The Hellion's Waltz Page 10

  At her back, Maddie could feel the hook Mrs. Money had set, tight and sure in a loop of blue silk that went unseen against the trimming and detail of the dress.

  “Is everything ready?” Mrs. Money called.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Miss Slight said, as she and Alice pretended to scrutinize the bubbling jars.

  Mrs. Money pulled the crimson lever.

  Sparks flew up, blinding the eye, and an agitated hum came from the cabinet. The blue gown gleamed through the holes in the cabinet front—then gleamed a little brighter, as the secret seam tore, the blue pulled away and the gold beneath was revealed. Fabric twisted up behind Maddie, the two layers of silk whispering softly against one another as the hook turned and turned.

  After another moment Mrs. Money threw the lever up and the awful humming stopped, sparks dying down and leaving everyone’s eyes dazzled.

  After a beat, Maddie hammered on the door. “Mrs. Money? Mrs. Money, let me out!”

  “Oh!” The widow rushed forward, struggling with the wooden latch.

  Maddie wailed and pounded on the wood, as Alice and Miss Slight ran forward to help.

  The bolt opened and Maddie flew out, not stopping until she had put Mr. Giles between her and the cabinet. Her hair was wild around her, her eyes wide. “Oh, that was strange!”

  Miss Slight gasped dramatically.

  Maddie looked down.

  The silk dress she wore was now a bright, blinding yellow that seemed to gather all the light in the room.

  Mr. Giles strode over to grasp Maddie’s arms and pat his hands up and down the seams of this gown—totally ignoring quiet Alice, who snatched the torn blue silk from the cabinet and stashed it out of sight beneath the thick fireproof drapes.

  Alice, after all, had been a magician’s assistant for some years with a traveling fair, and had adapted this trick from something the Wizard Falcetti used to do to change the color of a tablecloth spread beneath full goblets of wine. The mechanism to accomplish it had barely challenged Miss Slight’s abilities at all.

  Alice straightened up from the concealing drapery and folded her hands demurely in front of her, professional enough not to grin with triumph.

  Maddie turned her own grin into a preen and a simper for the cloth merchant’s benefit.

  “Incredible,” Mr. Giles murmured, his hands still gripping Maddie’s forearm, turning it back and forth to watch the firelight flicker on yellow silk. His eyes were wide and his face paler than before, with two eager red spots high in his cheeks. He fixed Mrs. Money with an expert eye, like an angler reeling in a catch. “Are these the only colors the process can produce?”

  “Horace’s dye produces a complete spectrum. He was able to replicate any hue found in nature—and one or two more besides.”

  His fingers pinched at Maddie’s sleeve, testing the cloth. “Incredible,” he repeated. “It feels like fine silk.”

  “It is fine silk,” Mrs. Money replied.

  “And the transformation is quick,” Mr. Giles went on. The gleam in his eyes was almost feverish now, his fingers tightening convulsively on Maddie’s cuff.

  “Very quick,” Mrs. Money said. “Imagine being able to change the color of your dress during an afternoon’s walk.”

  Mr. Giles’s mouth was fox-like. “Imagine being able to charge a customer more than once for the same dress.”

  “You can see why it was so disappointing when Mr. Obeney left for America,” Mrs. Money sniffed. “Such an opportunity going to waste.”

  Mr. Giles dropped the silk—Maddie had to fight the urge to step back out of his reach—and turned. “Madam,” he said, with his most portentous delivery, “I have a proposition to make.”

  Here we are, Maddie thought. Here’s where we sell him the stored fabric, the useless device, the whole set of props. He’ll have it on his store shelves by the end of the week—and I’ll bet he won’t even bother to test it himself first. He’s a cloth merchant and an opportunist: he won’t be able to resist this fabric.

  “I don’t want to buy this fabric,” said Mr. Giles.

  Maddie’s heart stuttered to a stop.

  Mrs. Money, wiser and more controlled, only cocked a head curiously.

