A Song Unheard

by Roseanna M. White

  The code words were likely to get a bit ridiculous if they kept this up. “He came over nipping at my heels. But my new friend joined us and shooed him away within moments. Still. He’ll no doubt have sniffed out where I’m staying.”

  “Regular bloodhound, apparently. I’d thought him just a mongrel.”

  “So then?”

  A static-filled hum crackled into her ear. “Maybe he just likes you. Maybe it’s nothing to worry about.”

  A ridiculous statement that hardly deserved a reply. “Dogs don’t just like me, Barclay. Not enough to follow me home.”

  “I daresay that’s not exactly true—but in this case, we’re not talking about following you a street or two, so I’ll grant the greater point. I—what?” A moment of muffled noises. “Retta has a rather cogent suggestion. For all the friends V has, he must have some rivals as well. And those rivals may have some well-trained pets of their own.”

  Her stomach would never unknot again. What was she involved in? And why had it seemed so much better than just lifting wallets from overfed, upper-class marks? “Do you think he’s dangerous?”

  “We oughtn’t to assume he’s not. But keep your head. Learn what you can about him, but otherwise focus on your purpose there. And for heaven’s sake, don’t let him smell your fear.”

  “I’m not afraid of some stray dog.” Much. Just uneasy, that was all.

  “Right.” The distance did nothing to cover his amusement at her expense. “Well, listen. Ring me here whenever you need me—I’ll try to be home every evening at this time, me or the girls. And when I meet with V tomorrow, I’ll probe a bit. Much as I can.”

  “Meet with V?”

  “Apparently he’s work needs done in London yet too. He was at Pauly’s last night. Doesn’t pay as well as your job, but . . .”

  But they’d be fools to turn down whatever he offered. Who knew how long it would last? But in the meantime, they could perhaps save a bit for a rainy day.

  And they had scads of rainy days.

  “All right.” She straightened and drew in a long breath. “I’ll just do what I do, then.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Well enough. I met Lukas De Wilde yesterday.” Her eyes slid closed. “He gave me a violin lesson this afternoon.”

  Were it Retta or Lucy or Elinor or Rosemary, a squeal would have come over the line. But it was Barclay. He offered only a scoffing laugh. “You don’t need lessons. You’re the best.”

  Her lips turned up. Sometimes she loved his scoffing. “Apparently my posture’s rubbish.”

  “Always looks fine to me.”

  “Well, what do you know?”

  He laughed, minus the scoff this time. “Granted. Hey, Retta asks if you’ve found any original music yet.”

  “Almost. Tell her De Wilde has a composer friend—I’ll have got one in no time.”

  “All right, well. Listen. If you need any of us, just give the word. We’ll be there. Help you get control of this pup.”

  Of course they would. Because they were family. “I know. Tell Luce and Ellie I said hello and all my love and all that.”

  “Mm. Be careful, Will.”

  “Carefuller than careful.” But theirs wasn’t a safe, careful life—he knew that. Their family motto was all about danger: With the greatest risk comes the greatest reward. Even so. The greatest risks meant the greatest preparation, the greatest planning, the greatest caution. That was the only way to master them.

  They said their farewells, and Willa set the receiver back into its hook. Then just sat there for a long moment, staring at the deep, warm brown of the desk.

  Her brows knit. Brown. The man following her yesterday and earlier today had been wearing a brown jacket.

  But Cor’s had been buff. Closer to white than brown.

  Her stomach knots knotted. Either he’d changed his jacket during her lesson for some bizarre reason or . . .

  Or Cor Akkerman wasn’t the only man following her about Aberystwyth.

  Music filled the cavernous room in a way she hadn’t realized was possible. Willa had thought she’d known how big the world was—or how big her world was, anyway. But as she sat in the darkened symphony hall on Saturday, in an actual seat, beside other music lovers, having gained entrance with a ticket rightfully paid for . . .

