Heartsong

by Melinda Cross

  'There.' The hands left her neck. 'That's better. Now play.'

  Almost mindlessly, she focused on the staff paper propped up in front of her and began to play.

  As she came to the end of the first sheet, another appeared magically; and then another, and another, and she played on, her brows tipped in inexpressible sadness, her lips parted in an unspoken sigh. At some point she ceased to merely play the music, and somehow became the music; and the haunting, heart-breaking melody that rose from the piano was nothing less than the song of her own heart.

  At last she struck a particular pianissimo chord that seemed to be waiting for something, but there were no more sheets, no more notes to play. The sound of that chord hung in the air long after her hands had fallen to her lap.

  She felt a gentle pressure on her chin, turning her head to the right, and it took her a moment to recognise the pressure as a hand. At some point Elias had moved to sit next to her on the bench, and now his fingers were cupping her chin and he was staring at her, his eyes quietly intent.

  'For the movie?' she murmured.

  He nodded. 'The title song. I started writing it the night we met.'

  She pressed her lips together and tired to fight the sudden rush of warmth that felt strangely like an embrace. It had been so intimate, playing his music, feeling his music, trespassing into the despair that had put those notes on paper, as if only she could enter his mind and tell the world what she had seen there. The bond of such a thing was overwhelming…and terrifying.

  He felt it, too—the wild surge of joy, and the terror as well. She could see it in his eyes, sense it in the heated tremble of his fingers as they slipped from her chin to her neck, then down to the pulse in the hollow of her throat.

  She was dimly aware that his hand was moving down towards the rise of her breast, and in a separate compartment of her mind an unheard voice cried out a warning—pull away, Madeline; pull away now, while there's still time—but she was lost in the green of his eyes that promised spring and rebirth, and her breast throbbed under his hand like the earth warming under the morning sun.

  It all seemed so natural, so inevitable. She had belonged to Elias Shepherd ever since she'd first played his music, and, just as surely, he had belonged to her.

  Instinctively she raised her hand to cover his, to press it more firmly against her breast, and for a moment she thought he was smiling at her, somewhere behind the steady eyes and the set mouth, somewhere deep inside where no one else could see; but then suddenly his expression darkened with something like alarm, he snatched his hand away, and shot up from the piano bench and glared down at her.

  Before she could make sense of what was happening, he had turned back to the first sheet of music and was jabbing at it with one finger. 'Play it again!' he demanded.

  Frowning, she looked back at the music, but the notes seemed to blur together on the page.

  'Play,' he commanded her again, and her brows twitched a little, as if she recognised the word but couldn't quite remember the proper response.

  'Dammit, play,' he spat, and her hands moved tentatively to the keyboard, remembering what was required even if her brain didn't. The first chord rang sharply discordant.

  'B flat!' he bellowed, startling her so badly that she bit down on her tongue. 'For God's sake, that's a B flat!'

  He was yelling at her. The bastard was yelling at her. She didn't have to take that, of course, and she wouldn't. Just as soon as she was thinking just a little more clearly, just as soon as she found her voice again, she would tell him that.

  He began to snap his fingers right next to her ear, trying to force her to pick up the tempo. 'Come on, come on,' he said irritably. 'You played it perfectly the first time; what's the matter with you? You sound like a first-year student. Concentrate!'

  She concentrated. It was better to concentrate on the music than on his sudden, inexplicable hostility; better than thinking about what had happened between them, or almost happened, or had she imagined it all? Her hands started to come down harder on the keys, faster, splintering the air with the raucous complaint of misplayed notes, and oddly enough she didn't care. As a matter of fact, there was a perverse satisfaction in playing it all wrong, in making a terrible, ghastly noise that would drive him—

  'What is this?' He had to shout to be heard over her banging. 'Jump into that phrase! Flutter the trill! Dammit, what the hell are you doing?'

