by Erica Ridley
“And last,” Lady Grenville continued with obvious pride. “My youngest daughter: Miss Bryony Grenville.”
When the youngest chit stepped out with a violin in hand, Michael barely managed to restrain a gasp of shock. Because he’d spent the last decade-and-a-half haunting music stores across the continent in search of unique harps, he recognized the instrument for what it was.
Bryony Grenville’s violin was a work of art. A musical masterpiece crafted by none other than the famed luthier Antonio Stradivari. What on earth was happening?
Lady Grenville took her seat in the front row next to her husband.
Michael stood a little straighter. He’d always known that the Grenvilles were neither rich nor poor, neither shunned nor especially fashionable. He’d believed their much-publicized musicales to be nothing more than a mother’s obvious attempt to draw a level of attention to her daughters that they might not otherwise receive. Three suitors for three daughters was too important a task to be left to Almack’s alone.
But the middle daughter wasn’t even present. The youngest had a Stradivarius that cost as much as the townhouse they lived in. It was the son who sat at the pianoforte. And Camellia…
What had Hawkridge said, that day at the circus? The marquess had claimed Camellia’s voice was far superior to the current reigning soprano—a woman internationally famous for the beauty of her voice.
Lady Pettibone had immediately censured the idea of a proper young woman throwing her life and reputation away on something as vulgar as the theater, and the conversation had taken a sharply different path.
Heath Grenville arranged his fingers on the pianoforte and began to play. When Bryony Grenville touched her bow to her strings, Michael’s breath caught from the exquisite sweetness of the sound.
And then Camellia opened her mouth to sing.
The rest of the world fell away. All Michael could feel was the enraptured thump of his heart. All he could see was Camellia’s expressive face. And then not even that. Her voice filled the room, filled his body, filled his head and his heart and his soul.
He was no longer standing in a claustrophobic salon with four inches of wainscoting protruding into his back, but transported to another world. To the vast, endless sky. The joyful notes were like shooting stars exploding across the heavens. The sorrowful chorus ripped his heart from his chest.
The Grenvilles didn’t merely play music. They forced their guests to feel it, to live it, to be it.
Heath Grenville was more talented than Michael had ever suspected. Bryony Grenville was nothing short of phenomenal. But Camellia… Her voice was capable of lifting people out of themselves and into the music itself. Every word was a painting, every soaring trill an adventure.
Michael had never been more in awe—or more in love. She was incredible.
Only when the song ended and her brother began playing the introduction to the next did Michael become aware of murmurs rippling through the room.
He turned to the person next to him. “What is it? What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” replied a wide-eyed gentleman. “This is the sixth song, not the second song. They’ve never strayed from the score.”
Michael frowned. “I’m not sure a change in the order counts as straying from the score.”
“Shh!” A man to the other side waved Michael to silence without taking his gaze from the stage. “Hush. Something must be happening.”
Michael fell silent. Not because the other gentleman had asked him to, but because Camellia had once again started to sing.
She turned words into emotions, lyrics into reality. Her voice ran through his veins like lifeblood, filling him with joy, then despair, then hope, then love. She held the entire room in thrall as she lifted her audience up and tossed them down with the magic of her voice. Not a single person breathed until the song was over.
Dazed, Michael turned to the man next to him in wonder. “Is it always like this?”
The gentleman blinked slowly, as if coming to after a sultry evening in an opium den.
“Always,” he whispered. “Although tonight is even better than—”
Every guest froze in obvious shock as Heath Grenville began to play the next song.
“What is it?” Michael glanced around in alarm. “What’s happening?”
“It’s…a new song,” came the disbelieving voice of a gentleman on the other side. “It’s never a new song.”
Camellia stepped up to the edge of the stage to face the audience.
“Tonight, I am going to sing an aria currently being performed at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden.” She took a deep breath and smiled at the crowd. “With luck, the next time I perform, it will be on that stage.”
A collective gasp ran through the crowd.
Michael’s heart stopped. He hadn’t arrived here tonight just in time to hear her sing. He was watching her give up her reputation, her standing, and her future in order to pursue the thing she wanted most: performing live in an opera.
The sound of a hundred mouths falling open in unison disappeared as the music swelled and Camellia once again began to sing. The notes dove and soared, the lyrics transporting the audience from the impotent rage of betrayal to the tender hope of love, of trust, of possibility.
He almost laughed when he realized the truth. He had come here tonight prepared to promise forty scandal-free years, not mere days, if that was what it took to win a second chance… and it turned out he wasn’t the scandalous one after all.
Camellia was.
For Michael, it changed nothing. But he would never be able to forgive himself if he didn’t encourage the love of his life to live her dream.
She wanted to be an opera singer? With a voice like that, the entire world needed her to be an opera singer.
