They didn’t arrive every day. The last bouquet, now two days old, still bloomed in a silver vase on the console, still filled the room with their unmistakable fragrance.
Why did he do it? The same roses, always white, arrived in her dressing room before each performance with Max’s card and a polite note wishing her luck for the evening. Those ones were easy to explain, common courtesy of house management to the theater’s main attraction. But why, every two or three days, did he send them to her home with a note? He never wrote anything very significant. The first note had been couched as a welcome to her new lodgings. Later missives enquired after her health or commented on the weather. One recommended a visit to Kew if she wished to see a fine variety of roses in bloom, but without any suggestion he should accompany her on the expedition.
What was the point? Sometimes she suspected he did it to torment her and wished he’d desist. For the appearance of the flowers always gave her a glimmer of hope that she instantly dismissed once reality intruded. Whether Max forgave her or not made no difference. The problem, the reason there could never be anything between them, lay within her and could not be mended.
An air of suppressed excitement hung around the Montellis when they returned, shortly after noon.
“What took you out?” Tessa asked Sempronio, never one of nature’s early risers. “Sofie must have threatened you with some dire consequence to get you out of bed so early.”
He looked sheepish and cast a pleading glance at his wife. Sofie appeared serene if also a little apprehensive.
“We have been meeting the directors of the Royal Philharmonic Society,” she said. “Mr. Lindo introduced us. They wish Sempronio to play in a concert, maybe several.”
“That’s wonderful news!” Tessa cried, getting up to embrace Sempronio. “How kind of Mr. Lindo. But it’s no more than you deserve and about time someone realized what a wonderful pianist you are.”
“I am to play two concertos, one Mozart, one Haydn,” he said, his endearing grin lighting up his face.
“And,” Sofie said, “Mr. Lindo says he can find Sempronio some pupils.”
“Splendid,” Tessa said. Sempronio really didn’t have enough to do. She needed him only for an hour or two a day unless she was learning a new role.
Sofie looked worried. “It means we won’t be dependent on you for everything. You are too good to us and have supported us for too long, far beyond what we earn.”
“I’ve never resented a single penny. You are my dearest friends.”
“But you see, Tessa, we’ll no longer be such a drain on your purse.” Sofie took a deep breath. “We can afford our own lodgings.”
“You mean, not live with me anymore? I’d miss you.” She glanced around the small drawing room and grimaced. “I realize this place isn’t quite what you are used to. We are rather cramped here.”
“It’s not that,” protested Sofie. “But…but since Sempronio and I married we’ve never had a home of our own. If you need us, we’ll stay with you.”
“No.” Tessa tried not to see their move as a desertion. She could understand Sofie’s desire, had often felt the same way. “It’s an excellent idea and I will be more comfortable here. I can turn your bedchamber into a dressing room.”
“Sempronio will come every morning and work with you, just as usual,” Sofie said earnestly.
“Better make sure you don’t live too far away or he’ll have to get up early every day,” Tessa teased, with a fond smile for Sempronio.
“Mr. Lindo suggested some rooms on Upper Brook Street he’s heard will be available soon.”
Sempronio broke in with a look of rapture on his cherubic features. “In the next house to where Handel lived in London. Giusto cielo! I shall be inspired!”
“When will you move?”
“Not before the end of the opera season,” said Sofie. “The concert is at the beginning of July. Then there may be a few pupils. What shall you do for the summer, Tessa? You spoke of going to the country. Then when you come back for the autumn season at the Regent we shall see each other every day. You’ll hardly notice the difference.”
“I’m not sure I shall sing at the Regent again. Maybe I’ll go back to Paris. Or Vienna or Berlin.”
“But Tessa!” Sofie said in distress. “I thought you liked England. You said it was your home.”
Sempronio gulped. “Wherever you go, we shall go with you, cara.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Sofie valiantly. “We’ll never desert you.”
How could she do this to her friends, drag them back to Europe when they were so excited about a future in London? Yet how could she remain in the same city, the same opera house, as Max?
“Not the autumn,” she temporized, “but perhaps the spring. I’d like a long holiday. I could go to Italy. Angela would like that. I could stay six months and then decide. I might well come back here. After all,” she said with a hint of her inner dejection, “it’s possible no one else will hire me.”
Under the cover of her friends’ protests she considered her situation. Once they’d made the journey, she and Angela could live simply in Italy, but she needed money. She could only hope her benefit performance lived up to expectations.
*
Give her time. Max repeated Mrs. Montelli’s words on each occasion—and there were many during the final weeks of the season—that he felt the urge to dash over to Tessa’s new lodgings. Instead he treated her with courtesy when he encountered her at the opera house but made no attempt at the personal conversation he longed for.
Why did you scream? A dozen times he bit his tongue rather than utter the words. Which left him lots of time to rack his mind for the answer to the question that obsessed him: What had happened to her that she reacted like that? He feared she had been hurt badly in the past, and the most likely candidate was her husband. By all accounts Domenico Foscari had been a worthless excuse for a man. More and more he bitterly regretted leaving Tessa to be exploited and abused.
