A Song Unheard

by Roseanna M. White

  Her fingers curled into his arm for half a second, then she forced them to relax.

  “That must have been difficult. I cannot imagine those early years without my father.”

  And she could not imagine early years with a father. Or with a mother who wasn’t looking for him every time they stepped out of their flat. It had struck her as sad for a while there, when she was old enough to realize that it wasn’t quite normal to always be searching for what never showed up.

  Then he had. Sort of.

  Willa couldn’t even remember seeing him across the crowded street. She just remembered the way Mum had sucked in her breath. The way the fingers around hers had gone painfully tight. They’d stood there, in the middle of the road, holding up traffic, for too long a moment. Until someone jostled them out of the way.

  Until Mum had seen where he’d gone.

  Then she’d bustled Willa back up to their flat, told her to be a good girl and that she’d be back directly. With Papa.

  Willa had put on her best dress, though it was far from pretty. She’d combed her hair and washed her face and sat on their faded sofa in their faded front room. And waited. And waited. And waited. Day had turned to night; exhaustion had overtaken her.

  She’d been six. Just six. Being left for a few hours was no new thing for her, but when she’d startled awake the next morning, she’d seen the note on the floor.

  Mum had taught her to read. He would expect it, she’d said. He was a man of intelligence, of education. She must make her papa proud.

  She could still remember the feel of that paper—expensive, thick, rich. Better paper than Mum ever could have purchased. She could still feel the way her heart pounded as she opened it up. It would tell her to meet them for breakfast, perhaps. Or to pack her things, because he would be taking them with him in a few hours.

  She could still see the words swimming before her in Mum’s hand.

  I’ll come back for you when I can. You’re a clever girl, you’ll get along. Mumma loves you, Willa.

  “Willa? Are you well, ma cherie?”

  “Just ducky.” She shook off the memories, the emptiness. The anger. Her mother had made her decision. And Willa had decided then and there that she wouldn’t be like Mum, always waiting for someone else to show up and make her life better. She hadn’t waited for her mother’s return. She took what she could, and she left too.

  If Mum had ever come back, Willa hadn’t been around to find her. She’d forged her own path. Made herself into her own person.

  But she knew in her gut that her mother had never come looking for her. And her father had never wanted her. And if either were still alive—which she sincerely doubted—then they deserved whatever ills befell them.

  Only when the light shifted did she realize they had reached the hotel, and that Lukas had led her inside the lobby. She had missed the other half of the walk as surely as she had the first.

  Acceptable only if she were walking with Barclay or Rosemary or the rest of her family. Not when she was arm in arm with her mark. The man in brown could have jumped into their path, and she wouldn’t have seen it.

  Stupid.

  Lukas’s smile was small. That particular degree of warm that said he understood and would make no demands on her.

  But he shouldn’t have understood. He couldn’t have understood, with only the few words she’d given him. And the fact that he’d grown up with loving parents who had sent him to school and hired him a violin teacher and given him pocket watches with sappy inscriptions when he finally grasped hold of his dream.

  She stood and waited while he disappeared to fetch the picnic basket, wrestling her wayward thoughts into control. No more preoccupation. She had a job to do, and it didn’t include ranting at God. Or her parents. Or kissing Lukas De Wilde.

  It would be back to London after she found this key. Back to bribing stage boys to let her sneak in for a few stolen minutes of music. Back to her trusty alley outside the London Symphony’s practice chamber. Back to that stubby little stage in Pauly’s pub, where everyone knew her and cheered her on and had no idea if she was playing an Irish folk tune or a masterwork by Vivaldi or Paganini.

  Her gaze swept the lobby with its elegant appointments and rich colors. She didn’t need this life. Didn’t want it. All the fine things came with high expectations, with demands on one’s freedom and very soul.

  But the music. She would miss the music when she went home. Miss sitting in the audience and hearing the notes soar overhead, even if the conversation baffled her afterward. Miss being invited to sit in on rehearsals. Miss sifting through that box of sheet music that Lukas had at their lessons and choosing whichever she wanted to try to learn.

  A melody echoed through her head now, some elusive combination of the sorrow and the joy. Inspired, no doubt, by what those others had written before her. Probably some odd combination of their compositions. She could almost, almost, hear it clearly today. That aching sadness of what she’d never had—minor notes, long and smooth. That raging anger at those who had decided her fate for her—quick staccato, heavily accented.

  A hand touched her elbow, and the notes broke through with startling clarity for one moment. Then went silent.

  “Are you ready?”

  She could manage no smile, but she nodded and let Lukas lead her back outside and into the overcast, wind-whipped day.

  An auto sat at the curb, and this he moved toward, a lopsided grin on his face. “One of these days, when I am in a given city long enough to justify it, I will have one of these. What make, do you think?”

  “Rolls-Royce.” Perhaps she picked the most out-of-her-grasp one she could think of. Perhaps because she knew it was out of his grasp as well.

  But the blasted man wouldn’t be offended. He chuckled. “I daresay not. Although that concert in London, when the dukes were there—the Duke of Stafford was telling me about his Rolls-Royce.”