  Mr. Giles’s lips parted in a cunning smile. “I want to make more of it,” he said. “I want to buy the whole process from you, start to finish.” His charming smile grew wider and wider; it was all Maddie could see, just that line of sharp white teeth. “This new discovery is going to change everything—and I want to take full advantage.”

  Maddie had turned to stone. The horror of this failure froze every bit of her body, from the back of her neck to the soles of her slippered feet.

  Mrs. Money only shook her head apologetically. “I believe Mr. Obeney owns all the legal rights to the fabrication process, sir.”

  “But not the ideas behind them. And Mr. Obeney is in his American utopia and unlikely to object for some time.” He lowered his voice as though imparting some great secret. “Think how much money we could make in the time it takes for the news to reach him. Enough to handle any small legal matters that crop up, I am sure.”

  “But I had planned to travel, sir, once my business in Carrisford was completed, and my year of mourning over. I had not thought to stay for any lengthy commercial venture.”

  “You wouldn’t have to stay.” Mr. Giles spread his hands. “You would only have to explain the process to me, take your money, and go.”

  Mrs. Money narrowed her eyes. “How much money, precisely?”

  “I was going to offer you fifty pounds for the existing stock,” Mr. Giles said. He shifted from one foot to the other, and tucked a hand into the lapel of his coat. “Of course, I would expect your price to be much higher for the technical knowledge than for a simple stock of fabric. Trade secrets and all that. I am prepared to be extremely generous. By a factor of two, possibly three.”

  “I want a thousand pounds.”

  Maddie’s mouth went dry, and even Miss Slight couldn’t repress a quick gasp of shock.

  Mr. Giles’s mouth went agape, before he got hold of himself. “Done. But in return . . .” He took a breath. “I would expect to know every step of the method, from start to finish. You show me how it works—and you relinquish all rights to the process thereafter.”

  Mrs. Money pretended to consider—but of course she couldn’t agree. There was no process, nothing beyond the tricks in this room. Maddie ground her teeth together in anguish. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t what they’d planned.

  This was supposed to be their moment of victory!

  Mrs. Money held out a hand. “Very well, Mr. Giles. We have a deal.”

  They shook on it.

  Mrs. Money went on: “It may take me at least a week to reassemble the production line Horace established. Particularly since one wants to be discreet.”

  “Of course—discretion is an absolute watchword,” Mr. Giles answered.

  I’ll bet, Maddie thought grimly.

  He bowed, and his eyes when they met Maddie’s flickered with reflected flames. “I will look forward to our next meeting,” he said.

  Maddie curtsied, cursing inwardly.

  This was a disaster.

  Chapter Nine

  The shop bell chimed a welcome. Mr. Roseingrave peeked up from the keyboard of the now-repaired Dewhurst and Ffolkes as Sophie entered. “Hello, my dear—you’re looking cheery. I take it Miss Muchelney’s second lesson went well?”

  Sophie nodded, still warm in the glow of success. “The girl is a natural. And enthusiastic—she barely leaves off practicing to eat, her mother tells me. Harriet’s even asked if we have any simple pieces for both piano and violin so she and her brothers can play something together.”

  “God help Mrs. Muchelney,” Mr. Roseingrave laughed.

  Sophie sat beside her father on the piano bench, her green skirts looking even greener against the new varnish. “I think Harriet has a real gift,” she said softly. “She’s quick and she alrea
dy seems to understand how the piano wants to be played.” She stroked the repaired keys, enjoying the sleekness of them. “She’s been composing, too—she calls it ‘fiddling,’ but it’s more than just childish noise.”

  “It is a joy and a wonder to see such talent in one so young. Reminds me of another brilliant young woman I know.” Mr. Roseingrave set his hands to the keys and began the first bars of his favorite piece, an adagio by Haydn. His voice was much softer when he spoke next: “I never apologized properly for putting you in Mr. Verrinder’s path, did I, child?”

  Sophie glanced up, startled.