  And suddenly, it was enough. She slammed both hands forcefully down on the keyboard, jumped to her feet, and spun to face him, her face red, her eyes flashing. For the first time in her life Madeline felt the stirrings of real defiance. She wanted to shout at him; to pound her fists against his chest and scream that she didn't understand, that it didn't make sense that he kept offering the teasing promise of affection only to pull back, just as life had always offered things like home and family and then snatched them away…

  But Madeline wasn't good at defiance. She'd never been taught that she had the right to shout and pound her fists and question the way others treated her when it seemed unfair; so, when she finally spoke, her voice was flat and dull. 'I don't think we'll be able to work together after all,' she said simply. 'You'd better find someone else.'

  She had a brief glimpse of emerald eyes flying wide in surprise before she pushed past him and left the studio, but once safely outside she sagged heavily against the door to keep her knees from buckling under her.

  Oh, lord, it had been an awful mistake; such an awful mistake to come here; to subconsciously hope that relating to the man's music would mean she could relate to the man as well.

  She pushed herself away from the door and stood erect, thinking that perhaps she was stronger than she thought. At least this time she was leaving on her own, before someone sent her away. As she started to walk back towards the house, her mind clutched at this new-found shred of pride, trailing behind her like the remnant of a wispy cloud.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Madeline fumbled through the kitchen cupboards until she'd found the makings for another pot of coffee, then sat at the kitchen table, staring out at the rose garden, feeling every bit as dead as the black sticks that jutted from the earth. Walking out on Elias's fit of temper might have satisfied her pride, but there wasn't much residual warmth to the feeling.

  She stiffened in her chair when she saw him coming towards the house, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent as if he was deep in thought. She hated her sharp awareness of him as a man, her weakness in noticing the way his jeans moulded themselves to his legs as he walked, in seeing the breadth of his shoulders and the sunlight glancing off the lighter strands in his dark hair.

  He came through the door quietly, met her eyes, then slid into the chair opposite her at the table. 'Maddie,' he said softly, and she frowned, suspicious of his gentle tone, and of the nickname. No one had ever called her that before. 'I don't blame you for walking out on me out there; I had it coming. But I don't want to get another pianist. I can't get another pianist. Not like you.'

  She felt the traitorous, involuntary flutter of her heart inside her chest, as if a tiny sparrow were trapped there.

  'I'm sorry about what happened out there. I don't have a single excuse for treating you the way I did. God knows you deserve better—'

  He stopped abruptly, rubbing his hand over his mouth.

  'Are you apologising for the way you touched me, or the way you yelled at me afterwards?' The words were out of her mouth before she realised she was going to say them, and her heart jumped to her throat, they sounded so bold.

  He'd frozen in place at her question, his eyes fixed on hers. 'Both,' he said quietly. 'I had no right to do either.'

  Oh, but you did, she was thinking. I gave you the right to touch me that way, in my heart, at least…

  He was still motionless; still staring at her. 'I got involved with my pianist once before, Madeline; married her, in fact.' He smiled bitterly.

  Madeline took a mental step backwards
, wondering why David hadn't told her Elias's wife had also been his pianist.

  'We both loved the music,' Elias continued in a dull monotone, 'and I was fool enough to think that meant we loved each other. Getting those two things confused turned out to be a disaster, and I'm not about to make the same mistake again.'

  In his eyes Madeline saw a reflection of the same pain she'd seen in her mirror for years; the same brittle defence she herself had erected against the temptation to let someone in, to risk that pain again. No wonder he'd become so suddenly cold when they'd entered the studio to work.

  He looked away abruptly, as if he couldn't bear the sight of her face for too long at one time.

  'I'm not your ex-wife,' she reminded him gently.

  He looked straight into her eyes, and something he saw there made his features relax. 'No, you're not.' After a moment, his mouth trembled with the beginnings of a smile. 'You're magic, Madeline, and you don't even know it, do you?'

  She remembered David calling her that the day they'd met—magic Madeline, he'd said— had Elias called her that first? She felt a prickle behind her eyes and blinked hard.

