Sweet Songbird

by Sweet Songbird (retail) (epub)

  ‘Kitty—’ He stepped delicately into the room, holding out both hands to her. ‘You were divine this evening.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Kitty tried to temper the tartness of her tone, but she made no move to take the outstretched hands.

  Luke, an astonished and entertained half-smile that Kitty very strongly mistrusted playing about his mouth, stepped to the wall and leaned there, watching, flask in hand.

  ‘You got the baubles I see. But – you aren’t wearing them! Naughty girl! Here, let me—’

  She stepped back from him. ‘Mr Belcham,’ she said, very firmly indeed. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here – I did instruct the doorman that I was very tired tonight—’

  ‘And I, m’dear, instructed him that I was very rich,’ the insufferable Mr Belcham interrupted.

  Kitty ploughed on, ‘—and that I wanted no visitors.’ She saw the young man’s bloodshot eyes flick for a moment to Luke. Luke smiled, pleasantly. Faint colour rose beneath the boy’s thin skin. Kitty frowned ferociously at Luke, turned back to the Honourable Ernest. ‘However, since you are here it will save Pol a journey. I was about to ask her to return these to you.’ She held out the box. ‘I really cannot possibly accept them. It’s out of the question.’

  The petulant mouth pouted. He made no move at all to take the box. ‘But, dammit—’

  ‘But nothing, lad,’ Luke said softly. He had pushed himself away from the wall and stood, relaxed and infinitely dangerous-looking, arms folded, still smiling. ‘Do as you’re told. Take them and leave.’

  Kitty spun on him. ‘Luke – please! Let me handle this!’

  ‘Just who is he?’ The boy’s colour was high. ‘What’s this to him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Kitty said.

  Luke’s smile was tranquil.

  Kitty still held the box. ‘Mr Belcham’ – she made no attempt to hide her exasperation – ‘will you please take these? You must know that I can’t accept them—’

  ‘I know no such thing. Why, Gertrude Daley had a sapphire ring as well! Come now, Kitty, stop bein’ so tiresome. Put the damn’ things on like a good girl and come and have supper—’

  She took a breath, praying for patience. ‘Mr Belcham – perhaps I should make the situation brutally clear? I don’t want the earrings. I don’t want supper. I don’t, I’m afraid, want you. So please – take your toys and run along. Perhaps,’ she added tartly, ‘if you hurry you’ll catch the end of Miss Daley’s performance. The Berkeley’s just a short cab ride from here, and they have a late performance tonight, I believe.’

  ‘I don’t want to see Gertie. I want to see you.’

  His likeness to a spoiled child at that moment was quite remarkable. Almost it made Kitty laugh. She shook her head in amused amazement. ‘Mr Belcham—!’

  ‘Time,’ Luke said conversationally, ‘to put an end to this, I think.’ In two long strides he was beside the young man, towering over him, a light hand on his shoulder. ‘Out.’

  The Honourable Ernest, outraged, struck at the hand that rested upon his perfectly tailored shoulder. ‘I say, Sir! Take your hands off me! Kitty – who is this bully-boy?’

  ‘Luke, will you please leave this to me?’ Kitty caught his arm. ‘Go home. I’ll come later.’

  Luke ignored her. He had been, she realized despairingly, looking for an entertaining diversion, an outlet for his nerve-bred mischief, and here it was. ‘This bully-boy, my little maggot, my snot-nosed Little Boy Blue, is Luke Peveral.’ His voice was tolerant and friendly. ‘Remember the name – Luke – Peveral.’ He had taken the young man by his cravat, held him so, one handed, and with each word shook him, sharply, as a terrier might a rabbit.

  ‘Luke!’ Furiously Kitty pulled at his arm – steel-like tendons, rock-like muscles – she might have been a kitten nipping at the heels of a stallion.

  ‘By God, Sir, I’ll have you horsewhipped for this! See if I don’t! Let go of me—!’ The Honourable Ernest was struggling fiercely, arms flailing in ungainly fashion, fists swinging full inches from Luke’s grinning face. ‘Let go of me, I say!’

  ‘Only if you promise to be a good little maggot and run along home to Mummy.’

