Chapter 24 - MARK—LET THE MUSIC PLAY

Iput my hands on the keys, closed my eyes.

The piece should be there.

It wasn’t.

Dido’s stare had taken it away.

In the middle of the chaos with the ill little girl, the duke had done some decorating. He’d arranged to have the portrait of the Mansfield cousins on display for his ball.

Her poise and pose, readying to dance, reminded me of the many days I stared at her. Why this painting? Why now when I hadn’t thought of her since Georgina and I had been practicing?

Obsession over a painting was ridiculous.

Yet it was here at Torrance’s request to torture me.

Putting my fingers to the keys, I began to play my melody. And I tried hard to ignore the portrait, a set of mere brushstrokes on a canvas of a woman gone from the earth.

Why wonder about her thoughts as she stood before the artist?

How many hours had I labored over the song Dido must’ve had in her head the moment she twirled from her cousin?

I started playing again from the beginning of my composition, getting the beat right, the nice three-quarter measure. This piece was intricate and swift and right in its crescendo.

Then nothing. It was gone again.

Was this Dido’s doing or my fears for Georgina? The horror on her face when Torrance took the unresponsive Lydia upstairs chilled the marrow in my bones.

I wanted to be upstairs comforting Georgina, waiting with her for news. Lady Katherine didn’t want the duke there. She definitely didn’t want me there either.

Fingering a key, I started playing Pleyel’s Hymn 143. I swept my hands across the ivory and played it by heart.

When I closed my eyes, I saw my Georgie. She was my future, but how could I reach for her without a new song?

Humming, masculine and deep, sounded in the hall. Torrance stepped inside.

I lifted from the bench. “Any news?”

“No, but Mr. Carew is trying a new tactic. We have more waiting.”

Rubbing his chin, he looked at me. “You seemed disturbed. Has Steele shown you more gossip rags?”

“No. I just feel helpless.” I sat back down and began playing the hymn.

Torrance came fully inside. His cravat was gone, as was mine. The fastidious burgundy waistcoat that I’d admired days ago was wrinkled and open, hanging about his drooping shoulders.

He went to the portrait of Dido and Elizabeth. Standing in front of it, he touched the gilded frame as if Mr. Steele had hung it improperly.

“What happens if you do not finish your piece for the competition? It’s weeks away. Right after my ball.”

“Your Grace, I will finish. I have no choice.”

“There’s always a choice.” He walked over and put his hands on the pianoforte. “This tune is dull but good.”

“It’s not mine. It’s Pleyel. It’s meant to be sung. When Miss Wilcox sings and I play, it will be divine.”

“Do you have another plan, sir? The scandalmongers are still brewing. Since we’ve not done any more public events, Miss Wilcox’s reputation might be too damaged to save with merely a good performance. We can’t let her or the Wilcoxes be more defamed.”

“I don’t have any plan. The one we are doing now is yours, Torrance.”

“I see. I thought as much. That’s why I asked Georgina Wilcox to marry me.”

My ears popped.

The music died.

I couldn’t feel my fingers. I took a breath. Then another.

After a moment, I slapped myself to awaken, to make words happen. “Then, congratulations.”

The duke smirked. “That’s how you react to the woman you love marrying someone else. You did better with the painting.”

I coughed and filled my empty chest with air. “How am I supposed to act?”

“You could ask how your supposed friend would marry the woman you love.”

I looked at Torrance and wanted to hit him. I wanted to drive my fist through his big nose. But what could I say to a woman who deserved everything, that I could give nothing? “I think the words would be congratulations. She’ll make an excellent duchess. Give her her heart’s desire.”

“What of your heart’s desire? Or are you still in love with what’s not there?”

I lifted from the pianoforte again. “Is this a test of some sort? Is that why you brought the Kenwood portrait here?”

“Well, I like the portrait. But I need to know if you’ll forever engage in fantasy as opposed to the true world where a man goes after and protects what is his.”

Torrance talked in platitudes while a hole consumed my gut. “Did she say yes?”