If she were willing to accept him, he’d be more than happy to play second fiddle to a far more scandalous wife. But if the siren call of the theater filled her world so completely that there was no room left for Michael…
He swallowed his sorrow. Then he would have to let her go.
Chapter 28
Camellia ended her final note with more trepidation than she’d ever felt in her life. She’d announced her intent to pursue a career in theater to the entire ton, then promptly performed a scandalous piece from Don Juan: A Grand Opera in Two Acts.
Three songs in, and the musicale was over.
From this moment forward, Camellia was no longer a respectable woman. She was a future opera singer. Or at least she’d die trying.
She might become the most famous performer in England, or she might never rise from the obscurity of the chorus. Either way, her life as a proper young lady was over. Most of the people present tonight would never be able to share a roof with her again, unless it was from the safe distance of a theater box.
Once the shock settled, a few brave souls burst into spontaneous applause. Several others stood up and left the room. The rest stayed perfectly still to see what would happen next.
Camellia had no idea what was going to happen next. She didn’t even know if she would remain welcome in her own home. Her siblings supported her one hundred percent, but Mother had very strong ideas about how she expected her daughters to live the rest of their lives.
Well, so did Camellia. Life was too short to spend it without the things one loved most.
She might not get to have it all, but at least she would have the opera.
Mother sprang to her feet and roared at the crowd. “Everybody go home! The musicale is over. Out! Out!”
Camellia stepped back into the wings.
Under normal circumstances, her mother screeching Go home! at the most fashionable, powerful people in the beau monde would have caused an even bigger scandal than Camellia had done with her announcement.
But these were not normal circumstances. Far from being offended, the audience members were delighted to escape into their carriages and parlors and dinner parties to gossip about what they
’d just witnessed here tonight.
No one would remember Camellia’s father looking at her as if he’d truly noticed her for the first time. No one would notice the nod of acceptance he gave her before escorting his shocked wife behind the curtain and off to their private chambers.
No one would recall the tall, golden-haired earl fighting his way upstream against the departing crowd to where Camellia now stood in the shadows.
“Wainwright.” She forwent the traditional curtsy and forced herself to hold her ground. “Did you enjoy the show?”
“I wish it were longer,” he said immediately, surprising her with his ferventness. “I wish I’d attended every musicale your family had ever performed. I wish I could hide in the chandeliers every time you open your mouth to sing, even when you aren’t on stage.”
Her cheeks heated in pleasure. “You did enjoy the show.”
He took her hand. “You must know that your talent is incredible. I don’t think you’ll find work at the theater. I think you’ll find fame.”
The pleasure faded. No one knew actresses better than the Lord of Pleasure. Now that she had announced her disreputable plans to the world, what could he possibly want with her?
Camellia’s voice was bleak. “Is that why you’re here? To arrange a torrid affair with an opera singer instead of the usual actresses?”
“Nothing of the sort.” His eyes were beseeching. “I don’t want a torrid affair.”
She hesitated. “You don’t?”
“I want a torrid lifetime.” He pressed her hands to his chest. “I want to do things with you that would make the walls blush. I want to fall asleep every night with you in my arms and the scent of your hair against my cheek. Even when we’re old and wrinkled.” He appeared to reconsider his words. “Especially when we’re old and wrinkled.”
She stared back at him, heart thudding with hope. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t love Lady X. I never did. I never will.” His voice turned serious, his gaze intense. “I love Camellia Grenville. With or without a mask, my heart belongs to you.”
Her breath caught as she stared back at him wordlessly.
“Despite everything that has happened, despite the chance that doing so may cause even more scandal—I still selfishly, utterly, desperately want you to marry me.” He fell to one knee and placed her palm against his jaw. “Won’t you make me the happiest of men?”
Camellia took a deep breath. Of course that was what she wanted. But he had to want it, too.
She touched his cheek. “Becoming an opera singer will drop me to the same social level as an actress, if my actions tonight haven’t already done so.”
He grasped her hands to his heart. “You want to be an opera singer? Be an opera singer. But please say you’ll also be my wife.”
“You won’t be the Lord of Pleasure anymore,” she warned him. “Not with a theater wife. You’ll be a laughingstock.”
“I’ll be envied by all,” he promised. “My countess will be the most famous singer in England.”
“Perhaps not for the right reasons,” she said, her tone self-mocking. “Pursuing a career in opera has always been my dream, not a foregone conclusion. I may get laughed off the stage.”
“Or you may find your name on every playbill from London to Rome.” He smiled, then corrected himself. “Our name, that is. Lady Wainwright. Countess by day, soprano by night. I could get used to that.”
“Don’t expect me to sing all night,” she demurred, arching a suggestive brow. “A countess also has certain duties which she must not neglect.”
He stood up and pulled her into his arms with an arrogant grin. “Is that a ‘yes,’ Lady X?”
She twined her arms about his neck and kissed him with the promise of a thousand tomorrows. “Yes, Lord X. I would love to be your wife… because I love you.”
