by Megan Chance
And I am also tired of how sad Barret gets when I tell him this. When he let me off at the door to the theater, he sighed and kissed my cheek and asked would I please be careful and remember the things he’d said, and I kissed him back and said I would.
I went to the back practice room, where Gideon was waiting at the piano. He was distracted and tense, which meant he had not got the role, and though I was relieved, I went to him and pressed myself against his back where he sat on the bench and leaned down to kiss his hair and say I was sorry. He twisted around, and caught me about the waist, and pulled my leg up so my foot was on the bench and my skirts fell back.
I could barely speak. He traced up my stocking to the ribbons of my garters, and his fingers slid beneath to touch my bare skin. He asked me if Barret was upset with him, and I was too mindless to do more than nod, and he leaned over to press his lips where his fingers had been. I thought I would swoon; the pleasure of it was too much. He moved his mouth as if he wanted to touch every part of those few bare inches, and when I gasped he raised his eyes to me and said that Barret wanted to tear us apart and I must not let him. He said my brother was jealous of how close we were, and of how well Gideon understood me. I felt his lips move against my skin and my thoughts grew all muddled, but I remembered what Barret had said, and I felt a twinge of doubt that made me thread my fingers through Gideon’s hair and hold him still. When he asked me what was wrong, I told him I thought Barret was worried that he would seduce me and leave me.
Gideon laughed then, and pulled away, and said it was hard to concentrate while I was around, but he supposed we must, and I wished I hadn’t said anything at all because all I wanted was for him to keep kissing me.
MARCH 6, 1872—There is to be no tour this summer because Mr. Mulder has asked for me to stay through the end of the season and by then it will be too late. So we are to stay in New York, which is both a relief and not. I’d hoped that a tour would keep Barret from drinking too much, but now there is no help for it, and I cannot make him stop in any case, though I’ve told him often that I wish he would. He only says he wishes I would do as he tells me too.
Gideon has got us rooms at another hotel—the Farthingale, which is down the street and two blocks over from the Town-shend. The rooms are small and not as nice, and the hotel is closer to the Bowery, which is no good for Barret. I see the whores lingering about when we come back late at night, but when I told Gideon my worry, he said that Barret would find trouble wherever we went.
Then he kissed my jaw and undid my dressing gown and unhooked my corset and murmured that I did not need my brother anymore, not when he was there to watch out for me instead, and his mouth was hot against my nipples—oh my God, just to think of it now turns me to liquid! I want him so I cannot think. Since the night at the circus, things have grown more heated between us. But it is only caresses and kisses; he never does what I most want him to do.
I wonder if he waits because of Barret? I think if my brother ever learned how Gideon touches me when he is not around he might kill him.
Or perhaps … could it be that Gideon still thinks of Willa? It has been seven months since it was ended, so surely it can’t be that. Maybe he doesn’t wish to cause more estrangement between me and my family, who all seem to dislike him now….
Oh, I hardly know! and I am tired of guessing! All I know is that my mind is full of him, and beyond that and the music there’s room for nothing else, and I find myself confused sometimes, so that when I look at Barret I think Gideon is right and I should send him home, and perhaps if I do, Gideon will come to my bed at last.
But I can’t do that. Gideon doesn’t know the brother I know late at night, when Barret stumbles into my room to be sure I am safe and alone, or the way he lies on the bed beside me and strokes my hair, as if I were still the small sister who followed him around the alleys like a little dog. “Don’t worry,” he says to me nearly every night. “I am here to protect my own dear schwester.” And before we both fall asleep I tease him that he must not speak German. How could I possibly send him away?
AUGUST 1, 1872—I am now eighteen and a soprano at the Academy of Music! Rehearsals began today. Mr. Maretzek is very demanding. Kellogg and Lucca sometimes don’t show up for rehearsals, though I am expected to attend every one, and in the evenings I practice still again with Gideon, who serves as my accompanist and teacher (though of course we still hold to the fiction that Barret is my manager). Gideon has not stopped auditioning, though I live in terror every time he goes—I think I would die if he left me to be some other girl’s tenor!
