A Song Unheard

by Roseanna M. White

  But if it were her, in her, then why could she never pull it from her own head to her fingertips? Why could she only reproduce, never create? Why did the magic stop just short of what she really wanted it to do?

  In a ritual she’d been doing for over a decade, she clasped the violin to her chest. The music had, those first days, felt a bit like . . . belonging. Like family. Like if she played the right notes, her parents would reappear. If she could just conjure up the right tune, it would summon them.

  But none ever had. And she didn’t want them to show up, not now. She didn’t need to look into the eyes of the woman who had deemed her nothing but an imitation of love. Something to be cast aside when the real thing appeared again. She didn’t need to meet the father who had never even wanted to admit she existed.

  So why this yearning to bring out into the air the notes that clamored inside her soul? Why this unshakable idea that if she could, she would somehow have something she lacked?

  “It isn’t your fault,” she whispered to the wood. “It isn’t your fault I can’t ever find the right notes. It isn’t your fault you’re not an expensive instrument. You don’t need to be.” It was hers. Her magic violin. She set it carefully into the scarred case and closed it up. She wouldn’t think of it as less, as missing something—she wouldn’t.

  It was her. And it was enough. She was enough, her life was enough.

  Laughter floated up from somewhere downstairs. She hadn’t expected to like the sisters so much, but hearing their joy brought her back to her feet and pulled her toward the doors. They were sweet women. And she had a feeling that even if they knew who she really was, where she’d come from, they wouldn’t look at her any differently.

  Gwen had seen her violin, after all. And called it a friend.

  She let the music of their voices pull her downstairs and into the little salon at the back of the house, where the afternoon sunlight shafted down. Where Daisy sat with her frizzy hair and Gwen rubbed her sore fingertips.

  Miss Blaker was stationed by the window, embroidery in hand and a smile upon her face. Though she hadn’t gone out today, she was still dressed in stiff, proper style with a high lace collar complete with a cameo brooch.

  Worth a pound or two if she were to fence it, nothing more.

  Daisy sat at the little secretary, a stack of papers in front of her. She held one in front of her, her gaze on her sister. Gwen had chosen the sofa and now motioned Willa to sit beside her.

  “Come, sit. Help us choose which causes to support.”

  “Causes.” Willa kept her voice even as she lowered herself to the cushions. She’d encountered plenty of people interested in causes in London. Ladies in large hats and taffeta gowns who paraded through a hospital in search of some cause to make themselves feel benevolent.

  She hadn’t, somehow, pictured Gwen and Daisy like those women, despite that she knew they volunteered at the local hospital. They had seemed genuinely concerned for the patients, that day she had accompanied them. They’d taken each one by the hand and prayed for them. It was more personal than a cause.

  “We get so many requests.” Daisy sighed and set the paper back onto the desk with a shake of her head. “Sometimes it is . . . exhausting. To try to discern which we should entertain and which we should dismiss.”

  Miss Blaker sent Daisy a tight, crooked smile. “I know many a person who would happily take on such exhaustion.”

  “Or simply waste the means, you mean.” Daisy shook her head. “It was no work of our own that earned us this fortune, as well you know. It is our duty not to trifle it away but to see it does some good in the world. That is what the Lord asks of us.”

  Gwen nodded along. And sighed. “I wish we could do more.”

  “You are funding an entire orchestra.” It couldn’t be cheap—and was, in Willa’s opinion, the best sort of cause. Bringing music to life. Enriching a whole town, a country once they began touring. And sending money back to Belgium besides.

  “Yes, but . . . it isn’t us, is it? It’s the money.”

  Now it was Daisy who nodded along with her sister, albeit as she gently coughed. “It is all we can ever do, really, aside from visit a few people in the hospital and write letters for them. We can give of our abundance but never do anything.”

  Willa flexed her fingers against her knee. She had the opposite problem—plenty to do, innumerable ways to get her hands dirty doing it, but never enough pound notes to be sure the problem didn’t return the next day. She could wash dirty children, brush the tangles from their hair, hug them, and whisper assurances that they mattered.

