by Ella Edon
Jonathan tried his best not to take his annoyance out on the portly young lady, Miss Wiglesworth. “But that is no matter, and it is all over and done with.”
“Oh, and why is that? Have you graduated?”
“I’m afraid not, Miss Wiglesworth. I have had to withdraw from the college because of the death of my father … in a hunting accident.”
“Oh, my stars! How romantic!” said Miss Wiglesworth. “A hunting accident!” And then she caught herself. “My deepest condolences on the loss of your earl, I mean, your father.”
“Thank you, Miss Wiglesworth,” said Jonathan, turning away. “Do enjoy the concert.”
“Oh, I won’t. I simply hate that European caterwauling.”
“Jonathan, you simply must meet Miss Cordelia de Montmorency,” said Peter, pushing him toward a young and attractive blonde girl.
“I am very pleased to meet you, my Lord,” said Cordelia. Jonathan was confused by this title, which he had scarcely ever heard before.
“Oh no, I am merely Jonathan Anderson-Reese, not an earl. At least not yet.”
“Oh, I am most frightfully sorry, Jonathan,” said Cordelia, looking slightly less interested. “I was given to understand that you are a hereditary earl.”
“Well, I suppose I am,” he said, looking past her and into the crowd of overdressed and over-perfumed young ladies, who had gowns that took up nearly the entire room.
There was a silence, during which he looked at this pretty blonde, ringleted young woman. To all the rest of the world, Cordelia was a beauty, a striking beauty, but all Jonathan could see was a coarse young child bent on boring him to death with her dull conversation. “I beg your pardon Miss Cordelia, but you have a most fascinating moniker. I have never met a person with such a … Shakespearean name.”
“Oh, it is not Shakespearean, it is Kentish,” she said, and at that moment Jonathan realized although her blonde ringlets were beautiful, and she was fairly dripping with jewels of one sort or another, there was a dullness behind her eyes revealing that she was not a clever girl.
“I only meant that it was a name taken from King Lear,” he tried to explain.
“No, no!” she giggled. “I was given it by me mother. She was from Kent, and my daddy is a man of few words, so he had no say in any of women’s affairs.”
“I see,” said Jonathan. “And what is it your father does?”
“He’s a manufacturer of spirits.”
“Spirits? What do you mean? He is a necromancer?”
“No no! He makes gin.”
“Gin? Oh, I see. How merry.”
Jonathan saw Simon, over her shoulder, making a mime show of drinking spirits and lurching around in a daze. He smiled. “I mean, that is fascinating. And are you interested in music?”
“Oh no. I have a tin ear. I am only here to meet young men such as yourself.”
“Oh,” he said, feeling overwhelmed with boredom. The bellman had begun to walk through the young crowd, indicating that the performance was about to begin. “I really must take my seat. What is your surname, Miss Cordelia?”
“De Montmorency,” she said with a flourish.
“Well I do hope I meet you again, Miss Cordelia de Montmorency,” said Jonathan gallantly.
“I hope so too, Jonathan Anderson-Reese, Earl of Yarmouth.”
She moved away, and Simon and Peter approached him, and both of them were smiling. “That is the answer to all your troubles, old sock,” said Peter.
“Dear God in heaven, I should rather leap off London Bridge than spend a single evening in her company.”
“She is dull as ditch water, but pretty as a picture,” said Peter, glancing after her.
“Heaven preserve me!” said Jonathan.
Peter and Simon looked at one another. “He is hopeless,” said Simon.
Sitting in Covent Garden, Jonathan sank further into despair. He felt more and more as though he would be condemned to a life of frivolity with someone like Miss Cordelia de Montmorency - a name he was almost certain had no Normand origin. Indeed, he would bet his last farthing that it had been invented by some resourceful gin distiller no more than ten years ago because it looked fine on a label. The bitter cruelty of his father’s passing was weighing on him more and more, and even when the petite songstress called The Parisian Nightingale took the stage in a beautiful lavender gown, he was unable to rouse himself to look.
But he could not close his ears and when she began to sing, he changed. He was mesmerized. He heard a pianoforte playing, and then a flute, and within seconds this voice - more than a voice - a presence. It was her, The Parisian Nightingale. When she sang, it was as though his soul were woken from a slumber that had lasted for eons.
“Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest, from his moist cabinet mounts up on high,” she sang in a voice so clear and beautiful that he could forget the staggeringly poor text setting. He leaned over to Simon who was gazing at her décolleté with rapture. “Who is this goddess?” he said.
“She’s the bleedin’ Parisian Nightingale.”
“I mean, what is her Christian name?” he said.
“Blessed if I know,” he said, nudging Peter, who was likewise mesmerized by her bodice. “Oy, what’s the bird’s name?”
“Parisian Nightingale,” said Peter shushing him.
“No, I mean what does her mother call her?”
