Let it be Me (Blue Raven) (7 page)

“Miss Forrester, I am afraid there has been a terrible misunderstanding. You see, I did write this letter, yes, but Vincenzo—Signor Carpenini, that is—is in the middle of a composition. And when he’s composing, he does not take on stude—”

But Miss Forrester was not listening to him. Instead her face had taken on a dreamy faraway look, and her fingers began to twitch in time to the music, as if playing imaginary keys.

The music.

“Is that,” she finally asked, “the Signore? Is Carpenini here?”

Her face lit up with the possibility, and she took a few unconscious steps toward the door to the drawing room.

“Miss Forrester, please do not disturb him,” Oliver cried, then reached out and grabbed her arm just as she reached the closed door.

“I won’t,” she replied, stilling beneath his touch. “I just wanted to hear better. Is that an A-minor key?”

“I don’t know,” he began to say, and drew her back a little. But, unfortunately, the damage had already been done.

It could have been the sound of voices in the hallway, especially female ones, that drew his attention. It could have been Oliver’s doing, speaking too loudly or too near the door. It could have been the gentle touch of Miss Forrester’s hand on the drawing room door latch. But in any case, the music abruptly stopped, footsteps sounded as they crossed the room, and the drawing door was flung open from the inside.

“What the hell is going on out here? Don’t you realize I’m composing?” the short-tempered man who emerged from the drawing room said in grunting Italian.

“Signor Carpenini,” Miss Forrester breathed.

Oliver straightened and kept his hand on Miss Forrester’s arm. Then, his mind remembering better manners than he’d known he had, he turned to the girl at his side. “Miss Forrester, this is Signor Vincenzo Carpenini. Vincenzo, this is Miss Forrester.”

Miss Forrester—and the woman with her, whom Oliver decided was her maid—dropped to a curtsy. He still kept his hand on her arm—for some unknown reason, he knew that touch was the only thing keeping her from flying away—and he could feel her shaking.

“Signore, this is a great honor,” she began, but was cut off by Carpenini as he crossed the room and grabbed her under the chin.

“Vincenzo!” Oliver cried, pulling Miss Forrester back.

“English, eh?” his friend said, his dark eyes going cold. And then, in his own English, he turned to Oliver. “If you are to bring a whore for me, Oliver, at least be sure she is beautiful. This one is too small to be of any use.”

And with that, the great composer stepped back into the drawing room and slammed the door, rattling the dusty chandelier in the foyer.

“I am so sorry; he’s a bit—” But as Oliver looked down into Miss Forrester’s face, he knew his apologies would be for naught. She was utterly and completely shattered.

“Molly.” Her voice shook. “We should go.”

The maid—Molly—nodded, and before he knew it, she had whisked Miss Forrester out the door to the street.

“Miss Forrester, wait!” he cried, jolting out of his shock. He ran after them, into the street, heedless of his lack of shoes. “At least let me see you home—this is no city for a lady alone!”

But it was too late. Miss Forrester and Molly moved quickly from the alley into the main street, disappearing into the crowds of pedestrians going about their day.

“Damn it all,” Oliver breathed, as he walked back to his house.
No
, he thought, his vision going red.
Not damn it all. Damn Vincenzo Carpenini.

He walked straight into the drawing room, any tentativeness about disturbing his friend gone.

“Vincenzo, you bastard!” he growled, and his friend looked up from the score on the pianoforte. “Do you have any idea who that was?”

“No.” The composer blinked at him. “Should I care?”

Five

“T
HAT
,”
Oliver seethed, “was your last best chance of making any money this month.”

“Making money?” Vincenzo replied, as if he had never heard of the concept. “Was that child going to pay me for a composition? A tune to commemorate her first communion, perhaps?”

“No, she was a prospective student,” Oliver sighed, collapsing onto the red velvet chaise that occupied the corner of the drawing room. Well, really the music room, ever since Carpenini had come to stay with him. “A determined one, at that.”