  But what did her words really accomplish, when their bellies were empty and they shivered in the cold?

  These sisters, however . . . What stopped them from doing both? “So then do. Do something active.”

  Miss Blaker snorted. “Don’t encourage them, Miss Forsythe. They are of delicate health, and they cannot go gallivanting into gutters in search of orphans to rescue.”

  The snarl started somewhere in her toes and curled its way up through her middle. “So better to toss money at some organization that promises to go to those gutters for you? Is that what your precious Jesus did?”

  She didn’t know where the question came from. How she even knew to frame it. Something Rosemary or Peter had said—it must have been.

  Miss Blaker narrowed her eyes. “Our Lord was a man. Not a young woman. A carpenter, not an heiress. We each have our purpose.”

  “Yes, but she’s right.” Gwen rubbed at her fingers. Were they paining her now, or had it just become a habit? “Christ went where He was needed. He didn’t just send others, He went.”

  “Be reasonable, girls. It is perfectly acceptable to send others where you cannot go—TJ and the major, for instance, going into Belgium. Could you have gone to find the musicians? No—it wasn’t reasonable. But you accomplished a great thing through them. You may have saved the lives of those musicians. You will enrich the neighborhood. And in the process, raise more money to send back to their neighborhoods.”

  “Yes, but . . .” Daisy rested her elbow on the desk. “It is so little in the face of an ongoing war.”

  “You don’t think it will be over soon?” Willa regretted the question the moment she’d asked it. If they believed that, they wouldn’t have gone to the expense of recruiting Belgian musicians and creating a relief fund through their efforts.

  The sisters exchanged a glance. Burdened. Solemn. “I cannot think so,” Daisy muttered. “The lads are digging in. The Germans have been repulsed at the Marne, it’s true, but they have dug in as well.”

  Willa’s stomach went tight and bruised. Trenches. Soldiers in them, with guns aimed and bullets flying. Georgie could well be in one of those holes in the ground. Shooting at other lads like him, just in different uniforms. Getting shot at.

  She almost wished she knew how to pray. Or that she believed there was a God up there who would care if she did.

  “Do you have someone in the war?” Gwen’s words were so quiet, Willa scarcely heard them. A faint note caught on the breeze and nearly blown away.

  Her face must have betrayed her. She cleared it. But couldn’t bring herself to lie. “My little brother Georgie. He signed up nearly the minute war was declared.”

  “Three squares a day, Will,” he’d said. “Can’t beat that, can you?”

  But you could. You so very well could. Better to be a little hungry and not have bullets whizzing over your head, by her estimation.

  A soft, warm feeling started at her fingers and worked its way to her heart, stilling a few of the worries. It took her a long moment of blinking at the carpet to realize Gwen had taken her hand. And that she didn’t mind.

  “We shall pray for him,” she whispered. “Every morning. Every night.”

  They would. Willa didn’t doubt that. What she couldn’t quite understand was why she was glad of it.

  So many years she had wondered what it would be like to sit with other musicia
ns, to share in their conversation, to be one of them. An hour into the dinner, Willa sat at the elegantly set table in exactly that company and knew her fears from that first concert had been right: It felt like she was a thief, and she had stolen the seat of someone else. Like any moment someone would realize what she’d done and boot her back to the gutter.

  She understood their talk now—mostly. A few times they mentioned a particular section of a particular piece, and she realized she’d not been pronouncing the Italian words properly as she studied them. And certainly she didn’t always know the music by its name and composer. But still, the conversation she could now follow.

  The place setting she could navigate well enough, thanks in part to having eaten at the Davies table these past weeks, and partly from the training the family had all given themselves with the aid of a book in order to blend in to the society functions they occasionally snuck into in order to lift a few pretty baubles.

  The relationships she could understand. Jules, with his puppy-dog eyes aimed at Enora Peeters. Enora, who was wary but leaning toward being convinced. Lukas, who had spent the entire hour subtly complimenting his friend and deprecating himself.