  The world grew. It expanded well beyond questions of Cor or Mr. V or men in brown jackets, pushed all those dreary concerns from her mind. It unfurled wings that sounded like melodies soaring to the heavens and plunging to the deepest depths.

  She wore the second of her evening gowns, lovingly stitched by Rosemary into a prettier style than the ones her hostesses wore, and she’d jammed pins into her hair until it didn’t dare slip out. She knew she looked like the others around her—not the elite of London, but someone who could afford to sit in one of these chairs legitimately. And for the first time in her life, she almost wished she rightfully belonged here. So that she could experience this again and again, with her family beside her.

  The catwalks hadn’t done it justice. And that beloved alley outside the practice chamber—that barely held a candle to this, where the high ceiling caught the sound and made it more.

  She felt, as she listened to the ninety musicians following the motions of the maestro into a frenzy of musical bliss, as though she were seeing true beauty for the first time. She felt bigger and smaller all at once. More alive. Closer to death. Fear and peace, love and sorrow. She felt like she never had before. And it left her with energy coursing through her veins, stinging her fingertips.

  Could she really play as those people on the stage did?

  Her gaze traveled through the darkness and to the platform awash in golden light. Traveled along the other sections until it caught on the only section—the violins. There were many of them, all looking equally talented as their bows drew along the strings, as their fingers pressed and flew.

  Lukas, of course, sat on the end of the row closest to the audience. The position of honor—first chair. His posture perfect, his arms moving with the same ease and mastery as his colleagues.

  Only because the Davieses had gotten them seats so close could she see the expression on his face. The pain hiding in it. It had progressed as the night went on. Now, as their second encore came to a rousing end and the audience gave a standing ovation, he smiled as the rest of them did. But the pain lurked there in his eyes.

  He looked her way, though she doubted he could see her through the stage’s lights. Then he stood along with the others, bowing.

  The maestro bowed deeply, hushed the audience with a hand, and bowed again. “This evening is dedicated to Miss Gwendoline Davies and Miss Margaret Davies, with the sincere gratitude and appreciation of this orchestra. It is because of you, ladies, that we have a hope of helping our beloved Belgium. Thank you. And again, thank you.”

  Applause roared through the hall. Willa joined hers to everyone else’s, chuckling a bit at how the bashful sisters flushed. She could have sworn she could feel the heat of their blushes coming off them.

  Or maybe it was something else. She glanced toward the stage again and saw that Lukas De Wilde was most assuredly looking at her. Not the sisters. Her.

  Never mind that. Chatter sprang up from a hundred places as the house lights brightened, and Willa didn’t need to remind herself of her cover story to smile. How could she not smile? At this moment, she didn’t think she’d ever stop smiling.

  If only Rosemary had been here to share it with her. And Barclay. And Retta and Lucy and Elinor.

  As it was, she had only Miss Blaker to turn to as the sisters were pounced upon by some eager couple in overdone evening wear. “That was lovely,” she breathed. The understatement of the century, but she had to be careful not to gush too much.

  Miss Blaker nodded with enthusiasm though. “Indeed. Such a talented group! I have never heard Symphony in D played so well. The maestro is quite a visionary, don’t you think? I was enthralled by his interpretatio
n of the first section by the time he reached the cadence.”

  Cadence? Wasn’t that just a beat—how could one reach the cadence? Willa cleared her throat. “Indeed. Visionary is exactly the word I was thinking.”

  “And the piece they played by one of their own—he is no Bach, of course, but the motivic transformation was rather splendid.”

  The . . . what? “Yes, I imagine he has quite a future as a composer.” Willa edged a few inches away from Miss Blaker, toward the Davieses. Perhaps the sisters were using normal words.

  But one of them was saying something about “the tutti.” And the bloke in the row behind them was chiming in with something about “a well-placed échappée.” And bit by bit, Willa’s smile required force.

  It wasn’t fair. Not even a little. This was her language, her greatest love—music, dazzling in its brilliance.

  So how could these people manage to take what she knew by instinct, from that place deep inside her, and make it confusing?

