by Carrie Lofty
Paradise.
Arie was a weak man. He understood his weakness as thoroughly as he knew how to walk. When she grasped his hand and tugged, his worthless hesitations relented.
Pretend. Pretend until it is real.
Other than his months-old declaration of love, Arie had never said anything truer to Mathilda. He had been inventing and re-inventing his personality for more than a decade. The time required to walk from the piano bench to the bedroom proved more than adequate to remake himself once again.
For Mathilda, he was an idol. The maestro. Her lover. The truth would stay buried, no matter the cost to his peace of mind. A single night with her—and he did not trust any more than one moment at a time—would be worth the agony of his guilty conscience.
Next to his bed, their bed, he took her in his arms and eased the blankets from her shoulders. Fearful of revealing his turmoil, he kissed her. Repeatedly. Her warmth and passion soothed his wounds, and he drank in every sensation. He pressed his hard shaft along her stomach, kneading the rounded flesh of her rear, pulling her to his aching body.
Had he actually believed he possessed strength enough to deny such a wonder?
Tension stretched across Arie’s muscles. The urge to taste and take and demand useless promises increased his ardor. Control slipped beyond his reach. Each needy assault on her lips became more aggressive than the last. The driving need to erase his anxieties made him brutal, remaking him yet again—this time into a man of violence and desperation.
For a dozen thrilling breaths, Mathilda kept pace with his fervor. She kissed him as urgently. Her tongue and teeth endured his pitiless invasion and returned his passion in kind. Too soon, or perhaps just in time, her kiss faltered. She squirmed against the pull of his hands on her backside. Her hands formed fists on the wall of his chest, pushing him away.
She bit his lip—out of self-defense, maybe, but the severe, frantic act drove him to the brink of madness. His groin jerked against her hips, fueled by the erotic intensity of the pain and punishment he craved.
A distant, rational part of him recognized the injury he inflicted, both to Mathilda’s tender body and to her fragile trust. But wild thoughts pushed aside what remained of his honor. He wanted her beyond decency, beyond honor. She was so damned innocent, despite all she had endured. She would forgive him anything. To push her into the mattress and take his satisfaction would be easy.
Her dreadful whimper broke through the fog of need that strangled his conscience, leaving Arie mortified and ice cold within his own skin. He tasted blood in his mouth.
“Arie!”
That single cry revealed all. Her passion, her trust—her love?—had vanished.
And he realized the crime he had nearly perpetrated.
Nausea arose swift and terrible in his throat. He released Mathilda’s imprisoned arms. Faint bruises marred her skin. As quickly as she could, she struggled into the discarded blankets, her only place of refuge. Enveloped within those opaque layers, her eyes wide and horrified, she appeared much younger than her twenty-two years. Bile stained his mouth and his stomach clenched in fearful pain.
And why? Because he feared her low opinion. Because he was terrified she would leave him. His brutality brought his most appalling nightmares to life.
“What was that?” Her voice wrote a whispered poem of confusion. She eyed him as if he were a half-crazed bear in a baiting pen.
Arie stepped back to the far wall of the bedroom, away from the door. If she wanted to run…
“Forgive me.”
“No, no, I asked you a question.” She tugged the blankets more tightly around her body, a defensive gesture that belied the vigor of her inquest. “What was that? A belated punishment for my behavior this winter? Have you been waiting to subject me to this cruelty?”
“No.”
“This has to do with more than fretfulness about your symphony, yet you won’t tell me.” Her eyebrows bunched together as a sensible woman of feeling and intelligence attempted to make sense of chaos. “I have witnessed your doubt and triumph. I have seen you a cad, an outsider, a drunk. You’ve been my mentor and my…my lover. But never before have I been afraid of you.”
“Perhaps you should be,” he snapped, angry at her patience. The sooner she left, the sooner he could begin the unthinkable process of living without her. “You know little about me, but you come to me with your innocent dreams.”
“Innocent? Me?”
