A Song Unheard

by Roseanna M. White

  Her poster of Lukas De Wilde had been tacked to the wall.

  She stopped in front of it with a heaving breath. And positioned the photograph on the little table under it.

  “I still can’t believe you got to meet him.” Ellie appeared at her side, looking up at it as well. “I mean, for longer than I did. It isn’t right for a man to be so handsome, is it?”

  Willa chuckled and slid an arm around her little sister’s shoulders. “It isn’t. It ought to be some kind of crime.”

  “And yet I bet that whole time you were there, you never thought to get an autograph. Did you?”

  She turned raised brows on Ellie, with her too-pretty features and her rosebud smile. He hadn’t looked twice at her, Barclay had said. Nor at Retta. Both of whom were far prettier than Willa. “No. Can’t say as I did.”

  “Good thing you have me around, then.” Ellie stretched up and moved the edge of something white under the tack holding the poster up.

  A program. From that solo concert of his that she’d sneaked into—she’d rescued this from the street out front, where some careless patron with more money than sense had let it fall.

  And scrawled on the front now was: To Elinor, For the sake of the music. Lukas De Wilde.

  “Sorry it’s to me. Would have looked a bit strange had I asked for your name instead.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Thank you, Ellie.” For the sake of the music. She turned back to the violin she’d set on the bed. To the promise of blank staff paper.

  She had a bet to win.

  “I am not taking you to a tavern.”

  Margot folded her arms over her chest and weighed the value of adding a pout. No, that would just cement in her stubborn oaf of a brother’s mind that she was a child. Which would rather defeat her purpose. “It is not a tavern, Lukas. It is a pub. I have heard nothing but good things about Pauly’s.”

  And more important, her brother hadn’t. Or so Barclay had assured her when they’d concocted this plan this morning.

  Lukas shifted from foot to foot and surveyed the room in which she spent her days. Sir Alfred Ewing had promised them more room soon, but at the moment it was little more than a cupboard of a chamber attached to his office. Still—it was a cupboard that buzzed with energy. A cupboard filled with all the most beautiful things—papers and puzzles and books.

  Papa would have loved it. Even with the chaos of all those men in the close space, it was heaven.

  Maman would be back any minute with their coats, and she would help with the convincing, if necessary. But if Margot could not manage it beforehand, what kind of a little sister was she? “Please? Mr. Culbreth says the food is—what word did you use, Mr. Culbreth?”

  “Hmm?” The man sitting nearest her desk looked up, his eyes still foggy with thought. Then he glanced between her and Lukas and seemed to sift through the words he’d no doubt overheard, even if he hadn’t focused upon them. His smile said he knew her grand plan was underway.

  He was a good sort, this new neighbor of hers.

  “Brilliant. Had a meat pie there three days ago that’s still filling my dreams.” He wisely didn’t mention that he’d had said meat pie when Barclay cajoled him into leaving his desk and going to Pauly’s pub for a late supper.

  Lukas’s mouth was still far too tight a line. “But is it appropriate for young ladies?”

  “Oh, there are hordes of ladies and little ones there this early.” Most of them were Barclay and Willa’s so-dubbed siblings, but Mr. Culbreth was too good to mention that too. “And I hear there will be music tonight. I’ve half a mind to knock off early and go over myself. I can show you the way, if you like.” He leaned back in his chair.

  “Please, Lukas?” It had to be tonight, Barclay had said. Willa would not only be there, she’d be playing. And according to what he’d told her, Lukas would be a “goner”—whatever that was—as soon as he heard her play again. And Willa, Barclay assured her, would be over the moon to see Lukas.

  She wasn’t entirely sure what Barclay did at Whitehall. He didn’t seem to answer to Ewing, but she’d seen him once talking to the director of Naval Intelligence, Captain Hall—who seemed to count Mr. V a friend. Whatever the case, Barclay made an appearance on one out of three days. She was still trying to determine if she’d be able to count him a brother when her brother married his adopted sister. The mathematics didn’t really seem in her favor there. But she would claim it anyway. His family didn’t seem to care about such trifles as blood or legalities when it came to family. She could approve of that.