“Garance Monteux,” he said, and as soon as Jonathan heard this name, it was imprinted on his soul.
“She is the woman I want to marry,” said Jonathan.
“Marry? Sorry, old bean, but that bird is a singer. She don’t marry nobody. But I warrant you can get a bead on her if you go to her dressing room after the performance. I read somewhere that these songstresses do that. But you need a pocketful of cash.”
And just as quickly as he had been filled with hope, his hopes were dashed. He sank into gloom and despair, and at the interval, he refused to leave his seat. “No thank you,” he said. “I have no need to meet Lady Cordelia.”
“I might take a spin on her if you are really disinterested,” said Simon. “I don’t mind a bird who is daft.”
Something had come over Jonathan. The concert was not only brilliant; it was stunning, and Jonathan was floating on the wings of song for the entire concert. He was captivated by her beauty which was the main attraction, it seemed, for most of the gentlemen in the audience, but not for him. Every few minutes, when he could tear his eyes from her stunning beauty, he looked around at the lascivious faces of old, fat men, ogling her like she was a prostitute. He was horrified and at the same time envious. He resolved then and there that, despite the unlikelihood of meeting her, he would give it a try. Jonathan knew a little about music, having studied the harpsichord for several years as a youth, and he had a passable tenor voice that was put to good use in the chapel at Oxford. He had sung a mass by some composer from Austria called Mozart, and thought it was one of the most rewarding experiences of his life. And so, he felt that perhaps he might have something to talk about with Mademoiselle Garance Monteux.
When the concert finished, he leapt to his feet, applauding with tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Brava!” he cried in a voice so loud that it nearly burst the eardrums of poor Peter who was seated beside him, sunk into sleep.
“Oy Johnny! What is wrong?” asked Peter.
“I simply must meet her.”
“Well, you know what I told you. Go backstage and see if she’ll rendezvous with you.”
Chapter Five
The First Encounter
Jonathan waited until the hall went quiet and the hum of excited voices began to sing her praises. He moved past his friends and into the lobby lost in thought. He didn’t see Cordelia de Montmorency as she sidled up to him. “Did you like her dress?” she said.
“I beg your pardon?” said Jonathan.
“Her gown, it was Parisian you know. It was beautiful, don’t you think?”
“It was lov
ely, but Miss Cordelia, it was her voice that had me transported.”
“I fell asleep for most of it, I confess,” she said, giggling coquettishly. “But the good news is that I have all the energy in the world after that lovely nap. Would you like to accompany my friends to a soirée?”
Jonathan did not mean to be rude, but he had a rather more pressing encounter to go to. “I am sorry, Miss Cordelia, but I cannot.”
“Well, do take my card. It has my at-home hours, and I should like very much to meet you again.”
“Of course,” he said having absolutely no intention of ever visiting her. But Jonathan was too well-brought-up to refuse a visiting card. Nevertheless, he pushed through the crowd and made his way to the street. He saw a flower-girl standing, looking bedraggled.
“Boy a flah from a poe gehl?” she said in a voice so pathetic that he was moved to buy all her flowers.
“How much for the lot?” he asked. She had six roses left, and they were a lamentable set. Limp and wilting, but red roses.
“Sixpence?” she said, and he gave her half a crown, as he took the small bouquet and strode toward the stage entrance.
“Oh, fank you saa!” he heard the poor flower girl say. He pulled the door open only to be greeted by a crowd of gentlemen, dressed far better than he, with bunches of camellias and white gardenias, orchids, and calla lilies. He looked at his sad little bouquet of red roses and the long line of older gentlemen, and considered returning to his friends, but something held him there, something more powerful than his shyness. He needed to see her, to meet her, to express his joy at the quality of her voice, her talent. He absolutely needed this, or he would die.
Jonathan was filled with a grim determination that he had never known before. He felt as though he were in love, and he would not be deterred, not by the fiasco of his father’s penury, nor by these callous thugs and their flowers. He knew, somewhere deep within him that this aura of perfection he had experienced on stage was more than a performance. He knew at some profound level that she would be his love. She simply had to be!
He watched, dumbstruck, as Garance entered the room. She was mobbed by these coarse gestures of infatuation from so many old, fat men. She smiled with equanimity and one after another, they departed, feeling that they had made a strong impression on her. She looked at him once or twice, their eyes locking in what he imagined was a meaningful manner. Something about her told him that they shared something profound, some bond that could not be broken.
She had a deft way of deflecting the advances of these old men. Never rude, and always utterly charming, but it was clear that they would not have a chance to spend time with her alone. Jonathan was momentarily worried that he would lose his opportunity to speak to her. Words were not his forte, he knew, but he felt inspired when he looked at her. The tension in his mind grew more and more powerful as the room began to empty of her admirers.
