Epilogue #2
“You have played it twenty times this month.”
“Twenty-three. I counted.”
Dominic looked at him. At the brown eyes steady behind the effort. At the jaw set and the hands pressing at his seams. He had not known, a year ago, how to meet those eyes without fumbling the meeting. He knew now. The fumbling had cost him a great deal, and the knowing cost nothing.
“You may come out when you are ready,” Dominic said. “Not before.”
James looked past him at the doorway into the room. His jaw moved once.
Then he stepped forward.
He walked down the center aisle with the focus of someone who had rehearsed the distance.
Forty faces watching, and he did not look at any of them.
His eyes went to the piano and stayed there.
He reached the bench and sat. He arranged himself as Annabelle had taught him—upright, feet flat, hands in his lap—and looked at the keys for the count of several seconds.
The room did not move.
His hands came up from his lap and settled over the keys. He pressed the first note.
It came out clear and clean, and the tension in his posture shifted—not gone at once, but in the way a body releases when the thing it feared turns out to be survivable. He went inside the music. The room ceased to exist for him, and he began.
A Mozart minuet. Annabelle had chosen it for him in October: simple, she had told James, but not simple-minded.
His hands knew the distances now. The piece moved in its deliberate way across the keys, and he played it with the stillness of someone who had gone inside it rather than sitting on top of it.
In the second phase, he came to the difficult bar—the one he always got wrong—paused for a fraction of a beat, found the note, and continued. The correction was so clean that half the room would not have caught it.
Annabelle caught it. From where Dominic sat, he saw her hands, folded in her lap, press together once.
James reached the final bar. He lifted his hands from the keys, placed them in his lap, and sat.
The applause was immediate.
Dominic was on his feet before he was aware of standing.
Miles had risen beside him. Lady Rosenhall’s hands were going together with real force.
Helena had both hands at her mouth. Annabelle was clapping with her color high and her eyes bright in the way they went when she was keeping something back.
James turned on the bench. He looked at forty standing faces. His eyes found Dominic’s across the room.
He held there for a moment.
Then he came down from the bench and walked back up the aisle, and Dominic met him at the front.
“I made one error,” James said.
“You played beautifully,” Dominic said.
“I made one error,” James said again, in the tone he used for things that were going on the permanent record.
“The second phrase, the difficult bar. You found it.”
James received this. “I practiced that bar the most. I always make that error.”
“You didn’t tonight.”
He weighed it. Then, “Annabelle said the error is part of the piece. That the composer wrote it hard there and everyone makes it and what matters is that you find it and go on.” He looked at his shoes, then up. “I think she meant that to be reassuring.”
“Was it?”
“Not when she first said it.” A pause. “Yes now.”
He looked at Dominic with his steady, direct look. “I think it is a true statement,” he said, “about more than the piece. I will need to think further about what it means exactly.”
“Take the time,” Dominic said.
Lady Rosenhall went to James at once and lowered herself to his level with the ease of a woman who had raised children and knew the angle mattered.
“You played very correctly,” she said. “The second phrase is the hardest part. You managed it.”
“I practiced it the most,” James said.
“That is how it is generally done,” Lady Rosenhall said. She straightened and addressed the general air: “He has an excellent ear.”
Miles reached Dominic’s elbow. He was not entirely composed.
He cleared his throat twice. “He is extraordinary,” he said, and then stopped.
He looked at Dominic. “You’ve built something here.
” He put a hand on Dominic’s shoulder and held it, and did not clear his throat a third time.
“I want you to know I can see it from here.”
Dominic said nothing. He watched Annabelle lean down and say something into James’s ear, and James nod once: small, full, satisfied.
From across the room, he saw Annabelle touch Lucien’s arm. Lucien turned, and she said something close to his ear, and Lucien went still.
Dominic had been watching for it. He had been watching for it all evening.
Lucien looked at his sister for a long moment. His face did several things, quickly, without managing any of them. Then he put both arms around her.
Annabelle’s head went to his shoulder. Her eyes came to Dominic across the room. She was smiling, and her eyes were bright in the way they went when something was too large to hold without showing at the edges.
He crossed the room.
Lucien stepped back from Annabelle and looked at him. Then he took Dominic’s hand and held it with the full force of it.