  Lukas sighed. It sounded three times as heavy as it had before all this had happened. “I am really not feeling up to it, ma petite.”

  “And how long until you do? Must we all sit at home every night until then?” It was a low blow, she knew. But a sister had to resort to such things now and then. When it was for her brother’s own good.

  Another heavy sigh, but something in his eyes shifted. “All right. You win. Supper at this Pauly’s pub.”

  But he didn’t smile—she’d been able to count on one hand the smiles she’d earned from her brother since they got to London. They had to change that. It couldn’t be healthy to have so few smiles.

  Maman returned, her brows raised toward Margot, who gave her a confirming nod.

  Lukas was questioning Mr. Culbreth, asking about the direction, apparently. Hopefully her brother didn’t know London well enough yet to realize it was in a poor part of town. The tube would disguise the fact as they traveled, and hopefully the darkness of the November evening would aid them in the short walk from there.

  Barclay had already drawn her a map of where to go. But she let Lukas get the direction as well—it would make him feel better, to think he was the one leading the way.

  Margot slipped into the coat Maman handed her, not missing the prayer her mother muttered as she put on her own. A prayer for Lukas’s happiness—and for healing of his broken heart regardless of what happened tonight. Margot added her own to it. Nine, eighty-one, seven hundred twenty-nine, six thousand five hundred sixty-one . . .

  Then she followed her brother and mother down the bleak hallway filled with shuffling old men delivering their last papers of the day. Down the stairs and out into the cold London night. She missed Louvain, which would never be the same. She missed Madame Dumont’s house in Brussels too. And the lady herself, and Claudette. She even missed, strangely, Gottlieb and his too-blue eyes and his too-slow moves in Go.

  But she liked where she’d ended up. She didn’t have to pretend to be stupider than she was anymore. She spent her days with people who forgot, more often than not, that she was a girl. Only a few of them were mathematicians as she was, but still they understood her. They saw her for the answers she produced. For the puzzles she could solve.

  Like Papa.

  She slid a hand into the crook of Lukas’s arm and followed him toward the nearest tube stop. It was his turn, now, to find what made him happy.

  He just had to take the risk and claim it.

  Pauly’s place looked more dubious with every step toward it, and Lukas was about to say so, to insist these two females beside him give up their determination for a meal at this particular place. Except that Barclay jogged up beside them at that very moment, a grin on his face.

  “Don’t let the neighborhood fool you. This place is a gem.”

  Barclay—he should have known he’d be behind Culbreth having discovered the pub. Barclay, he’d learned, knew the best places for everything in London and gave advice about them freely. Still, it didn’t seem the sort of place to take his mother and sister.

  But Mr. Culbreth had been right about music tonight—he heard the lively strains of a violin, a guitar, a piano, and a trumpet. They weren’t half bad either. Not exactly an orchestra, but a decent group for a pub in this section of town.

  Warmth met them at the door, along with the smell of frying food and spices and roasted meat. His stomach growled on cue, and his gaze swung around the
crowded room. If the number of people were any indication of the quality of meals to be had, he’d have to grant that Barclay and Culbreth hadn’t led him astray.

  He continued inside as he looked around, unwinding the scarf from his neck. It was when he turned to ask his mother where she wanted to try to find a seat that his gaze made its way to the tiny little stage jammed into the corner.

  His feet turned to blocks of ice, frozen and immovable.

  He saw the hair first, sliding as always from its pins. His hands tingled at the remembered feel of those stray pieces sliding over his fingers when he kissed her. The slender frame, standing with that same blasted bend to her back that he had spent weeks trying to correct—did she learn nothing from those lessons?

  As if hearing his thoughts, she straightened her spine, turned just a bit as she played.

  The violin—that snagged his gaze next. He could see from here that it wasn’t the sort a thief could afford. She wouldn’t have stolen it, would she have? He’d thought, somehow, that this whole ordeal would have changed something for her.

  But maybe he’d been wrong. As he’d been to begin with, assuming he could win her.