  Her father always smiled; he was not smiling now. Without that happy curve his face fell into deeper lines and shadows, the worn stone portrait of a king in exile. His hair used to be gray streaked with white: somehow while Sophie wasn’t paying attention it had become white streaked with gray. His fingers trilled over an ornament, a brief bit of birdsong in the melody. “I ought to have protected you better,” he said. “Instead I let my own hunger for renown lead me astray—and lead you into danger. I regret that more than I can say.”

  “You did nothing wrong,” Sophie insisted staunchly, despite the guilt that hung around her throat and threatened to choke her. “It was all Mr. Verrinder’s crime.”

  Mr. Roseingrave shook his head, white hair bouncing insistently. “He could not have led me so far down that bad road without some fault in me to latch on to. My love of well-built systems and machinery, my desire for praise, for wealth . . . These were my weaknesses, but they were used against all of us. You, your mother, your siblings—you did not deserve to suffer for my failings.” His hands faltered, dropping the rhythm, stumbling over wrong notes that interrupted the smooth flow of the song.

  Sophie reached out at once and picked up the thread of the adagio. Soft bass notes and the light clear tune on top. Her voice still felt thick when she replied: “We lost money and a little pride, that’s all. We can recover from that. We still have each other.”

  Mr. Roseingrave sighed. “I’ve missed hearing you play, you know. I’ve missed hearing the songs you create.”

  Sophie’s hands slowed.

  Her father took over the left hand of the piece while Sophie played the melody to match. They’d played solo works as duets like this when Sophie was learning—it had helped to break down difficult compositions into manageable halves. Together they could play much more ambitious things than either could play separately.

  They brought the movement to a close, notes fading away. Sophie pulled her hands from the keyboard and into her lap.

  If anything, she should be the one apologizing. Mr. Verrinder might have deceived her father—but he had not deceived Sophie. At least, not entirely.

  “Six months between London and here,” Mr. Roseingrave said into the silence. “I think it’s the longest I’ve ever seen you go without touching a piano. And I was so wrapped up in my own guilt and shame that I didn’t even notice—until I walked in and heard you playing for Mr. Frampton the other day.”

  Sophie flushed. She felt as though she had betrayed him somehow. Piano had always been the thing they shared with each other. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know.” He did smile now, comforting her. “That was another of my weaknesses, you see. I wanted the entire world to know how brilliant my daughter was. I wanted everyone to think as highly of you as I do. I still want that.”

  Sophie’s hands clenched into fists against her thighs, an echo of the way her heart twisted and tightened in her throat. “Love is not a fault,” she said, low and fierce.

  “Love may not be—but negligence is, and I let my love for you blind me to Mr. Verrinder’s true nature.” His eyes gleamed in the light of the dying day. “I swear to you, child, I will protect you better in future.”

  Sophie swallowed. “I hope you do not mistrust Mr. Frampton for offering me his advice?”

  Mr. Roseingrave chuckled. “Quite the opposite. Look at him and his son—they are very different, but they take such good care of one another. You can tell so much about a person by what they do, not just the flattering things they say. I should have paid more attention to what Mr. Verrinder did and less to what Mr. Verrinder promised. Because for all his lofty words, Sophie—he treated you very badly. Very badly indeed.”

  Sophie’s eyes prickled with tears. The confessions clustered so close in her throat that she didn’t know which one to start with. To explain she’d been more deluded by ambition than he had? To confess she had apparently not learned her lesson, and had fallen in again with someone whose motives were far from aboveboard?

  What would he say if he’d learned she’d offered to help Madeleine Crewe?

  The shop bell chimed again. Her father’s customer smile came out. “Hello, sir,” he said, lowering the fallboard and rising from the piano bench. “Welcome to Roseingrave’s . . .”

  Sophie dashed the droplets from her eyes before standing and turning to help.

  The rest of the afternoon passed dreamlike: Sophie sold a violin and a harp and several copies of the Harmonicon. She talked about Beethoven and Broadwood and the newest set of ballads from Griffin and Brinkworth’s. She smiled and answered questions and pulled instruments from the wall by rote—but inside she carried around a miniature maelstrom of emotion. Pride because her father thought well of her. Anger that her father had to worry about her welfare on top of everything else. Shame because she should have hidden her pain better. Guilt because she hadn’t protected him, either. And the low, flickering flame of determination, like a torch in the darkness, lighting her way forward.