OCTOBER 4, 1872—I am a success as Marguerite! The reviews said I added a “saucy innocence” as a contrast to Kellogg’s more restrained interpretation, and that my voice had “a lyric genius rarely encountered and which portends greatness for Mme. Conrad’s future.” !!!
Lucca herself congratulated me after the performance, though she also made a point of asking where my “pretty repetiteur” was. She is a bitch, actually, and I know she has her eye set on Gideon. He only laughs when I say it and says I have nothing to worry about, but still I don’t trust her.
Barret is seeing one of the girls in the chorus. Her name is Dorothea, and she is only seventeen, but very blond and pretty. She has gone out with us after rehearsal three times now, and Barret seems smitten. The best part is that it has turned his attention from me for a time, which is such a relief.
OCTOBER 26, 1872—This afternoon I came home after a costume fitting to find Gideon sitting in the hallway outside his and Barret’s room because Barret was inside with Dorothea. They were rather loud too, as I could hear her moans. Gideon looked exhausted and said he had just returned from an audition for the Layler Company and I told him to come into my room to wait until Barret was done and then I told him he should not bother with auditions anymore as I was doing well enough for us all.
He went to my window and seemed so sad. When I asked him why, he told me that this wasn’t what he’d expected for himself. He had wanted to make a name in his own right. I told him he was making a name for himself, as my manager, and he laughed and said Barret was my manager. I told him everyone knew it was really him, and that he had a talent for it and was very clever besides. He has learned so much about the business these last years. He watches so carefully and Barret has not half his ambition or skill. I believe he could make us both rich, and I told him why shouldn’t he reap the rewards, as he has been the one to set it all in motion? He could be a famous impresario if he wanted. Then I said that I needed him, and I could not bear it if he went away. He got the most brilliant look in his eyes and asked, “Do you mean it?”
I confessed that I loved him, and once I said the words I was so horribly afraid, because he said nothing, and then I was reassured when he kissed me, and I thought at last I would have what I’ve wanted for so long. When he led me to the bed, I tried to undo his trousers, but he stopped me, and I was so frustrated I slapped at him, and he whispered, “Patience, sweetheart.” He put his hands up my skirts and then he was touching me just as Paolo had done, but it wasn’t the same, it was … I thought I might burst, and I twisted and gasped and he kissed me into silence and suddenly I could not keep myself still. I grabbed his hand to keep it there and cried out—I could not help myself. It was as if my body belonged to him and not me, and I wished it would go on forever. And when it faded he said, “Do you really love me, Bina?” and I kissed his face the way he kisses mine and said yes, yes. Then he said he meant to plant a claque in the audience the night Kellogg performs to boo her on my behalf, because the best prima donnas have rivalries. It keeps them in the news even if they aren’t singing. He said I must start one with Kellogg.
I teased him that I would prefer to start one with Lucca, and he said Kellogg was the better choice, as she did not yet have Lucca’s status. Pauline Lucca is ambitious and would hurt my career if she could, because she is jealous of my talent. I told him it wasn’t my talent she was jealous of, and he said if that
was the case, it was better that he flirt with her. “Keep your enemies close,” he said.
I told him that I would scratch her face off if she touched him. He kissed me and asked did I think he cared for her at all? It was for me he would flirt with her, because Lucca would do her best to keep me from having a rich patron like August Belmont or Leonard Jerome. I don’t care about such old men, but he asked did I see the jewels Adelina Patti wore in all her photographs? Did I not remember that Jerome had a private theater built for her? Did I not want such things myself?
I told him again I didn’t care and he whispered that I must flirt with one of them for us, just as he must distract Lucca for us, that we all must do things we didn’t like to make our fortune. And then he began to move his fingers upon me again until I could not think, and said, “You’ll be more famous than any of them when we’re done,” and I gasped and said yes yes yes.