So, he wondered, what was it that made him so sure she was the partner he needed? Why would he, a student, a member of the nobility, but one who had never done a thing to distinguish himself in the world, think he would be a fitting partner to this woman who was able to bring an entire theatre to tears? He assumed that she had reached only the men, and, he reasoned, it was more than likely that she had reached them by her beauty. But Jonathan was not here because of a pretty face. He was here because she had moved him as she had moved many in that theatre. She had spoken to his soul, and Jonathan needed someone to speak to his soul, and he needed to tell this person that he, too, had the soul of a poet.
Standing there, watching her be able to reject the advances of these old men in a kind and loving manner was both inspiring and daunting for him. He had experienced this sort of misplaced adulation from the like of Misses Wiglesworth and de Montmorency, and he had not been able to brush them off in the same kind manner. He remembered how rude he was, how rude he felt he needed to be, to get them away from him, and he was once again impressed with how deftly this Parisian Nightingale was able to turn them away with love, with kindness.
She was his better, he knew, but he knew, too, that he was improving, he was learning, and he was about to get a crash course in how to live life in a way that would determine the rest of his life. When he had walked into the theater, he imagined the reason for his attendance was to scoop up some boorish but wealthy young lady and take her fortune as a replacement for the one his father had squandered. Now, in the light of her aura, the light that shone from her soul, Jonathan saw a new world appearing on the horizon; one in which a pile of money had little or no meaning. One in which love, expressed and cherished, was all that mattered.
Of course, the world he lived in demanded a nobleman to have means, or he would have no right to his title. That much was clear. However, it was far from clear how he would be able to save his soul if he were forced into marrying one of those foolish girls who were fawning over him in the reception area of the theater. On the other hand, the sight of this French songstress moving among so many admirers, treating them kindly but firmly was an object lesson in how to treat admirers without encouraging them. He looked at her, and her beauty shone through in a way he had never considered any woman’s could. It was not only her voice, or her astonishing beauty, it was her manner, her confidence, her facility with her lot in life that was admirable. She looked as though she did not need him, and that was terribly attractive.
Slowly, the room began to empty, and he knew his moment of reckoning was coming. There is a tide in the affairs of men, Shakespeare once wrote. Taken at the flood, lead on the fortune, and a tidal wave was headed his way.
Chapter Six
Rules
Finally, the crowd thinned, and at long last, after nearly an hour, she sighed.
And then, to his surprise, she smiled at him and murmured “At last!”
“I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle Monteux,” he said, star struck. “Would you like me to leave you in peace? You must be exhausted after that brilliant performance. I have never heard a coloratura like yours in my life!”
“Thank you, young man,” she said, taking the roses from him and depositing them in a small vase alongside the larger and more lavish arrangements. “I am far from exhausted, but I am famished, and my maid seems to have vanished. Would you be so kind as to accompany me to a café? I cannot go travel in the streets of London unaccompanied.”
Jonathan was stunned. He had never dreamed this would happen to him. He had been planning on asking her if he could take her for a carriage ride through Hyde Park or some other diversion but being offered to accompany her to a café was outlandish and perfect. “Of course,” he said. “Although I am quite sure we would have to return to Paris to find a café that would be open at this hour.”
“Why, it is scarcely past nine,” she said. “Ca m’étonne!”
“I know of only one restaurant that would be appropriate for a lady like yourself,” said Jonathan. “It is an oyster bar called Rules, and it is one of the finest places in London. Do you like oysters?”
She laughed and as she did, it gave him the sensation of a handful of tiny glass balls released onto a wooden floor. He felt faint.
“Bien sûr! I love oysters,” she said as she took his arm with finality. “Conduct me to this Rules!”
And with that, Jonathan Anderson-Reese strode into the night with the woman he felt deep in his heart would be his wife and soul-mate one day. If he could only make her see this, he felt his world would be complete. His heart swelled with pride as he walked past the group of old men who had given her their fancy flowers. He led her by the arm, down the avenue to Rules, which was only a few steps from the stage door of Covent Garden.
“I am sorry, my Lord, but there is not a seat to be had, not even for ready money,” said the maître d’hôtel at Rules.
“I think you are mistaken,” said Jonathan. “If you do not have a table for The Parisian Nightingale, you may find your establishment closed down tomorrow.”
“The P
arisian… oh! My goodness, of course, sir. We have a room here that is available for these sorts of rendezvous. I mean, of course, no disrespect, and I am in no way suggesting you are being indiscreet.” The poor man was bewildered and flustered, and ran from the podium into the inner sanctum, where he prepared a room for the two of them.
“Good Lord, you are a legend!” said Jonathan.
“Or perhaps it is you who are the legend, my Lord,” she said coquettishly.
“Oh, that!” he said with a sigh. “It is a long story. You see, England has many social strata, and I seem to be somewhat far up on one of these rungs. My father, you see, was the hereditary Earl of Yarmouth.”