“Of course. Marriage to a nice doctor does not make you a woman of the world.”
Her posture stiffened at his condescension. “You think—”
“What proof have you that this was not some elaborate means of seducing you?”
Panic like that of a cornered fawn flashed in her hazel eyes. “Do you want me to doubt you, to rescind my love? Is that what you want?”
“No!” He jumped away from the wall. “I want down from this pedestal!”
“I don’t understand.”
“I am not an idol, Mathilda, your musical hero to worship from the second row.”
She flinched. Then she sneered. “Oh, that is rich, because neither am I your muse!”
“But…”
Arie faltered. She was his muse. She embodied his fondest ideas, at once selfish and noble. Her face, her music, her essence propelled him to the most potent creativity he had ever considered. Was that how she imagined him?
She interrupted the disarray of his thoughts. “I am a person, the same as you. I’m capable of cruelty and mistakes, of love. I pray I am beyond the former and that my future mistakes will be few.”
As Mathilda stood, his heart stopped with a disbelieving shudder. She walked to him, still hugging the bedcovers across her torso. Coldly, she stared into his soul, mocking his attempts to hide or rationalize or deceive. He looked away, ending her silent inquest for fear she would comprehend his every untruth.
But she did not stop. She eased closer, standing within arm’s reach of where he leaned into the wall. “If you’re asking me not to love you, I cannot. I tried.”
“Mathilda, please,” he whispered. Fatigued, baffled tears threatened to fall, an occasion he had not experienced since boyhood.
“Why are you trying to frighten me?”
If he had to be cruel again, if he intended to poison their affection before it had a chance to flourish, the moment was at hand. But Mathilda’s will remained far stronger than his. When good sense should have sent her fleeing into the early dawn with nothing but fear in her veins, she reached for him. She pulled him into the safety of her mercy and held his hand.
“I would forgive you almost anything, Arie.” She stroked his face with a touch like absolution. “Even whatever compelled you to claim Love and Freedom as your own.”
He flinched. He pressed his eyes closed. The hand intertwined with hers tightened. Mathilda waited, but he did not answer.
Waking up alone had not surprised her. Their new physical passion fascinated her, and she had sought Arie, ready to draw him back to their private sanctuary. The magic and power of their union—the sheer glorious fun of it—left her greedy for more. She had been eager to prove to her doubting, wakeful mind that they could revive and duplicate those sensations at will. She wanted to fly apart once again, to recreate every glittering touch.
Her brief search in the near-darkness had revealed Arie at his pianoforte. But compared to the partner who had made such exquisite love to her, the man she discovered was a stranger.
She shuddered to recall the force of his kiss, when his maudlin mood had transformed into violence. Expressing his fears with clenching hands, his aggression had assumed a frightening edge of urgency. She had felt fear in the arms of Arie De Voss, her lover and mentor—her most esteemed hero.
Now he stood before her, as puzzled and hurting as she had ever seen. Shame obscured everything, even his love for her. He hated himself for more than one reckless outburst, and at that moment, Mathilda could no more leave him than she could she
d her own skin.
“How?” A single rasped word.
“How? No, I will ask the questions,” she said. “Who wrote Love and Freedom?”
He dropped her hand. “Sándor Bolyai. My former maestro.”
“And you held your abilities in so little respect as to need to claim his work?”
“Are you surprised? You of all people understand that doubts can take precedence over talent.” Despite every physical indication otherwise—the tension in his neck, the perspiration on his brow—he sounded calm. “How did you know?”
She shrugged. “How do I understand all that I do with regard to music?”
“Then…when?”
“The other night, after receiving your invitation. I began to play whatever crossed my mind—the cantata you performed at the Dom, the sonata from the Venners’ ball. And Love and Freedom. I heard the differences.”
Arie frowned. “Tell me.”
“The tonal distance between the harmony and melody, the pattern of rests. Everything. I heard it as plainly as the difference between my voice and yours.”