  That little triad was easy enough to categorize. Why she was among them, her place, she couldn’t have said.

  Enora laughed at one of Jules’s jokes and sent Willa a look that said, Men! What silly creatures.

  Willa smiled her reply. She knew the look. Had sent it herself to Rosie or Lucy or Retta. But she didn’t know this round-cheeked Enora with her enormous dark curls. They had no business exchanging looks.

  Jules swirled deep red wine in his cup. “I, for one, will be ready to travel when the tour begins. This is a charming town, to be sure, but . . . so small, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Ja.” Enora looked out the window, into the lamplit street. “Two more weeks, and then we will see more of Wales.”

  “Oui.” Jules’s gaze traced Enora’s profile.

  Willa’s lips twitched. It was sweet, watching him watch her. And funny how she would answer his French with Flemish and vice versa.

  When Enora looked at the table again, Jules quickly glanced away, toward Lukas. “You will be ready to repair to a larger city, I imagine. Lukas quickly grows bored in small towns.”

  Did he? Willa turned to watch his reaction—and didn’t bother correcting him on calling Aberystwyth a town, when it did meet the definition of “city.” Lukas hadn’t seemed particularly stir-crazy in her presence. Then again, she hadn’t been particularly so in his either, though she was a London girl through and through.

  That same self-debasing smile touched his lips.

  She didn’t like that smile on him. Which was strange, because she would have thought she’d prefer it over the self-possessed one. But there it was. Lukas De Wilde wasn’t meant to put himself down. It didn’t suit him.

  “I prefer larger cities, to be sure.” The unbefitting smile shifted to something better, something smoother, when he looked to Willa. “London I enjoy. I do, in fact, have to make a quick trip to London in the next few days.”

  He would be away? For days? She couldn’t ask for a better opportunity for searching his room. Unless he took the cypher key with him.

  Jules frowned at him. “London? Porquois?”

  “I have heard of someone there who may have news of my family.” He reached for his wine, took a small sip. Sent Enora a polite gaze. “Is your family still in Belgium? Are they well?”

  “Yes and yes. The soldiers did not come through our town. My family stayed and was none too pleased with me for leaving.” The woman sighed. “They deemed it cowardly.”

  Jules cleared his throat. “Mine all went to France. But then, being from Louvain . . .”

  Enora offered him a comforting smile and a few comforting words to go with it. Her eyes remained shuttered though. Her parents would judge his, by that indication. A mark against him.

  Lukas wouldn’t take the key with him, would he? Willa was all but certain it wasn’t something he carried on his person. Not on the pocket watch, and he wore no other jewelry. It couldn’t be in his greatcoat or shoes. But who knew what he might pack?

  A waiter arrived with their pudding on a tray, and Willa leaned back to let him slide hers in front of her. Something apple and cinnamon and warm and gooey. Her mouth watered. Barclay would be so jealous—he adored apples.

  Barclay. Her fingers closed around the fork. That was the answer. She could take the time to go through every speck and sheet of paper in Lukas’s hotel room while he was gone. And she would get word to Barclay to check whatever bag he took with him. They could simultaneously cover every last thing he had with him in Wales.

  She’d send him a wire first thing in the morning. A bite of the apple stuff melted on her tongue as she mentally composed it. M coming home. Meet and greet. Check. Anyone to intercept it wouldn’t understand, but Barclay would. M for their mark. Coming home to indicate London. Find him, check his bag.

  She had only to procure a bit more information and knew doing so would be a breeze. A simple smile aimed at her companion and a casual question. “When will you be leaving? For London?”

  “I did not have time to check the trains yet, but I hope to go tomorrow.” His eyes sparked, dark and deep as mystery. “I do not suppose you want to come along? We could meet your family as well.”

  A strange note laced his words. Something warm and yet frightened—frailty hidden under gumption. Hope, she realized. This man at her side, infamous for charming young ladies and leaving them behind, had actually pinned his hope on her. Invested a piece of his heart.