  Her gaze went to the stage again, where the musicians were filing off to put their instruments away. Decked out, each and every one, in the most elegant of clothes. Posture perfect. Instruments of the highest quality.

  They would know, every one of them, what a tutti was. And an échappée. They would know, the moment she opened her mouth in their presence, what Willa was not.

  She was not one of them. Whatever Lukas De Wilde might tell her, she’d do well to keep that truth always in mind.

  Willa Forsythe belonged in the alley outside their practice chamber. On the catwalks overhead, backstage. She could fake her way into the audience, apparently.

  But never upon the stage. If ever she tried it, they’d all see her for exactly what she was: nobody.

  Nine

  The knock on his door brought Lukas’s eyes open, but he hadn’t the energy to rise. His shoulder was on fire, sending aches coursing all down his arm. And his back. And up to his head. And, if he focused on it, all the way down to his toes.

  The wound was festering. He’d given in and called for a doctor again this morning, and the man had poked and prodded around inside his shoulder, pulling out a few fibers that had apparently not been removed along with the bullet on the boat.

  He’d soon be “right as rain,” the man had claimed.

  Lukas didn’t know what was so right about rain, but he wasn’t inclined to believe the mustachioed man with the round belly, given the torment he had inspired with his blasted pincers.

  And why would that blasted knocking not stop?

  “Lukas! I know you’re in there.” French words. Jules.

  Lukas hooked his not-screaming arm over his eyes. How could it be so bright in here when he hadn’t any lamps lit and the sun was on the other side of the building? “Go away.”

  “You don’t really want me to do that.” A moment of silence, and then the jingle of a key brought Lukas’s arm down again. Had the man finagled the master from the front desk?

  Partly, he saw as the door opened and Jules strode in. The clerk had walked him up and unlocked the door for him. And didn’t have the good grace to look abashed about it. What kind of attendant was he, letting people into other people’s rooms? He ought to get the man sacked.

  Jules strode into the living area, a stack of something or another in hand. “Don’t be angry with him—the doctor gave him instructions to check on you if you did not come down for luncheon. I convinced him I would do the job for him.”

  Lukas grunted and covered his eyes again. “Go away. Let me die in peace.”

  The stack of something or another slapped the low table before the couch on which Lukas rested. “You’re always so amusing when you’re sullen.”

  “I’m not sullen. I’m in agony. I’m about to gnaw this arm off and be done with it.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Jules lifted Lukas’s good arm and looked from one eye to the other. Though what he was checking for was anyone’s guess. “Did you take the medicine he left for you?”

  And fog up his mind before his lesson with Willa? “Non. I don’t need it.”

  “You’ll just gnaw off your arm instead.”

  “It would be more effective.”

  Jules rolled his eyes and straightened. “I sent a note round to the Davieses, letting Miss Forsythe know you’re in no condition to give her a lesson today.”

  “You what?” He strained toward sitting—then collapsed with a groan back onto the cushions behind him. How could one little bullet wound in one little shoulder make his whole body useless? “Send another one round then, saying you were mistaken.”

  “Perhaps I would, if I were.” Jules helped himself to a seat in the chair adjacent to Lukas’s sofa. “Don’t be an idiot, Lukas. You need to rest. You were all but in tears by the end of the concert Saturday night—”

  “I was not.”

  “—and then you were stupid enough to try to practice yesterday when you ought to have been resting.”

  Well, he’d had to practice. He’d messed up the section at Bar 180 in Bach’s Symphony in D on Saturday night, and that wouldn’t do. And since Gwen Davies had informed him that there would be no lessons on Sundays and that they were already engaged for dinner, how else was he to fill his time?

  He’d barely gotten to exchange two words with Willa on Saturday after the performance. He’d scarcely spoken to her at all since walking her home on Friday. How was he to know if that Cor fellow was still bothering her, if he never got to see her? If her hostesses and then his idiot friend got in the way?