His only overt advance toward her was the regular delivery of white roses. The accompanying notes cost him some struggle and a good many crumpled sheets of paper hurled at the waste-paper basket. Friendliness was the tone he sought, unthreatening banalities his subject matter. In ruthlessly suppressing the passion he wanted to express he feared he came across as cold and dull.
The greatest frustration in his decision to bide his time was the sight of her, night after night, on stage with and often in the arms of Edouard Delorme. His hatred of the tenor verged on the obsessive. Avoiding rehearsals because he couldn’t bear to see them together, he fed his imagination with visions of Tessa and Delorme sharing much more than professional friendship. The fire between the two singers on stage couldn’t possibly be all an act. He’d sensed something more in their relationship and he feared Delorme as his rival. If only the man weren’t so damned handsome.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“The London Theatre has seldom been gratified by a musical combination as notable as that of Madame Foscari and Monsieur Delorme.”
The Examiner
“Ma chère Thérèse.”
Tessa greeted the appearance of the tenor’s handsome face at her dressing room door with a guarded lack of enthusiasm. Accustomed now to singing with him most nights and during rehearsals, she had learned to tolerate his company in the presence of others.
“Edouard,” she said flatly and inwardly cursed the visit to her dressing room to find a pearl-headed hatpin whose loss Angela had been bemoaning all morning. Two minutes later and she’d have been on her way home.
“I heard you were to be in the theater this afternoon, planning your benefit. How fortunate you are to have a benefit when you have sung such a short time here.” Delorme couldn’t keep an undercurrent of resentment from his tone.
“You own benefit was well-received.”
The tenor’s chest expanded with satisfaction. “Every seat taken,” he said.
“Well deserved,” Tessa said. “I sh
all be late, so please excuse me.”
Instead of letting her pass, Delorme came in and closed the door. “It is hard to find you alone.” She made sure of that. “What will I sing at your evening?”
Tessa did a few breathing exercises and hummed a few bars of Mozart. As long as they stuck to business, she could survive ten minutes in a small room with him. “Because it’s the last night of the season we have planned something éclatant. The company will perform two full operas and I shall sing both Leonore in Fidelio and Rosina in Il Barbiere.”
Delorme whistled. “It has never been done. Will your voice survive until the end of the evening?”
She had her doubts and it was a huge risk, but she felt reckless. Perhaps she would fail dismally and the decision whether to remain in London would be out of her hands. “I can do it,” she said, showing no weakness in front of Delorme. “As first tenor of the company you have your choice of which role you will take that night. I don’t expect you to do both.”
He huffed and puffed, torn between vanity and sense. Being a tenor, vanity won. “Naturally I will sing both Florestan and Almaviva. We will make operatic history.”
“Merci beaucoup, Edouard. I value your support and I am glad for your sake that the soprano role in each opera is longer than the tenor’s.”
He looked for the barb in the remark and accepted her overly sweet smile at face value. Taking both her hands in his, he projected the full force of his shiny-eyed allure. “We were so good together, Thérèse, and we can be again. I shall never forget that night in Paris.”
She backed away. Could he possibly be remembering the same episode?
“I have always wanted to have you again.”
“You didn’t have me then.”
“But I would have. You wanted me. Now you are no longer married and we can enjoy each other without guilt.”
He was coming for her again. “No,” she whispered, terror clawing at her chest. “That was not why I refused you. It was a moment’s madness that must never be repeated.”
“But it must! Only you are a lover worthy of the world’s greatest tenor.” He seized her in his arms, silenced her with his mouth, and wrestled her onto the divan.
*
Max stood outside the dressing room door listening to the two voices speaking in French. Torn between the urge to interrupt whatever was taking place between Tessa and Delorme and dread at what he would find, he waited no longer when he heard a crash. Believing at first that he had burst in on violent lovemaking, the pain that howled in his brain was nothing to his red rage when he realized that she was struggling. With both hands he grasped the Frenchman by the collar, flung him to the ground, and stood over him with clenched fists.
“Get up,” he roared, eager to knock him down again.
“Milord Allerton,” Delorme said with an egregious smile. “Il n’y a pas besoin de vous déranger.”
“Yes, there bloody well is a reason to be disturbed. You attacked a lady.”
“Mais non. Dis-lui, Thérèse.”
Tessa sat with tears in her eyes. She shook her head.
“Shall I hit him, Tessa?” Max asked.
She shook her head again. “Va-t’en, Edouard. Leave.”
Delorme shrugged, bowed and complied. “A bientôt,” he said at the door, the picture of handsome insolence.
“Not if I see you coming,” Tessa muttered and Max felt marginally better.
Pouring a glass of wine from a decanter on a side table, he brought it to her. He watched in an agony of disquiet while she took a sip of the drink. The wretched woman he saw was almost unrecognizable as the bewitching diva or the offstage beauty. Her eyes seemed to have sunk into her face, and no cosmetic art could have made her paler. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms but he didn’t dare touch her, or even sit at her side.
She looked up and handed him the glass. “Thank you, Max,” she said with a dignity that belied her haggard appearance. “I’m sorry you had to witness this ugly episode.”