So I have agreed. But now the idea troubles me and I think I must tell him I cannot flirt with one of those men when I am in love with him, and that I want him to have nothing to do with Pauline Lucca either.
DECEMBER 3, 1872—I would like to kill Pauline Lucca!!!! Yesterday I came out of the dressing room to see her giggling with Gideon in a corner behind one of the scene flats, and they were far too close and he was bending to whisper something in her ear. They looked so intimate—oh, I could stab her heart out!!!
So last night, when I was onstage, I looked directly for the Jerome box, and while I couldn’t see exactly who was there through the footlights, I sent them my most brilliant smile and did not look away as I sang.
This morning I received a dozen pink roses. I put them in a vase in my dressing room, and when Gideon came in and asked who they were from, I told him Leonard Jerome and hoped he would be jealous. But he only smiled, so I turned back to the mirror and quite deliberately asked where Barret was, because I needed my manager to pick up my pay at the intermission, even though Gideon has been doing that for months now.
Then I did see the anger I wanted, and I felt a little satisfaction. But it didn’t last long, because Gideon brushed his lips against my bare shoulder above my gown, and when I shivered, he whispered, “When you punish me, you only hurt yourself, Bina.”
He left then, and his words made me even more angry, and I thought of how Lucca had pressed close to him. I threw the vase of roses on the floor so the water and shards of china and flowers went everywhere, and then I stomped on the flowers too for good measure.
When I returned to my dressing room after the performance, it was all cleaned up, and there was another vase on my dressing table, with more pink roses, as if my temper had never happened at all.
CHAPTER 8
Seattle, Washington Territory—March 1881
The night of the performance of Faust, I dressed in the black widow’s weeds I’d first worn to Seattle, still serviceable, though rusty and a bit musty smelling. I had not worn the gown or the veil since, and it felt strange to put them on again, to remember the woman I had been then.
When I walked into the Palace, Charlotte put her hand to her mouth in surprise. “Damn, I never would’ve recognized you. I don’t guess society’ll turn up their noses at you now.”
I wanted to laugh, remembering how this same dress had not kept me from being thought a whore. But I’d been a lone woman then, stinking of desperation. On Johnny’s arm, in Squire’s Opera House, it would look respectable enough.
Wryly, I said, “Oh, they wouldn’t dare snub us in any case. It’s businesses like the Palace that fill the treasury, you know. Without us, they’d have to tax themselves.”
She glanced past me, toward the stairs. “My, who knew Johnny dressed up so good?”
She went back into the crowd with a smile, and I turned to see Johnny. He looked so the respectable Society man that I was startled: his coat was dark and well brushed, his vest gold and black striped, and he wore a hat and a tie. The girls on the floor fawned over him as he approached, and he smiled at their compliments and shrugged them off.
“Don’t you look the proper widow, honey,” he said when he finally got to me. “You look like you did the first time I saw you. You should have told me you needed a new dress.”
“This one does just fine,” I told him, though I didn’t say it was the veil that made it so. I didn’t quite trust my disguise among society; better to be half hid. “But you … you could almost be a stranger.”
“Haven’t had occasion to wear it in a while. I’d almost forgotten how to knot the tie. You like it?”
“I don’t know. I feel I hardly know you.”
He leaned close to brush his lips against my ear. “I feel sure familiarity will come to you before too long. Let’s go before we’re late.”
He took my hand and settled it in the crook of his arm, and then he called out a good-bye to Duncan, who nodded an acknowledgment. “I hope nothing happens tonight beyond Duncan’s capabilities,” Johnny said as we went out the door. “I don’t like leaving him alone.”
“Paul will help if he needs to,” I said.
“If he can get down from the orchestra in time.” Johnny patted my hand. “I’m going to try not to think about it. You suppose this Fabrizi Company is any good?”
“I doubt it.”
He laughed. “So do I.”