  ‘Luke, will you for heaven’s sake—!’

  The Honourable Ernest let out a squeal of rage and lashed out with a well-shod foot, catching Luke more by accident than design a sharp crack on the shin. Taken by surprise, Luke let go of him and stepped back. The sandy-haired young man, in an ill-advised fury of temper, launched himself at Luke.

  Kitty flung the box she still held to the floor, shouted like a fishwife at the top of her voice. ‘Will the pair of you stop this! Get out of here! Both of you!’

  Luke met the Honourable Ernest’s senseless rush with a short, almost casual but entirely ferocious jab with his left fist. The boy shrieked and reeled back. His nose gushed blood. Luke stepped lightly after him. Once, twice, three times, his fists connected brutally with the boy’s face. The younger man staggered, making no attempt to strike back at Luke, trying only ineffectually and pathetically to protect himself from the remorseless blows. Luke slapped him, open-handed, caught him as he staggered and slapped him again.

  Kitty’s temper snapped. She grabbed the first thing to hand and leapt forward, eyes blazing with anger. ‘Luke! Get back!’ The heavy candlestick she had picked up threatened him.

  He grinned at her, totally impenitent, totally out of control. He let go of the younger man’s shoulder. With a groan Belcham slumped to the floor. Luke rubbed his knuckles, still grinning. The Honourable Ernest was making the odd, blubbering noise of a painfully crying child.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Keep back,’ she said to the still-poised Luke.

  He held his hands above his head in a mocking gesture of surrender, stepped back against the wall.

  Another knock, louder.

  ‘Oh, Lord, Pol – see who that is – and for God’s sake don’t let anyone—’

  Too late. Tentatively the door had opened to reveal a small, dark man holding pad and pen. ‘Miss Daniels? I’m from the Daily’ – he stopped, the smile sliding from his face, interested eyes taking in every detail of the scene – ‘Argus—’ he finished. ‘And I see you are already engaged. So sorry to have troubled you—’ His quick black eyes were everywhere, taking in every detail. ‘I’ll come back some other – more convenient – time—’

  Kitty lowered the candlestick. ‘Wait!’

  But he was gone.

  Luke threw back his head and laughed.

  Kitty bent to pick up the mother-of-pearl box, all but hurled it at the Honourable Ernest. ‘Take them. And please leave. As I earlier asked you to.’

  The boy scrambled awkwardly to his feet, sobbing. One eye was closing, blood was everywhere. ‘I’ll have the law on you!’ He retreated from Luke, his limbs shaking. Tears were streaming down his face, mingling with the blood that smeared his skin and flecked his handsome clothes. ‘I’ll see you punished! I’ll see you hanged! I have friends! Influential friends!’

  Luke smiled derisively, reached into his pocket for his flask, tilted and drained it.

  Still sobbing, the beaten man left. Kitty held the door open, making a small sign to Pol. Pol’s mouth set stubbornly. ‘Yer needn’t think I’m leavin’ yer with this drunken—’

  ‘Please, Pol, go.’

  Reluctantly, Pol left. Kitty leaned against the closed door and looked at Luke. ‘You despicable bully,’ she said, quietly. ‘Is violence your answer to everything?’

  The smile flickered from his face, but he said nothing.

  ‘You’re brutal and you’re cruel,’ she said, very clearly. ‘You’re self-centred and self-indulgent. You’re arrogant. A barbarian. Your answer to everything is to lash out at someone weaker than yourself. You coward. I pray some day you’ll find a man who can stand up to you. Who’ll beat you to a pulp. You deserve it. But at least, thank God, I won’t be there to see it.’

  A pulse was beating rapidly in his jaw. His
dark eyes had narrowed to fierce slits, glinting danger. She – miserably, intolerably angry – was beyond fear.

  He stepped forward. Murderous anger, drink-fuelled, burned in his face. She had no chance to avoid the crashing, back-handed blow that sent her reeling across the room to smash painfully into the wall. She tasted blood. He came after her in brutal rage, hauling her upright, shaking her with a violence that threatened to break bones. For a moment, in real terror, she struggled. Then he let her go. She stumbled, righted herself, supporting herself against the wall. They stared at each other in numbed silence. Then ‘Get out!’ she said. ‘Get out!’