  'I didn't just divorce my wife,' he said softly. 'I think I divorced the whole world. I hid myself away for so long, I think I'd almost forgotten how to care, how to feel. . .and then I heard you play my music that day, I heard you playing your feelings out loud on the piano, and…it was like hearing my feelings, too; reminding me I had them.'

  His smile was heart-breakingly tender as he reached across the table and captured both her hands in his. 'It was like waking up after a long sleep. You made me come alive again, Maddie. It's as simple as that.'

  Madeline sat perfectly motionless, barely breathing, her fingers trembling against his palms.

  'Something happens when you play my music, Maddie; some spiritual connection so powerful that it makes the music come to life, too. It's so rare; such a precious thing…' His brows angled like two black wings shadowing his eyes. 'I won't let that be destroyed.'

  She blinked in confusion, dark lashes battering the pale rise of her cheeks.

  'Relationships don't last forever, Madeline.'

  She nodded woodenly. No one knew that better than she did.

  'But our music will.' His eyes seemed strangely bright, almost iridescent. 'The music you and I make together might just last forever, if we don't destroy it by giving in to something that wouldn't last nearly as long.'

  Madeline felt the world pause for a moment, and in that pause something dark moved into the space between them. She felt her face stiffening, freezing into whatever expression she happened to be wearing.

  'Maddie.' He tightened his fingers on hers and leaned across the table towards her, com her attention. 'Give me another chance.' The words were so softly spoken she could barely hear them.

  She glanced down at where her hands were trapped like two lifeless birds, then looked up at him again with a faint, sad smile. 'For the music,' she said tonelessly.

  'Yes. The music. Nothing is as important as that.'

  Certainly not a moment of heedless, thoughtless passion, she thought bitterly; but then she let the bitterness seep away, because it was the music that had brought her into his life, and it was the music that would allow her to stay.

  The little clock above the sink filled the silent kitchen with its ticking while Madeline closed her eyes and took a deep breath. 'The music is important to me, too,' she said softly, and his head jerked hopefully. A single black strand of hair separated from its fellows and dropped over his forehead.

  'Does that mean you'll stay?'

  Madeline looked down at her hands with a sigh of resignation, wondering if she could really do this—if she could really spend day after endless day watching him, hearing his voice, feeling his presence, touching his mind through the keyboard, pretending, always pretending, that she didn't care any more than he did. Wouldn't it be easier to leave now? Of course it would. And then this would just be one more place in a long line of places where she had left behind a piece of her heart. 'Things will have to be different,' she said quietly. 'I won't be yelled at. I want you to treat me like…a friend.'

  His shoulders sagged as he released a long breath. He held her eyes for a moment, then slowly, solemnly, he extended his hand across the table. 'All right, Madeline. I promise.'

  Madeline hesitated, and, even though she knew she was opening herself to pain that would never quite go away, she accepted his hand, sealing the new bargain between them.

  He rose slowly from the table, and, for a man who had just got precisely what he wanted, he looked strangely sad. 'Why don't you take the rest of the day to get settled,' he said, 'while I do some work alone in the studio? There's a piano in the front parlour if you feel like playing.' He reached for the doorknob, then turned and looked at her. 'You won't regret this, Madeline,' he added. 'I promise.'

  She watched silently as he left, then turned to the window to follow him with her eyes as he passed through the rose garden and disappeared between the white pines. 'Yes, I will,' she whispered.

  She didn't know how long she had been sitting there, still staring out of the window, when the sound of a car in the front drive finally brought her to her feet.

  She walked through the house to the front door, opened it, and looked out on a battered station wagon with a starburst crack on the right side of the windscreen.

  A woman, whose petite, voluptuous form looked as though it had been poured into its brief shorts and halter, slid out from behind the wheel. Her brown hair spilled over her shoulders in thick, lustrous waves, and when her dark eyes saw Madeline a smile lit up the perfect oval of her face.

  'Hello!' A tanned, graceful arm lifted in a wave, then she bent to retrieve sacks of groceries from the car.