He went to the side and straightened a portrait that hung behind the pianoforte. “Your father will think Miss Wilcox is after a title, even a courtesy one at that, if you were to propose.”

“She doesn’t care about that.”

“Prahmn will say she’s after money.”

I went around the pianoforte and stood within punching distance. “That’s not Georgie.”

“Georgie? Oh, Sebastian, you’ve become quite familiar with my friend.”

“You know her, Torrance. If she said yes to you, then it’s because she actually loves you.”

Torrance smiled as he blocked my fist. I’d aimed for his nose. “Miss Wilcox basically said nyet. She refused to accept my title and money. She’s a special woman.”

I think I started breathing again. “How can that be? She knows I could never give her the things that you could.”

“I don’t believe she asked for the things I could buy. She’s concerned about a composer finishing his sonata.”

“Georgie said that? Georgina Wilcox would wait for me?”

He tweaked the frame again, leveling it. Then, the duke stepped back and admired his handiwork. “This Wilcox woman is idealistic. And she already said you were a great man whether you finished the sonata or not.”

He led me to Dido. “This beautiful woman, who does favor Georgina, was an asset to Lord Mansfield. I like to think that his love for his niece made him work to legally eradicate enslavement. He did what he could for her, but he couldn’t change the world fast enough for her.”

“What are you saying, Torrance?”

“I brought Dido to give you a choice: a fantasy where a woman will wait forever for you to act like her champion, or the real woman who needs a champion now. What will you choose, Sebastian?”

“My future is determined by the Harlbert’s Prize. I should have my piece finished in time for the competition. Established as a composer, I can have the music and Miss Wilcox too . . . if she’ll wait for me.”

“Like the gods, women can be fickle. I mean, a lady who doesn’t wish to be a duchess might not gamble her future on a man who thinks he has an infinite amount of time to write the perfect song.”

“Just a few more weeks, Torrance.”

“So you will be done. And at my ball, you will propose. That will end the scandal. The newspapers can say no more.”

“I have to win or score very well. Then, it will prove we have a future.”

“Funny, I sort of think she believes you have one now.”

Shoulders slumping, I tracked back to the pianoforte. “I don’t want to disappoint her.”

“So, you’re willing to risk losing her to someone else? All because you think you’ll be a different man if you win a prize.”

“It’s an award my mother and Prahmn will recognize. You know the challenges Miss Wilcox and I will face. I’ll need my parents’ blessing. I have to make sure that any bride is protected—a Blackamoor wife, even more so. And children. How will they be received if my parents refuse to accept my wife, my children, and my profession?”

“Their opinions won’t matter to a house built on love.”

“It always matters. It matters if I can’t afford a home. Being poor doesn’t make the best plan.”

I began to play.

Torrance hummed. “This is lovely, but it’s taken. Haydn’s The Seasons is popular. So do not enter it in the Harlbert’s Prize. Perhaps you should share your composition with Miss Wilcox, let her be more than a muse. Let her be your partner. She’s three-dimensional with life and vigor. She can help.”

“No, Torrance. This is my work. It has to be mine, done on my own.”

The duke clapped. “Hear, hear! Dido has heard you. But she’s not offering applause. Fickle, I say.” Torrance chuckled and fingered one of the brass buttons along his waistcoat. “Painted flesh is limited but, like a true woman, she will not be moved by promises.”

“You know that’s not what I mean or what I’m doing.”

“I find making those separations problematic. And the future should be planned by two.”

Humming, the duke turned and headed toward the entrance. “To be young and so impassioned about the future, thinking there will always be another chance for magic—that’s folly.”

His tone was cryptic. The duke wasn’t a subtle fellow.

When he greeted Georgina in the hall with the physician, Mr. Carew, a man with a thriving practice and a similar background to hers, and who’d known the Wilcox family a long time, I think I understood.

My stomach knotted.

My keystrokes became harder, firing with passion and jealousy. I looked at Dido, joyful Dido who’d been painted the moment before she ran. With the options Georgina Wilcox had before her, I was the most unlikely direction for her to turn.