  He slammed past her, nearly knocking her off her feet, crashed the door almost from its hinges. She stood in the silence that followed his leaving, very still, trembling, fighting collapse. She felt the trickle of blood upon her chin. She touched it with her finger, looked bemusedly at the scarlet stain. Shakily she moved to a chair, sat down. Her head rang with pain and with the echoes of his awful violence. Slowly she bowed her head, burying her face in her hands, the tears flowing uncontrollably. For a long time she sat so, crying desolately, weeping for herself, weeping for Luke, weeping for the precious thing he had finally and utterly destroyed. She heard the door open, sensed Pol’s presence, felt a hand softly on her shoulder. Still crying, she leaned on the girl’s soft body, her arm about her waist, sobbing as if her heart would break. Pol held her, rocking her, wordless. The storm passed at last. Kitty, sniffing, groped for a handkerchief, mopped at her face, her breath catching frequently and painfully in her throat.

  ‘Bastard,’ was all Pol said, but the tone of her voice grated in Kitty’s ears. Then, ‘Feelin’ better?’ she asked.

  Kitty nodded, shakily.

  ‘Could you manage a cup o’ tea?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Please.’

  After Pol had left Kitty examined the wreckage of her face in the mirror, gingerly touching her swollen, bleeding lip. Her head ached terribly and try as she might she could not control her trembling. She looked awful. On the floor still lay the candlestick with which she had threatened Luke. As she bent to pick it up the tangle of her hair fell across her face. She sat up, straightened her back, pushing the long hair out of her eyes. She sniffed, dashed her hand across her bloody mouth. She’d get her hair cut. Tomorrow. Or the next day. Some time, anyway – before she left for Paris.

  Part Three

  Chapter 1

  (i)

  Paris, during that spring and summer of 1867, was the undisputed, glittering Queen of Europe. The wild prodigality, the opulence, the gaiety and the squalor – all were part of the most intriguing and vibrant capital in the world, and some would say the most libertine. At all hours the wide new boulevards of Georges Eugene Haussmann – designed as much to give a clear field of fire to the authorities in case the unfortunate Parisian habit of insurrection should again manifest itself as to delight the eye – were thronged with the carriages of the rich and the fashionable. The pavements too were colourful with promenaders, seeing and being seen, ostentatiously flaunting wealth and position, gossiping and flirting, spending money with an extravagance that defied both reason and conscience in a city where the unhoused poor starved in the gutters. In the Paris that had been so splendidly rebuilt for the Second Empire at the cost of the common people, a costume from Monsieur Worth could cost anything over 1,600 francs, whilst the girl who sewed it would be lucky to earn two or three francs a day to stave off starvation. At Magny’s, at the Aux Trois Frères Provençaux, at the famous Maison Dorée or the even more distinguished Café Anglais, five or six courses might be served to a clientele looking in this as in everything else as much for novelty and new experience as anything so tedious as simple nourishment, whilst in the ever-more-crowded poorer districts starveling children begged in the streets. But such was life in La Ville Lumière – and most people, rich and poor alike, with a shrug accepted it; life had always been so. The rich were entirely absorbed in the intrigues, the extravagances and the cut-throat rivalry that comprised their social lives; the poor, according to their natures, in either slaving for a pittance or emulating a large number of their so-called betters in living off their wits. As with most other major European cities of the time squalor was, on the whole, their lot and alcohol their escape.

  For those with money, however – and these the city attracted like an exotic flower might the bees that were the emblem of the Emperor – Paris, wanton beauty that she was, was irresistible. Life was frenetically gay – by day a call, a drive in the Bois, perhaps a teatime tryst, a scandalous gossip at a cafe table, and by night a ball, a masque, a banquet, a visit to the opera, the ballet, or the theatre where the audience was there as much itself to be seen as to view the performance. And each night too an opportunity for a flirtation, a liaison, the possibility of love, real or imagined, bought or given freely for a reckless hour. This was a time and a place of restless searching – for fortune, for love, or what might pass for love, for new sensations, new enthusiasms. Overnight a name might be made – one week the handsome young Léotard risking his neck upon the high wire of the Cirque de l‘Impératrice, the next the delectable Theresa, adored star of the cafe-concert, with her charming, salaciously ribald songs.