“And you were angry.” His defeated statement broached no room for dissent.
“Angry? Perhaps. Disappointed, yes—curious. But I began to see events in a different light. You always became annoyed when I mentioned Love and Freedom, and you never select it for performances. Even last night, alone in Rittersaal, you refused to play it for me.”
“And now you know I am a fraud.”
“I know no such thing,” she snapped. “The improvisation at the Stadttrinkstube proved your talent, if nothing else.” Her anger flared like a bright flame. “Had you any intention of telling me?”
“The truth is complicated.”
“No, it’s not. You admit your mistake and stand ready for the consequences.”
Seconds piled on quiet seconds. Arie said nothing. Mathilda’s heart contracted with a disappointment far more painful than she had experienced upon learning of his deceit.
“When we met, your attention was a privilege.” Her unfaithful voice refused to remain strong. “Can you understand that? I held you in such awe…such awe. When you sought my company, the sun shone on me alone. But you didn’t intend to take me into your confidence, did you? I’m no more special than the public you deceive.”
His face flushed a sickened combination of white and splotchy pink. “I did not want to lose your regard. I knew how closely you relate that composition with me.”
Mathilda turned on him with the strength of her confusion. Her sense of rejection, of falling to earth after a wild surge skyward, tightened her throat. “You would rather lie to me, perhaps forever? Or all but assault me because you’re frightened and guilty?”
“And how different are you, really, from the people I trick?” He stooped to retrieve her discarded gown and forced her into the dress—a most spiteful and careless maid. “You should be outraged at my fraud, not follow me to bed. Yet you are hypnotized like any other eager widow.”
She slapped at stubborn, injured tears. “I want to think that this malice is your attempt to protect yourself. I did the same, staying away from you for all those weeks.”
“And if not?”
“Then I was deceived by more than a composition,” she said. “I had no notion your love was this small.”
He stood motionless and resolute. His gaze revealed nothing. Mathilda could find no hint of the man she had believed him to be.
She shook her head, staggered by the change in him. “How did we come to this?”
“Get your pelisse and get out.”
Mathilda stared, suddenly as angry as she had ever been. She ached with shame that the man she loved was sending her away, half-clad and humiliated. She drew herself up, all dignity and defiance.
“You’re a coward,” she said. Arie looked sideways at her, shaken from his smug footing. “Days ago you accused me of the same. You were right then, just as I am now. I’ve been trying to believe in you and your music, in us, but you make that impossible.”
From the dirt-smeared window behind his pianoforte, Arie saw Mathilda stride up Getreidegasse until the early dawn rendered her a distant silhouette. With a curse, he tore his coat from behind the door and dashed down dizzying flights. He had kissed her and held her in his arms. He had forced her to leave. But he would not let her walk home alone.
Following at a cautious distance, he allowed the numbing winds to obliterate his thoughts. If he thought, he might call out to her. If he called her, she would take him back—without ever asking him to prove his worth. He could never accept her generosity, not knowing if he even deserved her admiration. Her love.
At the Venners’ manor, Mathilda rounded to the rear servants’ door. A footman permitted her entry. Arie watched her disappear into the massive structure.
“Forgive me, Mathilda.” The wind swallowed his words.
He stumbled like a sleepwalker back to his studio and collapsed on the sagging single mattress. Driven mad by the smell of her skin on the sheets, the smell of their spent passion, he slumped into his studio chair instead. The battered, ink-stained worktable served as his pillow.
He neither ate nor drank. He accepted no callers and saw no students. Two days later, he packed his meager belongings, said goodbye to Kapellmeister Haydn and departed Salzburg.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Mathilda.”
I don’t want to wake up.
“Mathilda, dearest.”
“I don’t want to wake up.”
“Nonsense,” Ingrid said. “Get up, Tilda. This is my house, and I will have you forced from it bodily if I must.”
“Does Venner know you call it your house?”
