23. Gretchen
Gretchen
The party started at five o’clock sharp, and Tennyson was already at the harpsichord when the first guests trailed into the great hall.
Apparently Cristian’s friends were wealthy enough to secure last-minute costumes, because by the time he’d finished warming up on the strange keyboard, the hall was awash in Victorian skirts and tailcoats of varying colors.
Most of them skewed dark, but a handful of jeweled tones glowed under the dim lights.
Tennyson paid them little notice. His eyes were on their feet, noting and dismissing the myriad dress boots and heels and dance slippers as he searched for the work shoes Hartmann and his men would be wearing.
Costumes could be changed, and the masks Louna had devised to disguise Lindsey would disguise their enemies as well—but nobody ever thought to conceal their shoes.
He began “Faust Symphony”, willing the music to calm his nerves.
It was a new sensation, feeling anxious on a job.
Normally, he just did what was necessary and was done with it.
If something went wrong, he corrected and kept going.
Death came for everyone, eventually, and the threat of it didn’t scare him.
But tonight, it wasn’t only him at risk.
Cristian came in some time during the second movement, recognizable only by the presence of Louna on his arm.
She beamed around the room, speaking to the guests as he led them through the crowd, and skillfully avoided Tennyson’s eye as they drew closer to the harpsichord.
She was completely at ease, and Tennyson envied her control.
“Marvelous!” Cristian told him, when he was close enough to speak.
He didn’t say anything else, and when Tennyson glanced up during a rest, he found Cristian studying the room with a look of satisfaction visible even from under his mask.
Louna had secured her victory, at least in their host’s eyes.
She could probably steal her intended artifact in front of him, and he would find a way to excuse her.
When Tennyson looked up the next time, he found Louna watching him with a soft smile. She had something to tell him. She’d asked him to trust that she would do it, when everything was over—and he appreciated that she had chosen to wait. He needed to be able to focus. He should be focusing now.
But when she looked at him like that…
The second movement was slower than the first, introducing Faust’s romance with Gretchen and slowly merging her melody into his.
They complimented each other, twining together like paint on a palette, like fingers, like lips.
In Liszt’s symphony, it would have combined flutes and clarinets, oboe, viola—but he had only the plucked strings and they keys beneath his fingers, and he wondered how much Louna knew about the song he was playing.
Did she notice the way he articulated each note as Faust’s theme became recognizable in Gretchen’s?
Did she understand why he slowed down as he entered the recapitulation?
He let the final chord hang in the space between them, and when Louna parted her lips to let out the breath she’d been holding, he launched into the third movement.
This was another variation of Faust’s theme, twisted and warped by the influence of Mephistopheles on what had once been a pure melody.
His fingers shifted across the keys, light and loose, the way his father had taught him.
The crowd was settling in now, letting the haunting echoes fade around their speech, embracing the atmosphere Louna had crafted for them.
It was working out exactly as she’d planned.
Over an hour had passed since he’d begun the piece, and once again, he felt a sharp glow of appreciation for Louna’s foresight.
She had orchestrated the whole event beautifully, conducting each section as thoroughly as any director.
He played the final notes with his eyes on hers, and she beamed at him as he let the last chords fade into nonexistence.
The crowd broke into applause, and Tennyson accepted it with an awkward bow as Louna swept forward to thank him for opening the musical section of the evening.
“We are fortunate to have such a talent,” she said, taking Cristian’s place as host so he could remain unrecognized. “And we look forward to the second set later in the evening. But for now, please enjoy the talents of Adina Florea, our celebrated guest.”
The crowd clapped again, and a woman in a pale gray gown came forward. She wore a mask ringed in silver rose petals, and she flashed Tennyson a smile before lifting a panpipe to her lips and beginning a mournful melody.
Cristian caught his arm before he could escape, pulling him close so he could speak without raising his voice.
“You really were incredible,” he said seriously.
“Adina is a friend of my father’s, so I had to invite her, and everyone has heard her play.
But you—you are new, and I think you have left an impression. I would love to hire you again.”
“I work for Maria,” Tennyson answered. “You’ll need to talk with her.”
Cristian nodded. “Of course. Please, don’t let me keep you. You must enjoy some refreshments before your next set.”
Tennyson bowed his head and backed away, almost sorry that he would not be performing again.
He’d enjoyed the harpsichord more than he thought he would, and it had been nice to play a kind of concert once more.
The last time he’d done anything like that was when Bastian had him play in the background during his business meetings.
The attention hadn’t been on him, then, and he’d improvised as much as he played the sheet music Bas provided. He never knew the difference.
This, performing a solo to a room full of people… it was a taste of what his life might have been, if he hadn’t left his father that night. If he’d gone to college like they’d planned, if he’d lived up to the faith his family had put in him.
It was a ghost, nothing more.
But it was not unpleasant.
He looked to Louna, who whispered something into Cristian’s ear and hurried to meet Tennyson. “Pretty good for someone who doesn’t play harpsichord,” she said, smiling.
The couples around them were dancing, but Tennyson resisted the urge to pull her into his arms. “It’s a beautiful instrument,” he said in a low voice. “Where did you find it?”
“Cristian had it delivered,” Louna said.
“No,” Tennyson said deliberately. “The one Cristian had delivered was brown. This one is black.”
Louna turned to look at it, obscuring her eyes behind her mask. “Was it?”
He spoke in a hush barely above a whisper. “Louna.”
“Perhaps he changed his mind,” she said. “I’m sure there are all kinds of things tucked away in the castle. He may have found it when he was clearing some of the other rooms out.”
She was lying. Even now, after everything—at the time when they most needed honesty, she was lying to him.
He’d broken her trust in him.
Tennyson took a breath, holding it in his chest as he studied what he could see of her face. The lighting in the hall was dim, and her features were hidden in flickering shadows.
There are things I have to tell you.
She had asked him to wait, and he’d given her his word, whatever that was worth. He exhaled and touched her hand below the long cut she’d also lied about. “When this is over,” he said, holding her gaze.
She curled her hand to put her palm in his, and nodded.
He released her and weaved his way through the crowd, out into the main hall and into the kitchen, where he’d left the go bag with Lindsey’s costume.
The Verdier brothers were inside chatting with some of the staff, but they gave him only the barest of acknowledging nods as he slipped in and out of the room.
They would be listening as well, waiting to make their way to the van at Louna’s signal so they could be ready when Tennyson and Lindsey came out.
“Got a guess on how many guards are near you?” Tennyson asked.
“I counted three sets of footsteps,” Lindsey said. “But there may be more. It’s hard to tell through the door.”
Three wasn’t bad. In the mood he was in, three was almost good. “Stand away from the door,” Tennyson said. “If I have to break it down—”
Lindsey cut him off. “We’ve already been over this, Tenny. Just get in position and try not to have a stroke.”
He wanted to grumble at that, but it felt like too much work.
Instead, he shouldered the bag and made his way outside, stepping into the windy gloom of the outer courtyard.
The sun had set, and a rumble of distant thunder made him frown at the sky.
“I’m outside,” he said, for Louna’s benefit. “Almost ready.”
She didn’t answer, but she would still be surrounded by people inside the hall, so that wasn’t unusual. He made his way to the wall where he’d found the hidden door and leaned against it, watching the clouds roll in.
It looked like things were about to get interesting.