The Protégé

by Brianna Hale

  Maybe. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

  As I dress in my tuxedo I find that I’m humming the joyful part of Dvořák’s Ninth and that I’m actually in a very good mood. Lighter and happier than I have been in a long time. I was able to make Isabeau happy. We’re performing together, tonight. Life, unexpectedly, is very good indeed.

  When I’m dressed I head out and I smile at Marcus as we wait for the elevator to take us down to the lobby. He’s in black tie as well and gives me a sharp look.

  “You seem cheerful. Over your jetlag?”

  “Something like that.” The doors slide open and I start to whistle as we get into the elevator.

  At half-past seven I’m in the wings, watching the orchestra on stage tuning up and the audience waiting patiently for the performance to begin. I take a deep breath and stride out in stage, shaking Marcus’ hand and then bowing to the audience. They applaud, and then settle into silence as I take my place at the podium.

  Isabeau, sitting just a few feet away, glances up at me and her face doesn’t change, but a pink blush blossoms in her cheeks and a smile threatens to break over her face. Fuck, she’s too perfect. I watch her glance at her sheet music, the blush still bright in her cheeks, the smile still hovering at the corners of her lips. She’s thinking about what we just did together and she’s calm, not nervous in the slightest.

  I look out over the orchestra, all my musicians with their instruments poised. I love this moment. The perfect silence and stillness of a thousand souls behind me, waiting. I raise my hands and give the first downbeat and the music begins. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Isabeau. My Isabeau, her bow whipping across the strings of her cello.

  We play three dates in Singapore and they’re all superb. I couldn’t be prouder of the orchestra and I couldn’t be prouder of Isabeau. She’s getting to know her fellow musicians and there’s a smile on her face everywhere she goes. Seeing her so radiant takes my breath away.

  On Thursday morning we have a short flight to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. The string and woodwind sections have to check their instruments with the airline due to space restrictions with our local courier and we all wait in a long queue. I wait with them rather than swan off to the business class lounge, talking to Marcus about the program for the coming weeks.

  A few feet in front of us Isabeau leans sleepily against her cello case. She’s tired today, the pace of the tour and the early start catching up with her, and seems to prefer standing quietly rather than talking to the others. Her gaze wanders and she spots a piano forte a few feet away, one that anyone can play. Isabeau wanders toward it and her fingers trail idly over the keys. Plink plink plink. Then she frowns and plays a short melody. My heart starts to pound as I recognize it. A few people in the queue turn to look at her.

  Isabeau plays the gentle melody again and then turns and sees me watching her. “Laszlo, play Vocalise with me?”

  I look at her with a dry mouth. The piano is right there, waiting for a pianist, and she has her cello. What better way to pass the idle minutes than to play something beautiful? Except that she doesn’t understand this song causes me as much pain as it does pleasure.

  A few orchestra members around us have overheard her request and they add their voices, amused by the idea of their conductor actually sitting down and playing some music for a change. My eyes lock on Isabeau and I know I can’t say no to her, even now. It will hurt me, but make her so happy.

  We don’t have the sheet music but we don’t need it. This piece is burned into my soul. I could never forget it, not if I lived for a thousand years.

  I sit down at the piano and regard the ebony and ivory for a moment. It’s a clean, well-kept instrument and when I play scales I find that it’s perfectly tuned. Isabeau sits on her cabin bag with her cello between her knees, bow poised, and looks at me expectantly, her eyes eloquent with feeling.

  She knows.

  Not the pain I feel, but she knows how special this song is to us. That it always was and always will be something that connects us on a deeper level than mentor, mentee; guardian, ward. That we pour our feelings into it when we’re unable to find the right words to say to each other.

  I play, and she joins me, and everything else falls away. There’s just the piano beneath my fingers, and her. I watch her as I play, her eyes closed as she plies her bow across her mother’s cello, lost in the music, every one of her notes twining around mine. It’s as close as I’ve ever got to her, playing this piece. Closer even than when she’s snuggled in my lap in her underwear, cheeks flushed, behind reddened by my hand. Because this is the only way I get to tell her how I really feel.