“I chose the wallpaper. It’s mine.” She stepped away from the bed and opened the drapes, ushering midday sunshine into the dolor of Mathilda’s room. “Now get up before someone sees us. They’ll mistake me for your lady’s maid, and my place in society will be ruined.”
“Your place in society is likely tenuous enough because of me.” Struggling against the lull of comfortable bedding, she sat up and leaned on the pillows Ingrid propped along the headboard. The smell of strong dark coffee barely brightened her mood.
“Again, nonsense.” Ingrid placed a demitasse on the nightstand and sat nearby with her own cup. “Wealth counters scandal quite nicely, or I never would’ve been accepted as Christoph’s wife.”
Mathilda sipped the hot brew. “Well then, you can afford to take any occupation that pleases you, including lady’s maid.”
Ingrid conjured a face of disappointment. “I would, dearest, but we have company set to call in an hour. Alas, I must maintain my dreadful position as mistress of the house, at least for the afternoon.”
“Who will call?”
“Kapellmeister Haydn.” She offered a good-natured grin. “I’ve called Klara already. She’ll be along shortly to make you presentable, for I know he’s not calling to speak with me—or Christoph, saints save us. Can you imagine them talking about, what, land holdings?”
Mathilda eyed her friend as Ingrid prattled with uncommon brightness. “Perish the thought,” she said distractedly. “Did he mention his purpose for calling?”
“No, and neither did he mention Herr De Voss. But we both know he’ll be a topic of conversation, if not the only one.”
“I didn’t mention him.”
“No, I did, saving you the trouble.” She drained the remainder of her coffee in the quick, girlish way she reserved for moments alone in Mathilda’s company. “Now get up.”
Klara arrived fifteen minutes later, and thirty minutes after that, the maid had worked her ever-improving magic. Despite the fact she had been awake only long enough to become nervous, Mathilda deemed herself presentable, even becoming. Her brown locks carefully arranged, her corset snug, and a navy gown neatly pressed, fastened and flattering, she appeared ready to meet even the most discriminating caller.
“You’re worlds apart from the woman who arrived at our
door that morning,” Ingrid whispered. “A lucky thing, too, lest anyone recognize you.”
Oliver, ever subtle and dependable, had informed his mistress of Mathilda’s indecorous dawn homecoming, but no one else. Not even Venner. Tears, a hot bath and a lengthy conversation had consumed, Mathilda knew, most of Ingrid’s patience and the majority of the Saturday that followed.
Two weeks had done little to temper her humiliation. Although she could hardly be cross with Ingrid, neither could she view those events with any degree of optimism. Her expectations had fallen low, while Ingrid teased because she had yet to awaken to a day without hope.
Twisting an unruly ringlet, Mathilda said, “So I might better prepare myself, for how long will you insist on raising that specter?”
“Until the baby comes. By that time, I shall be too distracted to tease you.”
Mathilda formed a reflexive O with her mouth. “A baby?”
Pressing her lips together, tears forming in her green eyes, Ingrid nodded. “I told Christoph this morning.”
“Oh, I’m happy for you, dearest!” She enveloped her friend in a fierce hug. “I thought you were enjoying your new role as nursemaid a little much.”
“Of late, you’ve been needy enough to prove good practice.” Ingrid sniffed and offered a wobbly grin.
“What is it?”
“I’m a dreadful coward, Tilda,” she said, drawing away. “In truth, I’d hoped you would travel this path before me—how it’s always been for us. I am…scared.”
On occasion, as Jürgen’s nurse or assistant, Mathilda had witnessed gruesome events, not the least of which was the deadly trial of childbirth. She knew the immense difficulties some women experienced when bringing life into the world. Even as she mistrusted her own ability to conceive after three fruitless years of marriage, she had wondered what fate labor would hold.
Ingrid would face such a trial before year’s end, an event that brought Mathilda equal portions of joy and fright. But she forced reassurances to take the place of unease.
“You shouldn’t worry,” she said. “Venner will ensure that you have the very best care.”