  “Gwen Davies lent it to her.” Barclay kept Lukas still with a hand on his shoulder. “Until she could replace the one Cor Akkerman destroyed. I didn’t know a violin could sound like that—but then, I suppose you did.”

  He swallowed and shrugged away from the hand. This had been their plan all along—his mother and Margot obviously conspirators. Later, perhaps he’d be angry about it. He should be. They were forcing him to certain heartbreak, and he was none too sure he was ready to walk away whole. He needed more time to steel himself. To build that wall around his heart.

  To be able to look at her and see someone other than the woman he loved too much, too fully, too disastrously.

  But his feet took him a step closer. She must not be too upset about how everything had ended up, if she could play like that tonight. She must not miss him with the same soul-deep ache that overtook him every time he let his thoughts wander. She must not regret for a moment the way she’d handled it all.

  The song came to an end, and amid the raucous applause, the other musicians climbed down.

  Willa stood alone on the little stage, and her eyes were focused on a long table against the opposite wall. “This one’s for you, Retta! Winning that bet!”

  He spotted the blondes at the table then—the fairer Elinor, the more golden Retta, both smiling. Though Retta called back, “If you weren’t the hardest composer to ever wheedle a song from, I’d say it doesn’t count!”

  Composer—she’d written something? Margot nudged him forward, and his feet thawed enough to allow it. Propelled more by intrigue than his sister’s bony finger.

  She’d written something. Lured it to her fingers and onto the page. It shouldn’t feel like a victory for him—it wasn’t his, after all—but it did. It made something go light that had been heavy inside.

  A table cleared before them as if by magic. Or, perhaps, by the power of Barclay, who shoved him into one of the now-empty chairs and then leaned against the table with a smug little smile that might have been annoying if Lukas weren’t too focused upon the stage to pay it any undue mind.

  She closed her eyes, as she always did when playing from memory. Positioned the bow. And the din of the pub went muted, down to a dull hush ready to be pierced by the first note.

  It had a slow start, almost wandering through those same notes played over and over. Then a pause, in which his soul recognized the question. The emptiness. The loneliness. He leaned forward. What would come next? A minor key, no doubt. Confused and forsaken and—

  No. It wasn’t minor at all. It was major and fast and full and . . . Willa. His breath seeped out. It was her song—or she was its. Full not of doubt, but of confidence. Of life. Of . . . gratitude.

  “If you’d bother to talk to her,” Barclay said into his ear, “she no doubt would have told you how the Lord spoke to her in that cell—through music. This music.”

  He had? It shouldn’t surprise him. And it didn’t, really. Except that it seemed odd she would have reached out. That she would have asked. That she would have admitted she needed anyone other than what she’d found for herself.

  But she did. That was there too, in that line of melody. It wove around the notes, around his heart. And then it circled back to those same beginning notes. A restoration.

  It was a simple song. So how could it say so much?

  The crowd erupted again around him, with whistles and clapping and shouts of encouragement. He didn’t know most of these people, but she was theirs. And the same pride that surged through him obviously surged through them as well.

  She didn’t need him. She had family here, a whole world happy to support her. To cheer her on and be her audience. And he had family too, who would support him if she rebuffed him, who would make certain he didn’t sink too far into despair. Who would remind him that the Lord held his future in His capable palm.

  But as he watched her bow, manlike, and smile toward the girls she claimed as sisters, he felt again that same recognition he’d felt in the Davieses’ drawing room.

  They could be two melodies, existing in the same world but never mixing. Counterpoint, each line unique. Or they could be a harmony, blending together and making something new. Something more than, as Margot would put it, the sum of their parts.

  He pushed to his feet, dodging the hand that Barclay put out—no doubt meant to stop him from barreling from the pub. But he had no intention of leaving. Instead, he shouldered his way through the standing ovation until he stood in front of them all. In front of the stage.

  She looked down at him, and her face froze. Her violin—Miss Davies’s violin—lowered to her side. “Lukas.”

  That was a symphony all its own. His name on her lips, containing within it an apology, a recognition.

  Hope.

