14. Chapter 14 #2
Cassius ran his thumb along the edge of the keys, set his fingers on them, trawled through his options, and settled on Rosetti.
The notes flowed like water. After the fire, Karl had baulked at the cost of this piano, but Cassius had insisted.
He’d praised the piano in Covent Garden, knowing the comparison would send Karl wild, but really, it had been a selfish request. He closed his eyes as he felt the song, waiting for the melody to block out the words and confusion, waiting for the song to suffocate the clamour inside.
Normally, the keys worked as some messy refuge, not because they brought him joy, but because they allowed him to wallow.
But today, they offered no escape, because his thigh prickled with the memory of Odette beside him on the bench, and his mind itched with the image of her sinking to her knees before him.
Those glorious eyes fixed on him as she sucked him.
The way he’d played her until she rutted against his fingers with desperation.
His body ached for her, and every night he dreamt long, deep dreams of her in his bed, of his name on her lips.
Needs. She’d said it. They’d both said it. It was nothing more than fucking. She was a beautiful woman, and almost every man in London dreamt of her. They were only ensuring that their ruse of a relationship held up to interrogation by not risking a liaison with someone else.
Soon, he’d find more lonely wives and widows for his bed in Vienna. He always did.
Pack. That’s what he ought to do. He shouldn’t be here, playing.
He should return home and finish packing for Vienna, where he would stand before the best musicians in the grandest theatres and make them follow his baton and his cursed left hand.
That would shake her from his mind. Half of his belongings already lined the hallway, stuffed inside crates and boxes. He needed to organise the rest.
‘Mr Zadora?’
Cassius flicked his fingers off the edge of the keys. Ezra was hovering in the doorway, a few pages of the score glued within his grip as always. He held his opera close, clutching it to his chest like he expected the notes and quavers to flee from the paper if he dropped his guard.
‘I didn’t know you played so beautifully.’ Ezra moved into the room, his tone perilously close to an apology.
‘All conductors have an instrument,’ Cassius said. ‘But I do not play. Not like that. Not any longer.’
‘But you’re an excell—’
Cassius rubbed his fingers across his brow. ‘Mr Northcote. What do you want?’
The composer let out a long sigh. His shoulders slumped as he walked to the edge of the pit.
He paused in the gap between the wall and the rim of the stage that offered the sliver of a view into the auditorium.
‘What do any of us want?’ he said, his voice heavy with wistfulness.
‘To be a renowned composer. To have my songs published, to have people buying the sheet music and playing it with their family. To be remembered. I want the opera to be famous, for people to talk about it, to play it. Can you imagine, people in a hundred years still playing The Loom Weaver like we still play Tancredi? I’d been writing songs for a small publisher, not sure I would ever amount to anything, when Mrs Crofts offered to sponsor me.
This is my one shot at fame. I just want to know I am up to the task. ’
Cassius cursed under his breath. Damn composers, always ready for poetics. ‘I mean, what do you want from me. Why are you in my pit?’
‘Oh.’ Ezra stared down at the score. ‘I can’t decide how a scene should be played out. I thought hearing it might help.’
‘Here.’ Cassius rose, the bench seat sliding back with a groan as it dragged over the wood. ‘I am done.’
‘Will you play it for me? I’ve played it a hundred times, and I can’t decide why it doesn’t work.’
‘Which song?’
‘Marietta’s lament to the moon.’ Ezra tentatively offered the sheet. Cassius grumbled. Of course it had to be this song. ‘Please?’ Ezra inched the page a little closer. With a sigh, Cassius snatched the paper and set it before him. With one hand, he played the melody.
‘Can you play the chords also?’ Ezra asked. ‘I need to hear it fully.’
Cassius obeyed, not even reading the music, as he already knew the score. As the notes echoed through the theatre, Ezra paced, mumbling to himself, occasionally lunging into a dramatic pose. It was a beautiful song. Perfect for Odette’s voice.
And thoroughly adequate to the task.
Ezra clapped his hands before him.
‘That’s it!’ His words thundered through the auditorium. ‘Apologies,’ he added, a little lower. ‘I know what needs to happen. It’s too heavy. It needs to be lighter. Less bass. More strings. Do you think that will help?’
‘We can play it tomorrow,’ Cassius said. ‘Then we will know.’
‘You’re very good.’ Ezra nodded at the piano. ‘Do you compose?’
Cassius scoffed. ‘Conducting is enough trouble. I do not have time.’
‘Wagner conducts and also composes.’
‘Good for Wagner,’ Cassius snapped.
‘Cassius wrote beautiful songs,’ a new voice joined them. ‘Once.’
Damn it. What was Odette doing down here? What good was having a pit, his very own little hovel, if all the stage people just traipsed into it whenever it suited them?
‘There were no songs,’ Cassius countered, emphasising the s. ‘Just the one.’
He forced his gaze to remain fixed on the piano, not wanting to look at her because he knew she would be beautiful.
And yet, he needed to anchor the phrase just the one, had to pass it to another person who shared the memory.
So many of his own were adrift and untethered, flittering about like burnt paper in the breeze of his own recollections.
Karl had installed the best lamps for his musicians, and the lights bounced off the walls and converged on each other, drawing the eye relentlessly towards her.
They lit her not like she was onstage, but with the same warmth that had embraced her as they walked through the park near her home.
Her hair golden, her body a map of knowledge and secrets, of smooth curves and hidden strength.
And that lilt of a mischievous smile.
Ezra, doe-eyed, rocked on his heels with barely contained elation. ‘Would you play it for me?’
‘I don’t remember it,’ Cassius snapped.
‘I do.’ Odette crossed the room like the pit was her stage, tucked her dress beneath her, and sat beside him, so close their thighs touched. She smelt of berries and powder, of linen and light. She tinkered with a few keys. ‘It began like this. Didn’t it, Zadora? Your song?’
He hadn’t written it. They had. He’d chased the keys, and she had followed, tapping out notes and slamming down chords, brushing, laughing, throwing back shots of vodka from mismatched glasses and eventually, singing, singing in French, singing in Italian, singing in Polish, and stupidly, stupidly, in English.
And from the chaos, they had pulled together something fragile.
Something beautiful. Something too perfect for words.
It was one song. Just one song. A meaningless song without an audience, a score, or a purpose.
It was nothing.
‘I told you,’ Cassius snapped, as he shut the fallboard, ‘I don’t remember it.’
And he swung himself from the bench and stormed to the door.