“A student?” Vincenzo recoiled from the keys. “I’m not going to take a student I’ve never heard play. Besides, once I complete this opera, money will not be a consideration anymore.”

“Yes, if you would please hurry up and finish the opera, I would be most grateful,” he sighed. “But by the by, you
have
heard her play. That was Miss Forrester. When you came to get me in England? Five years ago?” At Vincenzo’s blank look, Oliver rolled his eyes. “We stayed with her father, Lord Forrester, for a day while awaiting our ship in Portsmouth. She played while her elder sister sang ‘Tom Bowling.’”

A light of recognition filled Vincenzo’s eyes. “But what on earth is she doing in Venice?”

“That . . . is my doing, I’m afraid.”

Vincenzo’s dark eyebrow went up. “Indeed? You called a little lamb to me from the coast of England?”

“Not exactly.” Oliver’s face went hard. He refused to turn red. This would all have been easier a year ago, when Vincenzo was the toast of Venice—not now, when he was practically barred from every patron and musical venue in the city. Every venue except Oliver’s. “Do you recall, a few months ago, my father sent for me, calling me home?”

Vincenzo’s eyes returned to the keys in front of him, and he began softly playing the same tune that had been haunting him all morning. As if he could escape the conversation by slipping into music.

“And when I told you of it,” Oliver continued, heedless of his friend’s inattention, “you said you would love to see England again—and I said I could likely manage your passage, but you would need some kind of income once there.”

If Vincenzo was listening, he did not acknowledge it. But he did continue his playing, as if giving Oliver permission to continue speaking.

“And you said—and I quote: ‘I’ll find a few students, stage a few concerts, and sell a few operas. It will be a triumph!’”

Vincenzo’s hands came off the keys. “I do remember something about you trying to force me to leave Venice,” he replied, shrugging. “But then you changed your mind.”

“It was not I whose mind was changed,” Oliver replied darkly. Oliver had been packed; he had broken off ties with his work at the Teatro la Fenice, the premier theatre in Venice, and was ready to return to London when he received another letter from his father, stating that Oliver was not needed at home after all.

Not needed. Stay away.

Oliver had admitted to himself a certain disappointment. Not for his sake, he told himself, but for his friend. Vincenzo could have had a fresh start in England. Overseas he was still regarded as a master. Miss Bridget Forrester’s appearance here today made that clear.

But Vincenzo was nothing if not stubborn.

Suddenly the music stopped with a slam on the keys. Vincenzo stood and began pacing. “I could not leave Venice, my tail between my legs, surely you see that!” He rubbed the growth of beard that had taken over his features since his fall from grace. “If I cannot compose in the city of my birth, then I can compose nowhere! I will not be in disgrace forever—and this”—he threw his hand out to the half-written pages on the pianoforte—“will be what saves me from it. This symphony will be my triumph!”

“Oh, it’s a symphony now? A moment ago it was an opera.”

Vincenzo shot Oliver such a look of loathing that Oliver felt momentarily compelled to be contrite. Or he would have, had he not remembered that Carpenini was living in Oliver’s house, on Oliver’s income, as the only person in Venice who would accept him.

And that was the quandary in which Oliver had found himself stuck. Carpenini had promised him a new composition to stage. But a year after Carpenini’s fall from grace, he was still living on Oliver’s goodwill and depleting what funds Oliver had to possibly stage said opera.

Unfortunately, Oliver owed him too much to do otherwise.

“The Marchese prefers symphonies to operatic histrionics,” Vincenzo replied. “And you will benefit as much as I from the Marchese putting me back in favor.”

It was true. However, until then, Oliver was stuck.

Oliver was resigned to putting up with supporting his friend (financially as well as emotionally) until he wrote a piece that would impress all of Venice into loving him again. But it was not just the city that Carpenini had to impress. It was his former patron—the Marchese di Garibaldi.