  We finish playing and those around us applaud. A woman with tears in her eyes comes forward and embraces Isabeau, and whispers in her ear. When she draws back Isabeau gives her a quick smile and shakes her head, and starts to put away her instrument.

  I take her cello from her and look toward the check-in queue and find it has shortened dramatically. I don’t see the people around us as she stands quietly by my side. I’m still lost in the music we played. When she performed it alone in the Mayhew I heard only sorrow in the notes she played. Now there’s not quite so much grief, but I still hear its echoes. I’ve always thought that music is a far superior medium than words when it comes to communication, but for the first time in my life I feel that it’s not enough.

  Tell me, Isabeau. Show me everything you’re feeling.

  But I know it’s not fair to ask her to confide in me when I can’t do the same for her.

  When we’re through check-in and security and heading for our gate Isabeau pulls me aside, moistening her lips as she looks up at me. “Laszlo. It’s very special to me, that song. I can only ever play it with you.”

  I want to reach out and touch her, but I’m conscious of everyone around us. “It is the same for me, sweetheart. Always has been.”

  She looks at me for a long time, words hovering just behind her lips. What does she want so badly to tell me? But I don’t find out because she turns and hurries away.

  That afternoon we arrive in Kuala Lumpur and not long after we’ve checked in there’s a knock on my hotel room door. I open it and see Isabeau wearing a tank top with a plunging neckline and a bra that seems to be pushing her breasts up. Her red hair is in a long plait hanging over one shoulder and there’s a faint pink bloom in her cheeks. She looks like a juicy peach and I want to sink my teeth into her.

  “Sir,” she says, as softly as a bow barely touching cello strings. She’s biting her lip and smiling. “I feel nervous again.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Isabeau

  Now

  We haven’t even got a performance tonight. It’s a rest day. I wonder if I should elaborate on my supposed nervousness but Laszlo merely takes me by the hand, leads me to the couch and waits for me to get over his knee.

  I catch his hazel eyes when he looks up and a blaze of desire shoots through me. I don’t feel nervous in the least. The last time he spanked me I touched myself thinking about him, my hand inside my damp underwear the moment I got back into my own room, back against the door, fingers working my clit furiously. I came in under a minute. I didn’t even have time to scrape together a coherent fantasy. Just hands—chest—strong—heat—Laszlo.

  I slide down over him, wondering if Laszlo thinks that way about me. If he can, now I’m older. He pushes the skirt I’m wearing up to my waist and both his hands squeeze my behind. I feel something akin to a groan deep in his chest against my thigh. He takes a moment to unbutton the sleeves of his shirt and roll them back, and I wait, my body humming with anticipation. I crave how much this will wind me up sexually even as it calms me down emotionally. I watch him out of the corner of my eye as he pushes his cuffs past his elbows, and the anticipation is making me wet. He’s got beautiful forearms, lean and strong and veiny. I used to watch them openly at youth orchestra rehearsals, wondering why I found them so fascinating. Admiring their str
ength, the dusting of dark hairs, the way the muscles in his arms move.

  “Longer this time, I think,” he murmurs, and the first strike of his hand catches me by surprise and I squeal. He works me over thoroughly until I’m a sweaty, panting mess, my behind and the backs of my thighs on fire. He goes on and on, and the pain recedes behind a wave of heat and arousal that makes me melt across his lap. I don’t care if people can hear as long as he doesn’t stop. My shirt rides up and I’m almost bare to him as I squirm in his lap.

  He smooths the flat of his hand down over my flesh and I know he’s finished. When he helps me up I’m smiling woozily. He pulls me tight against his chest and I burrow into him, his shirt cool against my hot cheek.

  “That feel good, sweet girl?” he asks, and I mumble my assent. Taking me by the shoulders he sits me up and looks sternly into my eyes. “What do you say?”

  I feel another surge of wetness between my legs. That dark glimmer is back and I lick my lips. “Yes, thank you, sir.”