  Madeline walked out to help, assuming this was the woman Elias had told her about, a little taken aback by her extraordinary beauty. 'Hello. I'm Madeline Chambers.'

  The woman handed over a grocery bag with a grateful smile. 'You couldn't be anyone else, not the way Elias described you. He did tell you about me, didn't he?'

  'Yes; you're Becky, right?'

  'Right. Cook, housekeeper, shopper—whatever you two need.' She shrugged with good humour. 'Where is Eli, by the way?'

  Madeline's smile faltered a little to hear the personal shortening of his name. 'He's…out in the studio.'

  'Ah.' She grabbed the last bag and slammed the car door, then led the way back to the house. 'Wouldn't do to disturb him, then, would it? Good lord. Look at this place!' She stopped just inside the door and shook her head. 'It looks even worse in the daylight. You can almost taste the dust.'

  'In the daylight?' Madeline trotted along behind her, down the hallway past the stairs to the kitchen.

  Becky flashed a knowing grin over her shoulder. 'I cleaned your bedroom after dark, which ought to explain any dustballs I might have missed.'

  'Oh, you didn't have to do that…'

  'Yes, I did. Elias calls, I come running. That's the way it is. Just put that bag down on the work-top, will you? Have you had a chance to get settled yet?'

  'No,' Madeline replied distractedly. 'I haven't even unpacked.' She pursed her lips in consternation, remembering the clothes scattered across her bedroom. 'Well, actually I did unpack, sort of.'

  'Sort of?'

  She shrugged, a little embarrassed. 'I threw everything I brought with me all over the bedroom. I think I had a fit.'

  Becky chuckled as she pulled a comb from her pocket and pinned her hair on top of her head. 'That was Elias's doing, no doubt. He does that, you know. Makes other people want to throw things.' She looked for confirmation in Madeline's face, apparently found it, then gave her head a little exasperated shake.

  Madeline watched as she started to unpack the grocery bags, wondering why such a beautiful woman wasn't a model instead of a housekeeper. 'Do you have a lot of houses to take care of?'

  'Good lord, no,' Becky laughed, plunging her hands into another
bag. 'I don't do this for a living. I only do it for Elias. I teach during the school year. This is my summer vacation.'

  Madeline took a mental step backwards, but Becky just prattled on, oblivious. 'I'm glad he's here to stay for a while this time. Usually he's up for a few days, then off to somewhere else— anywhere else.' She paused and looked at Madeline. 'I've been trying to talk him into moving back here permanently for years. Maybe with your help, I can convince him.'

  Madeline paled and took a real step backwards this time, and suddenly everything started to make perfect sense. Becky didn't clean houses for a living, she only did it for Elias; Becky cleaned the bedroom after dark—what had she said? 'Elias calls, I come running'?— and now she was soliciting Madeline's help to get him to stay with her permanently…

  'Anything wrong?' Becky was frowning at her expression.

  'No. Nothing at all.' She forced a thin smile. 'I'll get out of your way now.'

  The words announced much more than her intention to leave the kitchen, but Becky had no way of knowing that.

  'I'll have some lunch ready in just a little while,' she said amiably, crouching down in front of the open refrigerator door, then jerking back, her pretty nose wrinkled in distaste. 'Oof. Something died in there.' She looked up and her face brightened. 'I'll be here every day from now on, by the way, so let me know if there's anything you need.'

  Madeline smiled stiffly and nodded, then excused herself and left the kitchen, suddenly desperate to find a piano and play.

  Elias hadn't shown her the parlour on her first tour of the house, choosing simply to tap the sliding wooden doors on one wall of the living-room as they passed. She parted the doors now with an effort, then looked into what had to be the largest room on the ground floor.

  There were a few pieces of comfortable furniture, a fireplace of white brick, and a wall covered with dozens of framed photographs she decided to examine later. For now, she was anxious to uncover the shrouded baby grand piano over by the bay window.