  He held up a hand to help her step down. And said, “Only my closest friends call me Lukas. If you do not want to give me false ideas, you had better call me mon amour.”

  Her lips smiled as she stepped down onto the crowded floor. But her eyes were still wary. “You have it wrong. You just told me to call you idiot.”

  “No doubt you think me one.” He didn’t release her fingers. Couldn’t. Could only move his thumb across her knuckles. “That I proved you right. That I left.”

  She shook her head and gripped his fingers back. “No—I know you wanted to come back, Barclay told me. It was me who left. Who never gave us a chance. Who lied about so much—”

  “But not about what matters.” He nodded to the stage. “You could not lie about the music.”

  Her nostrils flared with the breath she sucked in. “I’ve turned over a new leaf—and not just because Barclay told us all we must. I mean it. So . . . can you forgive me? Someday, do you think?”

  “Mm.” He tilted his head, made a show of considering. “Perhaps. By our tenth wedding anniversary or so.”

  Her fingers went tighter still. “Lukas.”

  Someone shifted behind him and slid something warm and round into his hand. His fingers closed around it, felt its outline. The smooth circle of metal. The jewel jutting out. He had to blink thrice to keep back the emotion. “I know I promised you London part of the year, Brussels the rest—but that will have to wait. London only, just now. Perhaps a day or two in Wales, now and then, to visit our friends.”

  She eased closer to him and handed off her violin to a brunette with curls who stood nearby. “And Cornwall. We’ll have to visit Rosie and Peter in Cornwall.”

  “Naturally,” the brunette said with a cheeky grin. Rosie, he assumed.

  “Naturally,” he echoed. And tugged Willa closer still. Then he reached for her now-free hand and slid his mother’s diamond onto it.

  Her eyes were the most beautiful things. Blue and green and brilliant. “Aren’t you supposed to ask something when you do that?”

 
; “And give you the chance to say no? I think not.” But he lifted her left hand and settled it against his chest, where his heart raced for her. “I will be a good husband, Willa. I swear it. Give me a chance.”

  Yes, her eyes were the most beautiful things. Right up there with that smile that bloomed across her mouth. “I’ll probably be a dunce of a wife. But if you’ll have me, knowing all you do, then I’m yours.”

  “Kiss her already!” came from that long table, followed by hoots and laughter.

  It was good advice. So he took it, inclining his head until he could capture her lips. Capture her heart. And blend her song with his own.

  Willa’s Song

  If you’d like to listen to “Willa’s Song,” you can hear it in the video trailer at http://bit.ly/ASongUnheardTrailer.

  Special thanks to Taylor Bennet, the talented young violinist who performed the music for me.

  Kudos go out to Jessica Brand, the composer of “Willa’s Song.” I—and the voting public—love your beautiful melody, Jessica! To the other finalists in the contest, Thomas Reither and Melissa Merritt: I would have been thrilled and honored to have any of your compositions representing my heroine’s journey!

  I owe much appreciation, as well, to my old friend Harry Burchell, III, for taking pity on my overworked status and helping me turn Jessica’s composition into sheet music for Taylor to play.

  For the sake of the music.

  RMW

  A Note from the Author

  Though there was no real Willa Forsythe, violin prodigy, or Lukas De Wilde, world-famous musician, these characters and their situations were, in fact, inspired by research I stumbled across when I first sat down to plan out the SHADOWS OVER ENGLAND series.

  World War I is often considered a forgotten war—and this is true in Great Britain just as it is in America. For Britain, one of the great forgotten stories is of the hundreds of thousands of Belgian refugees who flooded England and Wales within the first few months of the war. No family, it’s said, went untouched by these refugees, as nearly everyone opened their homes and neighborhoods to the influx. There were resentments, of course, by the end. But in the beginning, “brave little Belgium” was a rallying cry. After the soldiers returned home at the end of the war, however, refusing to talk of the horrors they’d seen, those left on the home front didn’t feel they could talk about what they had experienced either. And so, these hundreds of thousands of refugees who went quietly home at the first opportunity were brushed under the rug, their stories largely untold.