The gas streetlamps had been lit, and as we approached Commercial Street, there began to be carriages—not the kind I would have seen in New York, with their crests and liveried footmen, but beaten, ancient broughams splashed with dried mud, and one or two open landaus, their wheels caked with sawdust and manure and their sectioned tops fastened back though the night was cool and moist. There were even a few wagons. Women in satins and laces, and men in frock coats and morning coats stood waiting on the boardwalk, top hats gleaming darkly in the blaze of light falling from the opera house windows.
Many of them greeted Johnny as we came upon them, and I bent my head and huddled nervously into his side, trying to seem inconspicuous. It was true what I’d said to Charlotte. Johnny, for all that he ran a business down on the sawdust, was well known in the city and respected. God knew the Palace contributed more than its fair share to the city coffers. But I had not really realized how much attention he would gain tonight, and I ducked my head and murmured hellos, glad for the veil that softened and blurred my features.
“Don’t be shy,” he murmured to me at one point. “It’s about time they knew who you were.”
The doors opened, and we joined those going inside, past the closed doors of the dry goods store on the bottom floor, and up the stairs. I had supposed Squire’s would be a small theater, and as shabbily built as most of the other buildings in Seattle, though from the outside it was nicely appointed. But it was much grander than I’d expected. It seemed Seattleites had high aspirations after all—the stage was very large, and the house must have seated near to six hundred, with twelve boxes on either side.
The footlights rimming the stage had been lit. I smelled gas and perfume and the faintly mildewed scent of the heavy green velvet curtains separating us from the stage as the heat from the lamps shone upon it. In a narrow pit, the members of the orchestra began to tune their instruments. Talk and laughter filled the auditorium as the audience entered. There was the usual shuffling of feet and the rustle of satin and taffeta and the quick swish of fans, the creak of seats straining to accommodate. I felt a sharp anticipation.
I had no illusions—I knew I would not see an unparalleled performance coming from a company willing to trek to the outpost that was Seattle—but I craved the sound of that music, the romantic story, the battle between good and evil where the stakes were high and the moral easy to identify, so unlike real life, where those fights were subtle and small and you never realized you’d fought them until they were over.
Beside me, Johnny leafed through his program, his top hat settled on his knee, his hair shining golden in the reflected light. “Now here’s something I’d forgotten. It’s your namesak
e here.”
I glanced down at the page, at the character name I knew already perfectly well.
“Your ma an opera lover?” Johnny asked.
“I don’t know how she came up with the name,” I said stiffly.
“Well, let’s hope you don’t share this Marguerite’s fate.” He closed the program and glanced around. “Looks to be a full house tonight.”
“It seems Seattle’s growing hungry for culture.”
“Maybe it’s time to contact some of my old friends in San Francisco. What kind of show d’you think would go up here?”
I shrugged. “Anything by Verdi. No one dislikes Verdi.”
I knew the moment the words were out of my mouth that I’d made a mistake. Johnny’s gaze sharpened. “Verdi? You know something about opera?”
I scrambled for safety. “Everyone knows Verdi.”
He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, and I wished I’d kept quiet. I turned away, looking up as the bejeweled and best of Seattle society took their seats in the boxes, and when the lights flickered off their opera glasses, I looked away and down, my excitement and anticipation fading in anxiety. I had been a fool to come.
But then the lights went dim and my nervousness slipped away as everyone quieted. I held my breath, waiting for the first notes. The orchestra began the overture. The music was mysterious and eerie, and I found myself on the edge of my seat, leaning forward, my breath caught as the curtains opened with a swish, revealing Faust at a table, preparing the poison he was about to drink, and from the moment he called out for the devil and Mephistopheles appeared in a showy burst of smoke, I was lost in sensation and words and music and a story so compelling I forgot where I was, who I was with, everything but the opera, which seemed to climb into my throat and lodge there, urging me to sing it.
For three years I had kept away from this. Now the intensity with which I’d missed it hit me like a blow. My soul drank the music, and when the intermission came and the curtain fell, I blinked my way back into time, bewildered, for a moment not remembering where I was, and I could not speak for the weight of my memories. My face was wet with tears I hadn’t realized I’d shed. Surreptitiously, I wiped them away.