  She gave a heavy blink. “You were talking to a duke about cars?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . because it’s so normal. And he’s a duke.”

  Lukas chuckled and opened the passenger door of this car for her. She couldn’t have said what make it was, but certainly no Rolls-Royce. “He is just a man, mon amour. With a wife who is determined to have a Renault.”

  A couple who could afford two high-priced automobiles? She shook her head and slid into the closed cab. “And there are children starving in the streets.”

  Lukas paused with his hand on the door, ready to close it behind her. His eyes were sharp. Not the kind of sharp that sliced—the kind that considered. “They are generous benefactors to many—the Staffords.”

  She lifted a brow. “I daresay they give only what doesn’t make them feel a pinch. And how is that generous? It is only worth noting if it hurts.” Like Pauly, who gave what he didn’t really have to keep orphans from starving. That was benefaction worth touting. But no one ever would, because he didn’t make his donations with a newspaperman on hand to sing his praises.

  “Hmm.” Lukas’s lips pressed together, but he didn’t look at all put out by her pronouncement as he rounded the car and got in on the driver’s side, sliding the picnic basket to a rest between them. “I suppose I’ll prepare myself for a life of feeling pinched, then, oui? You will apparently give all our surplus to the poor.” He made a show of tilting his head. “It is a good use for it. And I daresay there will be many poor in Belgium after this war—perhaps you will approve us helping them?”

  Of all the . . . “You are infernally exasperating. There is no ‘we’ or ‘us’ to help them. But you are certainly welcome to give all you can.” It was a fine idea, really. If the papers told it true, the Germans had obliterated many a town and village when they marched through the tiny nation. It made her stomach sink to think of all the children now homeless. All the mothers who would now be struggling to feed and clothe them.

  “Well, look at this.” He reached out the open window and t
ouched a hand to a mirror. “To see behind us, I suppose? I have never driven one with mirrors.”

  There was one on her side as well. Willa leaned toward it to get a better angle. How interesting. Perhaps with this she could get more than a fleeting glimpse of the rusty-brown jacket. “But you have driven before, correct?”

  “Do you not trust me, ma cherie?”

  “Trust is earned, along with friendship.” The street behind them had another car puttering down it and two carriages drawn by horses. Most of what was to be seen, however, were people milling about in their Sunday best, tugging children along with them.

  She missed the little ones. Having one of them scramble up onto her lap and loop an arm around her neck. The way they looked at their big brothers and sisters with complete trust. Earned, to be sure. They’d taken them in when they had no one. Fed them as best they could. Clothed them. Taught them how to survive.

  Now they’d be taught new things—properly educated, thanks to Rosemary and Peter. Taught things like history and philosophy along with the basics of reading and writing and numbers.

  She was glad. Glad they’d have chances she never had. And yet . . . it was only because of someone else’s generosity that they could give them that. Rosemary’s new husband. And, in part, Mr. V, who had paid the family quite a handsome sum to guarantee their loyalty to him.

  “And off we go.” Lukas pulled onto the street. “Though we are not going far. Just to the castle—we could have walked, were it not for the hamper.”

  The drive would take only five minutes, yes, but it took them up onto a hillock that would offer a very different view than the close-set walls and buildings of the little city. Willa set her eyes on the crumbling turret as soon as she could, and beyond to the green hills of the countryside. So that she could pull the images out again during the bleak London winter, along with the strange sights she had seen on the train into Wales—sheep grazing on hillsides, hills rising all about them, heather and yellow-flowered scrub plants vying for dominance.

  “It does not look too busy today.” Lukas pointed ahead, to where the old castle tumbled in upon itself.

  She drew in a long breath. London had its share of ancient sites, to be sure—but not like this, left to the wind and weather. Her city hadn’t patience enough to let a building crumble naturally. “Beautiful.”

  “The cook at the hotel said it is a perfect spot for picnicking.”

  Her shoulders relaxed against the back of the seat. “Perhaps this day won’t be so terrible after all.”

  Lukas chuckled. “Good to know you were so looking forward to our afternoon together.”

  She certainly hadn’t been. But she had a job to do, and she aimed to finish it as quickly as she could. Another week, perhaps. She would get back into his suite and search his bedroom. They had no concert this week though. She would have to risk it during daylight hours, while everyone was at one of their practices.

  Her gaze latched onto the mirror. That same automobile from the street outside the hotel was still behind them, though the carriages had vanished in some other direction. What color was the jacket of the driver? It was too shadowed in the car’s interior to make it out. “I’m not much for the getting-to-know-you nonsense. I hardly know how to do it.”

  “It is easy. You tell me a bit about you, I tell you a bit about me.”

  Easy. Right. “You start.”

  “All right.” He kept his gaze ahead of them as he puttered up the hill toward the castle grounds. “What would you like to know about me?”

  Where you keep your secrets. She waved a hand. “I don’t know. Your family?”

  “Ah.” A smile overtook his lips. “A good subject, to be sure. You will like my family, mon amour. I only wish you could have met my father.”

