nora.” He waited for her to look up. “No matter the answer to those questions, you are safe with me. I will not allow anyone to hurt you. Ever.”
Somehow, someway, he’d find Mrs. Reed and Adler and save Nora from them, for Graham had been right. Ezekiel had led the wolves to Nora’s door.