  It made no sense. And made another strange note twang, this one inside her. She hadn’t the name for it. But it made her almost, almost wish she could go with him. See what it felt like to bustle through a train station with her hand tucked into the crook of his arm. To sit beside him in the posh seats of first class and watch Wales and then England chug by. To tug him into Pauly’s like Rosemary had done with Peter and introduce him to her family.

  But he thought she came from a respectable one. If he saw where they lived, the Poplar neighborhood surrounding Pauly’s pub . . .

  And she had a job to do here.

  She sighed, though, and made sure her returning gaze was warm and regretful. “I’m afraid most of my family is not in London just now anyway. And it would be rather rude of me to leave Gwen and Daisy during our visit, when I’ll be going home for good so soon.”

  Disappointment flickered through his eyes, but it was swallowed up by logic. He was no doubt realizing that having her there would distract him from his true purpose in going anyway. He sent her that heart-stopping grin of his. “Perhaps absence will make the heart grow fonder then, as they say.”

  Heavens, she hoped not. But if it did, she would simply have to deal with it. Get herself under control. Remind herself that it was only allowed to hurt when family left, and he wasn’t family. Far from it.

  He was just a mark.

  They finished their apple-things, chatted a few more minutes, and then Lukas claimed to have to get her home and made their farewells. Perhaps in truth he wanted to give his friend some time with his sweetheart alone.

  Or, she granted when he tucked her gloved fingers into their place on his wool-clad arm once they were out in the street, perhaps he wanted time with her.

  “I am not certain what time I may leave tomorrow.” His voice was a breath against the quiet streets, a little white puff in the chill air marking each word. “I likely will not see you again before I go. Our lessons will have to wait until I return. Which will probably be the following day, or the next. I cannot think it will take me longer than that.”

  She nodded and wondered how much affection she should put in her eyes as she looked up at him. Then realized with more than a little frustration that it was a moot question. Because something must have been in her eyes without her even realizing it, given the way his softened in the glow of the lamp. A little sigh slipped out
in a little cloud. “Would you send a note round when you leave, and when you get back?” So she could pass the word along to Barclay, that was all. Not because she would miss him.

  “Of course.” Satisfaction filled his voice. Hers must have reflected something more than she’d meant it to, as her eyes had done.

  Blast it. She couldn’t like him. She wasn’t that stupid.

  So why, when he drew her out of the lit path and into a little night-clad garden that probably belonged to one of the houses nearby, did she make no objection?

  Because, perhaps, it could be viewed like . . . summer. Short, fleeting, to be enjoyed while it lasted. The autumnal winds of reality would prevail soon enough. Why not enjoy the warmth while it was here?

  The night looked good on him. Better than it should, with the way the shadows carved each feature into something precise and extreme, chiseled a stronger ridge onto his nose, below his cheek, his jaw, and the moonlight kissed the planes. He was . . . beautiful. If she could wield a paintbrush as she did a violin bow, she would want to put him to canvas as some classical figure whose name she didn’t even know.

  The leather of his gloves touched her cheek and rested there. The dark of his eyes caught the moonlight and turned it into something more. “Will you let me kiss you again before I go?” The murmur wrapped around her like an embrace.

  She hadn’t, at the end of any of their lessons. For good reason. “No. That would be stupid. And Willa Forsythe isn’t stupid.” Except that she was, apparently. Because even while she said it, she leaned toward him, strained up on her toes.

  One of his arms slid around her waist and helped her close the distance. “Ah. But you can kiss me. I see.” And found it amusing, given the turn of his lips in the second before hers found them.

  Music. It came in a burst, all brightness and joy and fast, high notes. But not the wispy kind, to be blown away in a stiff breeze. Undergirded by the deep strength of a bass. It grew as his lips caressed hers, increased in tempo, then slowed to a sudden pulsing when he pulled away just a fraction, enough to rest his forehead against hers.