Chapter 29
Michael leaned against the sunny strip of wall between two of the harp room windows and grinned at his beautiful wife. Indescribable joy filled him at having her in his home. Their home. For the first time in well over a decade, the harp room was once again alive with music.
The cherubs smiling down at them from the brightly frescoed ceiling were no longer melancholy reminders of the past, but a promise of a long, happy future. He and Camellia had been wed for less than a day, and already Michael was more content than he could ever recall.
Speculation on whether his new wife was also the mystery lady who had fled his embrace at the masquerade had paled next to society’s giddiness that the Lord of Pleasure had been brought to heel by none other than mousy Miss Grenville. Not that they were calling her “mousy” anymore!
Ever since the scandalous splash she’d made singing the soaring lyrics of Don Juan’s spurned lover at her family musicale, talk was not over whether Lady Wainwright had once attended a masquerade, but whether she would be taking the stage to perform Mozart’s masterpiece live and without a mask.
The entire city planned to purchase tickets to witness a countess take part in theater.
The caricaturists were beside themselves with glee over the change in direction. Michael was no longer sketched as the Don Juan of England, but rather as a shamelessly smitten husband who fell to his wife’s feet to listen to her sing.
Not far from the truth at all.
Michael grinned to himself as his green-eyed siren sang and hummed her way about the infamous harp room. Now that he was happily married, he wondered if society would finally cease to believe the music room a den of bacchanalia and iniquity… or if they assumed he and his wife kept the spirit of wickedness alive on their own.
They wouldn’t be wrong.
Camellia spun to face him, her fingers tracing the mahogany curve of a shoulder-high harp. “It’s a shame these beautiful instruments go unused.”
He inclined his head. “I’ve thought the same thing for some time.”
She lifted her fingers from the harmonic arch and came closer to toy with his cravat instead. “If you learn to play, I shall accompany you, and we can have our own musicales.”
He captured her teasing lips in a kiss. “Private musicales?”
“Naked, private musicales,” she promised as she led him to the window seat by his cravat. She climbed into his lap and twined her arms about his neck. “Isn’t that what the harp room is for?”
“It is now,” he growled as he claimed her mouth in a heated kiss.
For the rest of the night, the only music they made was their own.
Epilogue
Two blissful years later, Camellia beamed at the packed, motley audience of the first annual Wainwright family musicale.
The entire Grenville clan was in attendance, as were the tenors, baritones, sopranos, and sundry crew who joined Camellia on stage for their command performances of The Marriage of Figaro at Covent Garden.
Neither Lady Jersey nor Lady Pettibone was in attendance, but it was hard to tell who else might be missing amongst the noisy, elbow-to-elbow crowd.
Camellia rescued her baby from the coddling arms of his favorite aunt, so that Bryony could join them on stage with her violin.
After settling one-year-old Henry on her hip, Camellia glanced over her shoulder at her husband. “Ready?”
It was all she could do not to burst into giggles at the pained look on his handsome face.
Of course he was not ready. Michael had no idea what to do with the harp-lute in his arms. But that was his own fault, since he had promised to learn it in time for their first family musicale.
Bryony’s bow struck a high, clear note.
Camellia began to sing.
To the more discerning in the audience, her performance might not be quite on the same level as it had been during last season’s run of The Barber of Seville.
But the discordant plink, plink, plink of her husband’s red-and-blue stringed harp-lute punctuated by the high pitched “Ooh! Ooh!” of the ecstatic infant bouncing on her hip definitely made this t
he most memorable performance of Camellia’s career.
Half the audience was in tears of laughter, clapping in a syncopated rhythm even worse than Michael’s harp. The other half of the audience was on their feet, turning the rear of the parlor into a whirling, impromptu dance floor.
Whatever etchings tomorrow’s caricaturists made of the fun-filled pandemonium here tonight, Camellia planned to frame every last one and put them in the harp room in a place of honor. Her life had turned out better than she had dreamed.
There was nowhere she’d rather be than surrounded by her favorite people, side by side with the man she loved.
* * *
THE END
Who is the mysterious Thief of Mayfair that sexy Bow Street Runner Simon Spaulding has sworn to capture?
Find out in Lord of Night, the next full-length Rogues to Riches regency romance. Keep turning to read!
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Acknowledgments
As always, I could not have written this book without the invaluable support of my critique partners. Huge thanks go out to Darcy Burke and Eva Devon for their advice and encouragement. You are the best!
My thanks also goes to my editor, Lesley Jones, whose careful eyes catch everything from typos to continuity goofs. Any mistakes are my own.
Lastly, I want to thank the Dukes of War facebook group and my fabulous street team, the Light-Skirts Brigade. Your enthusiasm makes the romance happen. I thought of you as I wrote this story.
Thank you so much!
Lord of Night
Rogues to Riches #3