  “That’s better,” he says, sleek satisfaction in his voice as he pulls me against him. Mine, I think, burrowing my face against his chest, drunk on this surfeit of the man I’ve always wanted. His hand slips beneath my shirt, caressing my back. When he hums to himself his lips are against the top of my head and I want to cry from happiness.

  “Good girl,” he murmurs softly.

  The next afternoon I’m back. And the next. I can’t help myself.

  Laszlo doesn’t question why, or exclaim over how nervous I’m pretending to be. He just lets me in and gives me what I’m asking for. Thoroughly. Harder by increments each time, making me cry out against the sofa cushions and squeezing tears from my eyes. The harder he gets the more I want, and more again. Then he strokes me and murmurs loving words and holds me in his arms. I’ve never known anything like it. The longer and harder he spanks me the more he fusses over me afterward. Stern, fierce Laszlo being soft and buttery with me, his cool fingers smoothing the hot tears from my face and telling me I did so well, what a good girl I am. I can’t get enough and I want to feel even more vulnerable as I’m prone across his lap.

  Standing close to him while he holds my hand to lead me to the sofa one afternoon, I say, “I’m worried about people walking past and hear me crying out. Will you gag me, sir?”

  “Of course, Isabeau.” He finds a handkerchief in his suitcase that came with his tuxedo, puts it between my teeth and ties it behind my head. He reminds me that I can still use my safeword when I’m gagged this way and he’ll understand what I’m saying.

  The next time I want to be gagged again, but I also add, “Sir, I think I squirm about too much on your lap and I don’t want to. Will you tie my hands together?”

  I’m not worried about the noise. I don’t think I squirm too much. If he knows what I’m doing he pretends he doesn’t. When I’m gagged and he’s tied my hands behind my back he rakes me with a long, heated look but doesn’t say anything, just moves past me to sit down on the sofa. This time when he spanks me he hooks two fingers into my underwear halfway through and yanks them up. I give a muffled moan as the fabric rubs tightly against my clit and sensitive parts. He pretends not to notice. He doesn’t remark on my underwear being wet, either. Because I am wet. I’m very wet.

  Later, at a drinks reception hosted by the patrons of the concert hall we’re playing in, Laszlo comes and stands beside me. “Good evening, Isabeau. Do you like my tie?” he asks, stroking his fingers down the silk.

  My eyes widen as I see it’s the same one he bound my hands with a few hours earlier. “It’s ah, very nice.”

  Before he moves away he murmurs in my ear, “I like that you like it, very much. It’s important to me that you’re happy.” I watch as Laszlo takes a glass of champagne from a waiter gliding by and then he turns away to talk to Marcus.

  He likes that I’m happy. He must know that what we’re doing doesn’t just make me happy, it makes me aroused and wet. Why is he pretending he hasn’t noticed? Is it so I don’t get embarrassed? Or is he letting me know that he knows what I’m doing when I ask to be bound and gagged, that I’m finding new ways to be submissive to him?

  There are things I pretend not to notice, too. That the knots Laszlo binds me with are practiced and neat and nothing ever needs to be retied. That there’s a hungry glint in his eyes when he looks at me, bound and gagged. And that when he spanks me, Laszlo gets hard.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Isabeau

  Then

  “Can’t we play it just the two of us? Please? Like we always have.”

  Laszlo’s slicing vegetables for a stir-fry and doesn’t look up. “And leave the whole orchestra sitting silently? Sweetheart, that would be a waste of their talent.”

  I take a piece of carrot from the chopping board and chew it, thinking. In just over a month’s time I’ll be eighteen and too old for Laszlo’s youth orchestra, a thought that makes me feel horribly sad, like being told I’ll never go back to Narnia. I and four other members will be graduating at the upcoming Summer Concert and we’ll each be performing a solo piece. I want to play The Swan, of course, and I want to play the arrangement for cello and piano and perform it with Laszlo. “I just think it should be special, that’s all.”