  Into this vortex Kitty was thrown, dizzy, excited and on occasion half-dead with fright. After that disastrous evening – a comprehensive and highly imaginative account of which had duly been reported in the Daily Argus – her one thought had been to get away, to put as great a distance as possible between herself and Luke Peveral. The Parisots had been more than happy to oblige. Within a week she was installed with them in their splendid and elegant apartment on the Rue de Rivoli, not far from Charles’ new theatre, the Moulin d’Or. The theatre was in itself a revelation to Kitty; its baroque exterior resembled a palace rather than a place of entertainment, its opulently gilded, velvet upholstered and draped interior was an extravagance of gold and crimson. Within a day of her arrival, sets were being built – a replica of a London street for Dick the Dipper, complete, to her amazement, with a real horse-drawn omnibus; a country lane, lamp-lit, with real trees through which rustled a gentle breeze for dashing Jack Blade the Highwayman. Charles Parisot laughed at her astonishment. ‘But – chérie! – you are in Paris now! What else would you expect?’

  ‘Charles, it must be costing a small fortune?’

  He spread careless hands. ‘But of course.’

  Most mornings she spent shopping with Genevieve in arcaded shops so lavishly stocked and extravagantly priced that she could scarce credit her own eyes, whilst her afternoons were given over to rehearsals under Charles’ friendly but critical eye; and only now did she truly appreciate the hard work Pat Kenny had forced her to do those months before. Her contract with Charles, running from April to October, was a generous one – a thousand francs a week and a pressing invitation to stay with them in the apartment on the Rue de Rivoli. She had the guest suite – a bedroom, a small sitting room and a tiny bathroom; nothing could have been more pleasant. The rooms were comfortably and elegantly furnished, the Parisots’ carriage was put at her disposal. At the theatre she had her own dressing room and an experienced dresser to help with her costumes – a small, dark, excitable Parisienne who could not have been more in contrast to Pol had she tried. Kitty’s only regret at the speed with which the move had been accomplished was that she would miss Pol’s marriage – her first task in Paris was to fill a trunk with the most beautiful linen to be found in the city and send it to the happy pair as a wedding gift. Apart from the disappointment at missing the wedding she was only too pleased to have got away from London, for a while at least. Luke’s display of violence had frightened and disgusted her, had brought to the surface in the most shocking way those differences between them that she had tried so hard to ignore but that she had always feared in the end would defeat their love. She would not – could not – live with such a man.

  But it was in vain that she tried to forget him.

  In the two
weeks before opening she worked hard indeed to prepare herself for this new and exacting audience. It had been decided that it was perfectly acceptable for her to perform in the main in English – anything English being, as it happened, at this moment considered the height of chic in Paris – but Charles believed it would be well taken if she could perform at least one or possibly two songs in French, a language of which she had only the sketchiest knowledge, and so, added to the usual hard work of rehearsal was the mental strain of singing in a language not her own. She fell into bed each night worn out, her brain overstimulated, her body often aching with fatigue. She found herself suffering nausea that prevented her from eating properly – obviously a physical result of the stress she was living under but a worrying one since, slim as she was, she could ill-afford to lose weight. Yet no matter how she drove herself or how tired she was, Luke awaited her each evening in her lonely room, in the vast, empty bed, his mocking voice in her ears, his dark gypsy face and brilliant smile vivid in the darkness behind her closed lids. Stubbornly she resisted him. She would not contact him. She would not, willingly, see him again. She remembered her passion for Amos: that had eased with time and so would this. The disaster of their relationship had to be stopped, and it had to be stopped now.

  But in the dark and lonely nights she cried, and often.

  It was a full week before she remembered her intention of contacting Jem.

  ‘An artist? Pouf—!’ Genevieve made one of her graceful, expressive gestures. ‘There are thousands in Paris! Most of them causing trouble—!’