“But if you wish to travel to England,” Vincenzo continued blithely, “go. Do not worry about that warehouse you purchased . . .”

“It’s a theatre—the Teatro Michelina,” Oliver answered automatically.

“Right now it is a warehouse,” Vincenzo answered back. “At any rate, you can tell your father you have invested your allowance in real estate. I am sure he will be pleased. But I release you from any obligation. I will be fine here by myself.”

Oliver rolled his eyes. If he could only believe that Vincenzo would be fine without him! The difficulty was he had no notion as to the man’s ability to take care of himself. There were too many days he did not eat, and absolutely no money coming in to pay someone to remind him to do so or to pay the rent on this house. His artistic fever would overtake him, and he would compose, compose, compose. Or his artistic fever would leave him, and he would wander aimlessly into trouble with women, women, women.

Just watching it, Oliver—who himself enjoyed such troubles, in moderation—was exhausted.

“You know I’m not going anywhere.” He gave in to the impulse to pinch the bridge of his nose. When he had first come to Venice, the excuse he had given his father was that he wanted to know the land of his mother’s birth. He had not intended to stay this long. But now it had become his home—if only because his father did not welcome him back in England. And it was here that he had determined to have a future. It was here that he had learned the business of the theatre from every angle—even appearing on stage. It was where, discovering his position at La Fenice had been filled after his aborted trip to England, Oliver decided to attempt a long-held ambition, sinking most of his savings into his own warehouse . . . er, theatre. It was where he would someday stage works of his own choosing, starting with Vincenzo’s newest. Whenever he happened to finish the damn thing. “Can we move forward, please?”

“But you still have not explained the girl,” Vincenzo broached, his fingers returning to the keys.

“Ah—well, she seemed a good prospective student. You even offered to teach her when you originally met. So, when I thought we were going to England, I wrote a letter on your behalf, exploring whether her family would allow her to be taught by you.”

Vincenzo looked up at him in horror. “So you’re my procurer now?”

“I was attempting to be practical.” Oliver’s brow thundered down. “I apologize, it won’t happen again.”

“How many letters did you write? Are there going to be a dozen English schoolgirls showing up while I am trying to write my masterpiece?”

“I only wrote the one, because that was the only English girl I ever heard you offer to teach.” Granted, they had not been in England together for very long five years ago. But after spending the last five years in Vincenzo’s company, he hadn’t often heard the man offer to teach anyone. He’d had students, of course—back before his fall from grace. But those had been children of the highest nobles in Venice, people who did not wait to be asked. For Carpenini to
want
to teach someone, they had to display something special.

“Was she that good, then? This Miss Forrester?”

As Vincenzo kept playing variations of his tune, Oliver took himself back in time to that afternoon they had spent at the home of the Forresters, Primrose Manor, waiting for their ship to be ready to sail with the tide.

His father was going to try to stop him. He had been sure of it, and it made him one raw nerve during the long carriage ride from London to Portsmouth, where they would catch their ship. But while he had been taking furtive glances out the window and constantly rearranging his long legs, trying to get comfortable, easy, he had also been sitting across from the great composer Vincenzo Carpenini, who—after a concert at which the man had received three ovations—upon learning who Oliver’s mother was, and Oliver’s desire to see Italy, offered to take him back with him.

Lord Merrick had been furious. He saw it as a personal betrayal, a rejection of everything English that Oliver had been raised to be. His older brother had just blinked in confusion—how could Oliver want to go to
Italy
, of all places? Wasn’t it horribly hot and dirty? But his brother Francis, both of his parents having been English, never knew what it was like to feel like you had one foot in one world and one foot somewhere else. Oliver was the second son, from the second wife. England was where he was raised, but perhaps, he’d thought, perhaps he belonged elsewhere. Why else did he reject the notion of a career in any of the three places—the law, the military, or the church—where a gentleman’s second son can thrive? Why would he be so unnatural, as his father had said more than once, to take a liking to music, to the stage?

