Chapter 23 #3
Lucasta took a deep breath and met Jem’s eyes squarely. “I would be deeply honored if you would play, Judith,” she said, pressing back the tremor in her voice. She would not weep again tonight; she would not. “And I would be even more honored to sing for you.”
Judith smiled a beatific, rather knowing smile and allowed Jem to lead her to the small spinet that had been set up in the gallery for the occasion. The foundlings on the benches jostled each other, their eyes round as shillings, muttering about the fancy lord and his very fancy companion.
Lucasta heard not a single snigger or exclamation.
This lot were accustomed to disease, wounds, scars, and challenges; it was the rare body, in their world, that was hale and whole.
Judith in her blindness was immediately one of them.
It was her dress causing the marvel. Several girls whispered appreciative comments about her gown as Judith seated herself at the instrument.
“Hey now, is that his wife then?” Hester exclaimed. “And here we thought he was danglin’ after you, miss!”
“That is his sister, Hester,” Lucasta shushed her. “Mind you address her as Lady Judith, as she is the daughter of a marquess.”
“Ooooh.” Hester looked appropriately impressed. “And ’e’s still fixin’ to marry you, then, ain’t ’e?”
Lucasta stepped to the instrument and took Judith’s hand. It was small and cold. “I am so very glad you are here.”
Judith’s smile grew enormous. “I knew your concert would be a success if you would sing, Lucasta. And I told Jem I could make you.”
Jem bowed and withdrew to whisper a word in the ear of the governor who was announcing.
After some throat clearing, the other man settled the audience with an introduction.
“Performing on the spinet, Lady Judith Falstead, sister to one of the members of our governing board and daughter of the new Marquess of Arendale,” he said pompously.
“And performing ‘The Bells of Aberdovey,’ the organizer of tonight’s concert, Miss Lucasta Lithwick. ”
Judith, with the serenity and concentration of a professional, flexed her fingers and began to play. And Lucasta, her heart overflowing with joy and gratitude, sang.
She couldn’t begin to comprehend Jem’s motives, but she didn’t need to. She let the music lift and carry her. Judith played with ease, from memory, and Lucasta poured her heart into her voice.
It lifted into the great room, winding around the pillars of the first-floor gallery, trilling along the cornices outlining the ceiling, resounding off the polished wooden panels and arched windows.
It wasn’t a song that required gusto, but Lucasta gave it anyway.
It felt so good to sing, to fill a room with her voice, to be a part of the music.
She had found herself earlier in a moment of complete happiness; this was profounder, more perfect.
But Jem’s gift wasn’t complete. After their song, Judith remained seated at the spinet, flexing her fingers once more, and Jem stepped forward, joining Lucasta at the balcony. She gazed at him with questioning eyes.
“Judith had one more request,” he said. His eyes on her, filled with amber lights, made her feel as if the music still poured through her, a current of liquid gold. “She asked if we would sing a duet.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “Demanded, actually.”
“Performing ‘The True Lover’s Farewell,’” said the announcer in a wondering tone, “one of our governors, the new Lord Payne, and Miss Lithwick.”
“But you—these people,” Lucasta tried telling him. “All watching. What you feared.”
She didn’t understand. He didn’t want eyes on his family, but he had let Judith play. And now he was going to sing. With her.
He held out his hand. “Some things,” he said simply, “are worse than gossip.”
She grasped his fingers, warm and firm and strong, and the music inside her came to life. The sound of this throaty, rich baritone swirled through her to her very toes as Jem began the duet they had sang at Rose Hollow.
“Fare thee well, my own true love, and fare thee well for a while—”
There was no more thought, only music. And each note of the melody, each chord from the instrument drew them together, binding them with a tether invisible to the eye.
They were tuned to the same pitch, Lucasta thought hazily, as far as thought was allowed her.
They vibrated at the same frequency. They were a perfect harmonic unit.
She heard the strangest vibration when the last notes of the duet faded, and she wondered why the floor quivered.
Judith stood and stepped toward them to take her curtsy, and the gallery shook with thunderous applause.
Through blurred eyes Lucasta saw that the audience was on its feet, and her foundlings clapped and whooped with glee.
Judith, slipping an arm through each of theirs, sank into another graceful curtsy, and then, still smiling that saintly smile, waved and took her leave.
Lucasta stood rooted to the floor. Signor Marchesi, who was slated next, stepped into the adoring applause, lifted Lucasta’s hand and kissed it with a cheeky wink, and then launched into his aria from Ifigenia in Aulide.
Though the song was his alone, he performed it with the gestures from the opera, addressing her as if she were the doomed Ifigenia, and Lucasta collected just enough wit to remember the postures the actress had assumed: her adulation for the posturing Achilles, her despair as she realized her fate.
It was almost too much. She had sung with Judith, and with Jem, before an audience of hundreds.
It was her first public performance of this magnitude.
And now the great Signor Marchesi was performing next to her.
With her. She might very well die of happiness and be taken straight up to heaven in the chariot of the gods, just like another version of the play. It would be a fitting end.
The night lasted forever, and it was over in moments.
The foundlings held up beautifully. Her performers were stellar.