  It was too many things for a single heart to contain. She had to get them out—and there was only one sure way to do it.

  So she lingered by the piano while her father closed up the shop. He glanced at her hands, twisting and flexing, and a knowing gleam came into his eyes. “Make sure to lock up when you’re finished,” he said, and vanished upstairs to the floors where the family lived, and where her mother and siblings would be gathering for dinner.

  But for now, she had the shop entirely to herself.

  She turned the lamps down at once and pulled the openwork shutters down over the window and the door. The gaslights in the street outside provided just enough low light to see by through the wooden scrolls and cutouts.

  Then she took a seat at the Dewhurst and Ffolkes.

  For a moment she only sat, calming her racing heart and flexing her fingers to limber them up. But before long she was opening the fallboard like a pirate lifting the lid of a long-buried treasure chest. Sharps and naturals gleamed in welcome.

  This was no time for subtlety. Sophie raised her hands and set to playing the fastest étude she remembered, the one crammed with more notes than the listener’s ears could hear at once. Some of the notes she hit weren’t the right ones but she barreled onward anyway, trying to outplay the stiffness of her wrists and that iron chill that still froze her sinews. That cold pushed against her, she pushed back, but the piece ended before the battle did.

  She plucked up one of the newer concertos that had just arrived from Vienna. And tried again. But she found herself wrestling with the same problem: it was as though there was a wall between her and the music, some barrier that kept her emotions from flowing down her arms and into the song like she wanted them to. With no outlet, those wild feelings could only swirl faster and faster around her, until they trapped her as completely as if they were walls of stone, and Sophie left with only a spoon to chisel her way free.

  She might never get out.

  Sophie wanted to weep at the thought—so she shifted to the most lugubrious funeral march she knew. Minor chords, stately rhythm, a melody heavy as teardrops down the face of the bereaved. On more than one occasion playing it had made her sob aloud with mournful ecstasy.

  But even that once-familiar agony felt muted and distant. She let the notes die away.

  With the piano quiet, other sounds flowed in. Footsteps on the stones outside. Human voices fro
m sidewalks and the street. The rush of the river. And a low, repeated thrum that Sophie had learned was the sound of the silk-throwing mill, that ran all hours. Not just a sound but a heartbeat, like the pulse of some great devouring beast. The rhythm of Carrisford. For the first two weeks here it had kept Sophie from sleeping; now she couldn’t imagine going to bed without sensing it just below the threshold of hearing. Like a lullaby.

  No, not a lullaby—a waltz. The distinctive one two three, one two three fit so neatly into the spaces between the thrums that Sophie’s fingers were on the keys before she realized she was moving. She found the bass note that harmonized with the silk mill for the one. Two and three were soft, higher chords, the footsteps of a woman walking lightly down the street. A woman in gray wool (the simple melody began)—escaping into a churchyard (a brief flutter of a minor key for the gravestones)—then a powerful torrent of notes as her pursuer caught up with her and was trapped in turn by a single fiery kiss.

  A second theme: languid and sensual. Caresses over linen and hands stroking skin. Building to a climax . . .

  But now there were too many possibilities for the tune. Sophie frowned and went back two bars to refine the shape and structure. Not perfect yet, not entirely right—but she kept working at it, so focused on following the magnetic pull of that internal compass that she lost track of everything outside her hands and the keys and the shapes unfurling in the air . . .

  A noise—one she didn’t make—broke through her trance. Someone knocking.

  She whirled around to see Maddie Crewe peering through the scrollwork. Almost as if she’d been conjured by Sophie’s song.

  Sophie hurried to the door and let her in, closing the shutters again behind her and hoping the haste would explain the flush that burned on her cheeks. “Miss Crewe,” she breathed, then all breath stopped as the other woman whirled off her cloak with a flourish: Miss Crewe wasn’t in her usual gray wool.