So there he was, on a mad adventure away from the only place he knew, with a man he knew of but did not know. One who kept smiling at him and trying to converse about the bright and beautiful city of Venice in broken English, and Oliver kept trying to answer in barely remembered Italian from his mother.

They had come to Portsmouth a day earlier than the ship departed, and Oliver was numb with fright that his father might come and try to stop him. Worse yet, Oliver was afraid that he himself would have time to rethink his flight. Italy? Had he gone mad? He had no funds and didn’t know a soul there!

He was doing this kind of second-guessing when he and Carpenini had run into Lord Forrester’s personal brand of kindness in Portsmouth. And Lord Forrester, delighting in finding an Italian composer of renown wandering around looking for a decent spot of lunch, invited both of them back to Primrose to wait for the dawn and their departure.

Oliver had walked into Primrose Manor still unsettled, but realizing he had to play the gentleman for the next several hours, he kept it under wraps. And he found that—much as it did on the stage—playing the role helped ease his nerves. Not entirely, however. Primrose was a big, happy place, made more so by the hospitality that Lord Forrester and his family provided. It reminded him of his own home, the one he was leaving.

The second-guessing began again, and as he and Carpenini wandered the halls, he almost voiced his change of heart.

Almost.

Because at that moment, they passed the music room, and Oliver’s ears were filled with . . . Tom Bowling?

Carpenini, like a bloodhound with a scent, turned on his heel and followed the music. And in the music room they had found two of the Forrester girls, one singing, one playing. It was a solemn tune, but the girl had been playing it in a joking fashion, as if she made fun of its overwrought lyrics by matching it with even more overwrought dramatics. Carpenini began correcting her immediately, of course.

“Play it again,” Carpenini had said to the girl. “But this time,
calando
,
ritardando
.”

Oliver hadn’t expected what came next. But there was something about the way the girl at the keys played, bringing the truth out of the music. Something about how she infused the music with some spark of life—even if she was just playing a phrase twice over, as she was doing now for Carpenini. Fine-tuning her playing, elevating the mood, the emotion behind her technique. But none of that mattered nearly as much as the feeling of being caught up. The way she was. In music. In a story.

That is why you are going to Italy. To be caught up in something.

“Melancholy.” his voice came from somewhere outside himself. “Beautiful.”

Later that evening, the Misses Forrester had played for them again, although the obvious talent had been the one on the pianoforte. Oliver knew enough about music to appreciate its being played well. There was no mistaking her playing in the music room as simply a passing moment. She was very, very good.

Yes, Miss Forrester had shown them something special.

Although now, Vincenzo seemed hard-pressed to remember it.

“She was very good.” Oliver said, as if lost in a dream. Then, at Vincenzo’s arched eyebrow, he cleared his throat. “She stood out in my memory for five years, and she was just a child then,” Oliver tried again, venturing into the void of silence that had fallen. “Think of how much better she could have become in that time.”

“Or so desperate for instruction that she crosses a continent to obtain a teacher.” Carpenini shrugged. “But it does not matter. I will not have need of a student before long. It has been a year, and the Marchese has not given his patronage to a new musician. He has not found someone to match me. He is simply waiting for me to compose something that will justify my return. Thus, I will finish this sonata—”

“I thought it was a symphony.”

“—and I will dedicate it to the Marchese, and he will have to forgive me. And then you will stage it to great acclaim!”

Once again, it was up to Oliver to pour ice water onto his fantasy. “Men forgive their mistresses being seduced, Vincenzo, not their daughters.”

Vincenzo’s expression darkened. “The Signora Galetti is a married woman; she should be her husband’s concern, not her father’s. But she feels badly enough about my circumstances that she has agreed to help me.”

“
Now
she feels badly?” Oliver asked in disbelief. “A year after her seduction and betrayal caused you to lose your place?”