The Gorgons had a surprise for her as well: a Boccherini quintet, the one she had heard performed at the Ranelagh Gardens masquerade, with Cici on the cello. They, too, received a standing ovation.
The Abrams sisters, Miss Harriet and Miss Theodosia, brought flowers raining down upon their heads with their transcendent voices.
The trio of Philippa, Isadora, and Camilla, with Hester playing the spinet, went off without a hitch.
And at the very end, amid another ovation, with calls of encore, encore!
Lucasta heard her name being chanted: “Miss Lithwick!” the audience called, amid shouts for Signor Marchesi.
They were being called for together: the great Marchesi, and poor, plain Lucasta Lithwick.
Marchesi took the balcony, throwing his arms wide.
“I will sing for you!” he cried, projecting his voice to the far end of the room.
“A song I wrote myself, in Italian, but as arranged by Miss Lithwick, who will please me, I hope, by singing the English version she has so admirably translated for me?”
Lucasta moved to the harpsichord in a daze, praying she would not die of happiness until after she had performed a duet with Signor Marchesi.
She knew better than to try to overshadow the famous castrato.
Rather she let the English be an echo of his Italian, her voice counterpoint to his, a delicate, supple lilt to his acrobatic contralto.
As he repeated the last stanza, he signaled for her to sing the Italian with him, and Lucasta felt her chest would burst with joy as she harmonized with one of her heroes, using her voice to enrich and surround one of the most beautiful sounds she had ever heard.
As the echoes of the song faded into breathless silence, Lucasta closed her eyes and hugged herself, her heart breaking open. This was what she had denied Jem for. It would have to be enough. It would be enough, in time.
Then there were flowers being shoved into her arms by Selina, and suddenly all the Gorgons were on the balcony, Cici too, distributing flowers to the foundlings.
The orphans curtsied and smiled as Lucasta had never seen them smile before, the simple roses the crowning beauty of an evening they would never forget.
Lucasta curtsied as well, again and again through the rolling applause, until Annis finally took her arm and dragged her away.
“Let the staff clean up and tuck your foundlings into bed,” she said in Lucasta’s ear. “We are gathering at Arendale House. Jem will bring you.”
“Judith?”
“Will come with us,” Minnie said firmly. “Between Trevor, Ashley, and Frotheringale’s carriage, we’re all accounted for.”
“Ashley,” Lucasta murmured in surprise, but Minnie said airily, “I won’t allow him to stay. It’s just us girls, at Bertie’s invite. Don’t malinger, now, even if you are the star of the evening.”
Jem waited for her at the bottom of the stairs, holding her cape and hat. People moved around them, staff taking the instruments away and the nurses herding their foundlings off to bed, where they would no doubt stay awake well after the lights were doused, whispering about their triumph.
One after another they hugged Lucasta as they passed, and she hugged them back, praising them all for their accomplishment. When at least she turned to Jem, her smile stretched so wide it hurt her face, and her heart was dangerously close to bursting.
“You let Judith perform,” she whispered, leaning toward him as he slowly, gently, settled her cloak about her shoulders.
His hands lingered, brushing down her arms, and she breathed in his scent, so familiar, so heady, so potent.
There was no force on earth that would make her able to step away from him again. He would have to do it.
His eyes were dark and full of emotion, his voice husky. “I asked myself, why would I allow the possible displeasure of a few small people to keep her from her great dream?”
Lucasta smiled. “And you sang,” she breathed. “You were glorious.”
“And untrained. No match for you, my dear. But I knew no other way to show you I’d come to my senses.”
“What do you mean?” She could barely manage air around the lump in her throat.
He clasped his hands around hers. As always, a tingle darted up her arm, curling around her heart. “Lucasta Lithwick,” Jem said in that voice that was heaven and promise and seduction all together. “Will you sing with me every day of my life?”
Her lips trembled. “In private, you mean?”
“There are many duets I hope we shall have in private,” he said, and his wicked look sent trills of pleasure along every nerve.
“But I hope you will sing in public, too. You were a marvel tonight, Lucasta. A revelation. I don’t think you comprehend how you enchanted everyone.
To deprive the world of your gifts would truly be a loss.
But as I also want you as my wife—” Here he drew her so close that she felt his breath against her ear— “I suppose I shall have to learn how to be the husband of a famous musician, and bear whatever slings and arrows of outrageous fortune result.”
She lifted her chin and brushed her lips along the strong line of his jaw. He shivered.
“Jem,” she said, “I want nothing more. But I would have so much to learn as your wife. There will be attention. There will be—opinions. All my failures will be public and will reflect on you. Your family. I know you don’t want that.”
“I don’t wish it,” he said slowly, wrapping his arms about her. “But Judith is stronger than I thought. So are the others. So are you. I shall have to learn to be equally resilient, and stand rooted in what I know to be true. That is all.”
She raised her hands to either side of his face. She forgot they stood in a dark alcove in a building full of strangers. She couldn’t tell if her feet still touched the earth.
“Jeremiah Falstead. You are the strongest, bravest, most generous, most protective, most—giving man I know.”
“And you are the most fascinating female.” His lips curved as she giggled, and his breath across her lips made her gasp. “Lucasta Lithwick. Will you be mine?”
“I already am,” she whispered, and fell into his kiss.