About Delorme, at least, he knew what to do. “He’ll never sing at the Regent again,” he said without any consideration of the business consequences of dismissing the popular tenor.
“Edouard is nothing.” She dismissed him as though swatting a gnat. “He was troublesome, yes, but I wasn’t in real danger. He is nothing but a voice to me and of no other importance.”
Max had never guessed Delorme responsible for Tessa’s profound unhappiness. While not ready to dismiss the tenor’s attack on her so easily, he was glad to hear her call him insignificant.
“But,” she continued, “we have a history.”
“No history that justifies him forcing himself on you.”
“No, not that. I think I had better tell you about it.”
Painful as it would be to hear the confirmation that Delorme had once been her lover, he savored the fact that she was ready to trust him. He ventured to perch beside her on the low couch, his long legs hunched up. When he tried to take her hand she removed it, though not urgently. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have no right.”
She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes and her nose pinched into an inelegant sniff. “You have the right of a friend but it’s better not to touch me now. You will understand after you hear my story. To explain what happened today, and the night of the fire, I have to tell you about my life. The parts of my life that have not appeared in the newspapers.”
“I am honored by your confidence and you may rely on my discretion.”
“I trust you, Max. You deserve to know the truth.”
His heart turned over at the naked vulnerability of her expression. She was no longer hiding from him.
She made a visible effort to compose herself but her hands, twisted together in her lap, gave away her anguish. Max guessed that her story would not be an easy one to tell.
“Don’t speak of anything that upsets you,” he said, longing to hear everything.
She shook her head and murmured something he couldn’t make out. After a while she began, choosing her words carefully. “I told you how I eloped from Lisbon with Domenico Foscari. As an artist I made a good choice. He was an excellent manager for a young singer. He knew voices and made sure I had fine teachers in Italy. Had I stayed in Portugal I wouldn’t have risen beyond the provincial. While I made my name as a singer, he created an image for me—the temper, the broken china, the gowns, the jewels, the lovers.”
Was she saying what he thought? That there had been no lovers? That she had not lain with Napoleon Bonaparte after all? Max kept his mouth clamped shut and let her speak. Later perhaps he could ask questions.
“I didn’t like behaving like a temperamental diva, or the rumors he spread about me, but I let him do as he wished as long as I could sing. La Divina was an invention of Domenico Foscari.”
“Not your voice,” he said firmly. “No one but God could invent that.”
She smiled so faintly her face scarcely moved. Head bowed and shoulders hunched, unlike the confident, voluptuous goddess of the stage, she seemed fragile, as though she might break apart with the waft of the merest breeze. “The music and the performances were all I cared about. Domenico said if people read about me in the newspapers they would want to hear me, and the opera houses would engage me for the best roles. He was right. I became famous all over Europe and we became rich. He was very good at negotiating, unlike me.” She glanced at him wryly. “Neither Mortimer nor your Mr. Lindo would have had my services for so little if Domenico was in charge. But no fortune was ever enough for him.”
The words came more slowly as though enunciating them was a task for Sisyphus. He hated to see her pain and would have told her to stop but he couldn’t. He had to know. Unable to bear her nearness without offering physical comfort, he stood and put a little distance between them. From the sofa she looked up, her eyes dull.
“Performers often add to their incomes by coming under the protection of rich men, as I know you are aware. Domenico h
inted that I should accept some of the lures sent out to me by noblemen, as long as they were rich. Many men wished to possess La Divina, but I refused them all. Even if I was tempted to give myself in a sordid commercial transaction, which I was not, I had made wedding vows and I honored them.” Her lush mouth turned down in a grimace and her forehead creased. She had never looked uglier…or more beautiful to his eyes. “What a fool. I already knew Domenico was far from an ideal husband. We were happy enough at first. I believed I loved him. But he became unpleasant when he did not get his way. He lost his temper. And when I refused to let him be my pimp, he no longer troubled to cover up his own infidelities. Our marriage became a business arrangement only. I sang. He collected money. He spent money, far more than I knew.”
Max nodded. Just as he had deduced. The man had ruined her in more ways than one.
“Then, last year in Paris, he began to woo me again. He said my coldness had driven him to other women. He made me believe that it had all been my fault but he wished to start again, have children, which he had always said was impossible for La Divina. I was wary but agreed. After all, we were tied to each other for life and I wanted a home and a family. I fooled myself that I could have them with Domenico. I let him convince me.”
Her voice had dropped to a whisper and she bent low so he couldn’t see her face. He sensed she was approaching the crisis in the tale and, as she had indicated, Delorme was not the villain.
“We began to share a bed again and once more he said I was cold and had no idea how to please a man. He made a suggestion. He told me there were games we could play in bed that would make things more exciting for both of us. I was reluctant but I agreed.” With her hands covering her face he could hardly make out the next part. “I had made up my mind to embrace our marriage so I let him—I let him tie me to the bed posts, bind my wrists and ankles, blindfold me. He left me for a while, telling me that the anticipation would increase my passion. I lay there for a long time, unable to move or see, and while I was waiting I knew that I did not love my husband and could never be happy with him. I heard his footsteps and the thought of him disgusted me. All I could think was that it would soon be over.”
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