  He smiles down at the chopping board. “It will be special because you’ll make it special. I’m the conductor, not the pianist. What am I supposed to do, boot Celeste off her instrument?”

  “She’ll do whatever you tell her to do.”

  He eyes me from beneath the lock of sandy hair that’s fallen into his eyes. “Now, is that fair on Celeste?”

  I suppose he’s right, but I’m just going to miss being in the orchestra so much. I’m going to miss living with him even more as in a few months I’m going up to Durham to study music and I’ll be living in halls. I’ll only see Laszlo during the holidays and on weekends. I’ll take the train up to London as many times as possible, and he’s promised that during the week when he’s not performing or rehearsing he’ll come and visit me.

  Three long years away at university. Away from Laszlo. But after that—excitement fizzes through me—I’ll be a properly trained cellist. “Can I join your orchestra when I graduate?”

  Laszlo presses the point of the knife into the cutting board and regards me. “I’ve been thinking about that. Not just lately, but many times over the years. I want that so much, sweetheart.”

  But. I can see the unsaid word written all over his face and panic makes me stop chewing. He doesn’t think I’m good enough for his orchestra?

  “Remember all those times you’ve talked about being a soloist?” he asks.

  I start chewing again, thinking. “Well, yes. I want that too, but I just love playing with you so much. I’ll still have to play with an orchestra behind me a lot of time as a soloist, so why not yours?”

  I remember what he said to me all those years ago when I debuted at the Mayhew with his orchestra. Solo pieces are a collaboration between the soloist and the conductor. You bring your own vision for the piece and I interpret it for the rest of the orchestra. I love that sense of collaboration between us. He knows me better than anyone. I don’t want any conductor but him.

  Laszlo nods. “And you will, but you’ll be so famous that I’ll have to beg you to come back and play a show or two at the Mayhew with my orchestra. I want it to be that way, even though I…” He trails off and goes back to chopping.

  I feel bereft at the thought of all the performances he’s imagining for me that aren’t with him.

  “What about Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim?” I ask. “They were always together. Why can’t we be like them?” Du Pré was a famous cello soloist in the sixties and Barenboim was a conductor and her husband. Everyone wanted to see them perform together with his orchestra until her career was cut savagely, painfully short by multiple sclerosis. Her biography was one of the books that Laszlo gave me to read when I first came to live with him and I’ve never forgotten her. I’ve reop
ened that book many times over the years and run my fingers over the many glossy pictures of them smiling at each other, working alongside each other. They’re perfect together. Cellists and conductors were meant to be.

  Laszlo slices a chili in half. “Not always together and du Pré was famous in her own right before she met Barenboim.” He looks up at me. “You’re going to make a name for yourself, Isabeau, without my help.”

  Laszlo wants to be sure this is what I want, and that people will value me for me and not because of his reputation. He wants me to stand on my own two feet.

  Fine. I can do that. I will do that. When I’ve graduated I’ll be such a famous soloist that Laszlo will ask me again and again to play with his orchestra.

  I bite savagely into a sugar snap pea, thinking of the eight cellists in his ensemble who sit close by him night after night, and I’m green with envy.

  “If one of your cellists is sick and it’s the weekend or I’m on holidays can I please, please fill in for them? I’ll jump on that train the second I get your call. You know I can play anything.”

  He thinks about it, turning up the heat on the wok. “All right. If you’re not busy with your studies and you feel confident about the piece we’re performing then of course you can. You’d be very welcome.” Laszlo smiles at me, though it’s not a smile that reaches his eyes.

  I watch him as he cooks, and think of how he hasn’t hugged me for such a long time. The smiles that slide off his face too quickly. Is he sad? Because of all this talk of me going away?

  I say in a husky whisper, “I’m going to miss you so much.”

  Laszlo stills, and when he looks up at me I see my own pain in his expression. He reaches out and strokes the backs of his fingers my cheek, his eyes running over my face. “I’m going to miss you, too, sweetheart. I won’t know myself without you.”