  She rolled her eyes at the idea of ever meeting those who remained. “What was he like, beyond being a brilliant mathematician?”

  “A brilliant mathematician.” He chuckled and angled an amused gaze at her. “It was what everything came back to with him. Mère says that she tried for weeks to get his attention when they first met, but she did not succeed until she decided to embroider a theorem into her sampler. That he saw, though he had walked by her blindly for weeks.”

  Willa’s lips twitched up too. “Why was she so determined to catch his eye?” He must have been wealthy. That was the usual reason, wasn’t it?

  But that answer didn’t match the softness in his eyes. “To hear her tell it, she knew the moment she was first introduced to him that she wanted to spend her life with him. She was a great beauty in her day—she still is, quite honestly—and she had her pick of beaux. But she said they all bored her. When she met Père, she knew he would not.”

  “She wouldn’t be bored by mathematics?” Willa shook her head. His mother must have been rather inclined to it herself, if that were true.

  “There is something so very alluring about genius.” He sent her a teasing gaze, a crooked smile. “I suddenly understand that.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “So I am the genius and you the pretty one in this equation? And you think if we can re-create your parents’ circumstances, we can re-create their happiness?” She snorted her opinion of that.

  It did nothing to dampen his smile. “So you admit you find me handsome?”

  As if he could draw her into a trap so easily. Willa sent him a glare. “You know well you are, but don’t try to make something of it that it’s not. I’m immune to handsome faces.”

  “Ah, but it does not matter, n’est-ce pas? I have already found the equation that will secure your attention.” He pulled into an empty lot near the castle ruins. “You want to keep playing my Strad, you must keep spending time with me.”

  “Hmm.” That car behind them continued straight ahead, but it slowed more than the road required. Watching them, she’d bet. Just as she’d bet the man inside had middling brown hair and a rusty-brown jacket. “That may result in affection for your violin. It does not necessitate affection for you.”

  “You pierce me through, ma cherie. But I am relentless. I will win you over by my sheer determination.”

  She couldn’t see the car anymore as Lukas killed the engine and reached for the door. But tension possessed her shoulders again. “You’ll waste your time, and then I’ll be gone. I’m only here for a short visit, Lukas. Then it’s back to my own world while you stay in yours.”

  “But we share a world. Music.”

  How wrong he was. But then, their worlds were overlapping for another reason too. One she would never admit to him. Then there was Cor, who came here following her and was now working for him.

  And the man in brown.

  She drew in a long breath as Lukas came round to open her door for her and shot her a warm smile. He was a man with a bull’s-eye on his back, and did he even realize it? Did he realize that the same danger that had met him in Brussels was stalking him here too? Well, perhaps not the same, but it was surely linked.

  His father, brilliant as he may have been, had made the De Wilde family targets.

  She didn’t return his smile, warm or otherwise. “Are you afraid for them? Your mother and sister?”

  Pain overshadowed that too-handsome face. Like, but not like, what had been in his eyes due to his shoulder. “Terrified. But I will trust, as my mother begged me to do. I will trust there is a God strong enough to see them to safety. And I will find them.”

  “I’ll help you, if I can.” The words were out before she could stop them. They hung there in the air, accusing her of stupidity—this was not her job, was not why she was here.

  But she could do her job and help him find his family, couldn’t she? Not because she was going soft. Just because she, better than anyone, knew the pain of not knowing where one’s mother was. And could imagine that echoing note that came when it was not by one’s mother’s design. And when a sister was missing too.

  If any of the family were to vanish, she would turn the world upside down looking fo
r them. They all would.

  His fingers gripped hers long enough to help her out, but then they drifted away. He was respecting her boundaries right now, though he seemed happy enough to push them at other times.

  “Thank you, Willa. I do not know how you could help, but . . . thank you.”

  She was more capable than she intended to let on. But for now, it was enough to offer a small smile. To look around at the nearly empty site that would probably fill as the afternoon wore on and more picnickers left their church pews and sought recreation. To note that moving, man-shaped patch of brown on the far side of the castle.

  Oh yes, she could help him more than he knew. And it was going to start by turning the tables on her follower.

  Thirteen

  Margot placed a black stone on the game board and wished she dared to put it where she really wanted to. When the war was over, she would have to find someone trustworthy to play Go with her, so that she could at least once be good at it. Lukas could learn. He may claim not to be interested in such things, but she hadn’t been able to beat him at chess until she was eight—and even now, he occasionally won a game.

  He was more than he let on most of the time. Just like Maman.

  Across from her, Gottlieb hummed, thoughtful. He wasn’t quite so hideous when stationed at a game board rather than trying to charm her mother. He would be even less hideous if he were wearing normal clothes rather than that awful uniform.

  But no. He probably slept and bathed in the thing. She’d never seen him without it.

  He flipped a white stone between his fingers as he debated his options. She had chosen the position he wanted, she was sure. It was one of the reasons she had put her piece there. Even a dunce could have seen it was his next move.

  “Your skill is improving, fräulein.” He offered a small smile and leaned back in his chair as he surveyed the board. “It is a pleasant pastime for a lazy Sunday afternoon, is it not?”