  “Lukas. You won’t want some strange girl you’re trying to impress to be here for this.” Jules leaned forward and picked up the stack. Envelopes, now that Lukas blinked his eyes clear and actually bothered to look. Quite a few of them. “The hotel in Paris finally forwarded your post. There’s a letter from your mother. Postmarked before the invasion.”

  “What?” Now he did sit up, agony be hanged. And stretched his left arm out for the letters. “And you let me go on about my arm?”

  “Because two minutes will make all the difference?” Shaking his head, Jules held tight to the stack rather than hand it over. “I can stay. Or I can go. But I need your word that you’ll meet me in the dining room at seven, either way. You’ll eat, and you’ll be reasonable, and you’ll not fall into a brood or worse, and you’ll certainly not go off on another tear.”

  He hadn’t been the only one to go off on a tear when the news had reached Paris of the Germans’ invasion. They both had. The only difference was that Jules had actually found his family, safely escaped to France already, while Mère and Margot seemed to have vanished with the wind.

  No, there were two differences—the Germans hadn’t been lying in wait in Brussels for Jules, hiding in his townhouse with weapons drawn.

  Lukas nodded, hand still outstretched. “You have my word. Dining room at seven. And I would like to be alone.”

  Jules set the stack onto his palm but didn’t release his gaze. “This won’t answer your questions. Don’t expect it to do so. She wrote it before any of this happened.”

  “I know.” His questions could only be answered by being there, by finding them. Or by somehow getting in touch with them now. But telegraphs had been shut down in Belgium. Post wasn’t going through. Newspapers weren’t even being printed—which must be a special kind of torment for Margot.

  The German army had his country in a stranglehold.

  If only Jules had left him there, he’d know by now. He’d know whether they were alive or dead or . . . He’d have found them and brought them all to safety.

  Jules rose. “I’ve new ammunition now, so for that I thank you. You do realize, I hope, that if I hadn’t brought you here, hadn’t accepted the offer from the Davieses on your behalf, you never would have met your Miss Forsythe.”

  His friend had a point. Though, intriguing as the young lady was, he never would have traded his family’s security for a pretty—or not so pretty—face, no matter how masterful she was with music. Eve
n before the world fell apart. Though if he were looking for the proverbial silver lining in his current situation . . .

  Jules shook his head. “You’re utterly incomprehensible, do you know that? All the most beautiful girls in Europe throw themselves at you—girls with money and family names and influence—and you set your sights on some nobody from London at whom no one else would ever look twice.”

  If no one else looked twice, it was because they were fools, all. And he was happy to let them be.

  But it wasn’t exactly accurate either. That Flemish farmer parading about in a jacket that didn’t fit him had obviously looked. There was something about that Cor Akkerman that put Lukas’s teeth on edge—and it wasn’t just the way he’d treated Willa. Though granted, that was a large part of it. It was . . . It was . . . something. Perhaps when pain wasn’t fogging his mind, he would be able to pinpoint it.

  Jules muttered a mild near-curse and shook his head. “Whoever would have thought that Lukas De Wilde, playboy extraordinaire, would fall in love at first sight with someone like her?”

  “It wasn’t love at first sight. It was intrigue at first sight.” He flipped through the stack of envelopes, not caring a whit about any of the others. Just seeking that familiar handwriting. “Love at first listen.”

  Jules snorted. Which had rather been his point in saying it—a tease that, in turn, proved him not quite out of his mind with pain, didn’t it?

  There. His mother’s script, elegant and easy. His hand shook as he plucked it out and let the other letters fall where they may. “All right, perhaps not love. But she is something special. Would you have me ignore that? What if she is the one meant for me?”

  His friend folded his arms over his chest. “My mother always says that the one you’re meant to marry is simply the one you do marry—it’s not a matter of romance, it’s a matter of deciding to love and make it work.”

  “And how do you decide who to marry in the first place, hmm?” He studied the words on the envelope, though they were nothing noteworthy. His name, the hotel in Paris he’d been staying at, the direction. He flipped it over and tore open the flap.