“Well,” Lucien said. His voice was not level. “Well.”
“Yes,” Dominic said.
Lucien put his free arm around Dominic’s shoulder once—briefly, firmly—and let go. “When?” he said.
“Spring,” Annabelle said. “March or April.”
Lucien exhaled. He looked at his sister and then at Dominic and pressed his lips together.
“Come,” he said. “I need to find Elinor.”
They found Elinor near the mantelpiece. She looked at Lucien’s face first as they approached, and then at Annabelle, and she was already moving forward before anyone had spoken.
She took Annabelle’s hands in both of hers. “Oh, Annabelle,” she said quietly.
They were talking in the way that required no outside assistance, and Dominic stood beside Lucien and let them have it. Lucien looked at him.
“Spring,” Lucien said again, as though the word required a second hearing.
“March or April.” Dominic watched Elinor hold his wife’s hands. “And you,” he said, to Lucien. “She told me last week. Are you going to tell them?”
Lucien looked at Elinor. She had heard; she turned and looked at her husband, and the color rose in her face.
“It appears,” Elinor said, with the brightness of a woman who has decided to deliver good news properly, “that the Barrow and Stanton households are in something of a race.”
A laugh moved through the small group that had gathered, and Annabelle took Elinor’s hand.
Miles, when they found him, set his glass down on the mantel the instant Annabelle said the words. He set it down with the deliberate care of a man who could not currently trust his hands. Then he turned to Dominic.
“You absolute wretch,” he said, and his voice cracked, and he did not bother covering it.
He grabbed Dominic by the shoulder and shook him once, hard enough to mean something far beyond “wretch”. Then he collected himself, picked up his glass, turned to Annabelle, and bowed over her hand in an old-fashioned way that was entirely sincere.
“I am extraordinarily pleased for you both,” he said. “James will make a very thorough elder brother.”
“He doesn’t know yet,” Annabelle said.
“He will take it with tremendous seriousness and begin researching the developmental stages within the week.” Miles straightened. “I am never wrong about James.” He raised his glass. “To spring, then. Both springs.”
Helena wept. It was immediate and complete, and she waved off the nearby guests who turned at the sound, and then put both arms around Annabelle and held her. When she stepped back, she wiped her eyes with the back of her knuckle and did not apologize for any of it.
“In October there was something different about you,” she announced. “I could not say what it was. I knew there was something.” She turned to Dominic. “You are going to be a father.”
“I am aware of it,” he said.
“Are you? You are standing there as though it were perfectly ordinary.”
“I am attempting composure.”
“Stop,” Helena said, and she hugged him with the completeness she brought to all things. He put one arm around her shoulders and let the room go on without him.
Lady Rosenhall, when they came to her, took Annabelle’s hand and held it with both of hers. She did not speak immediately. She looked at Annabelle for a moment, and then she said:
“The child will be fortunate in its mother. That is all a child truly needs to begin.”
Annabelle looked at her. “That is the kindest thing you have ever said to me.”
“It is the truest thing,” Lady Rosenhall said, and released her hand, and moved to find tea.
By ten o’clock, the guests were taking their leave.
It went the way evenings go when they have been good: no abruptness, no awkwardness at the door, only the gradual dispersal of people who had heard something worth hearing and were glad about it.
Mrs. Howell and the footmen had begun to clear the music room—softly, with the discretion of a household that knew its work.
Lucien was last. He kissed Annabelle on the cheek, held Dominic’s hand one final time, and said only: “Thursday.”
“Thursday,” Annabelle confirmed.
The door closed. The hall went quiet.
James was in the corridor in his good coat, his governess a step behind. He was looking at the floor.
Annabelle crouched to him. “James.”
He looked up.
“You played very well tonight,” she said. “I want you to know I was proud of you.”
He looked at his shoes. Then at her. Then at Dominic, briefly, and back at her.
“I was worried,” he said. “When I sat down. My hands went—” He made a small movement with his fingers.
“But you sat down anyway,” Annabelle said.
“I knew the piece.” He paused. “You said I knew the piece.”
“You did.”
He nodded, filing it. “Thank you,” he said. He looked at Annabelle and then at Dominic. “For the lessons. For tonight. It was a good night.”