The Hellion's Waltz Read online

  “Yes!” Mr. Frampton leaned forward. His voice warmed with excitement. “You’ve got the holes and the punch cards already—why not make them work for you?”

  “How do you mean?” Maddie asked.

  “The cards already pass in front of the lantern. The holes block or allow light from certain panes. Certain colors.” He let his hand hover over the warp. “Not just a rainbow: a rainbow in motion.”

  “We could go even further with that,” Miss Slight put in. “There are certain ways of arranging colors next to one another so that they appear to move and shimmer, even when they are quite still. They can quite confuse the eye.” Her smile was broad now, her gray eyes sparking with excitement. “The harder he looks, the less he’ll see what you’re actually doing.”

  “But how do we explain it to Mr. Giles?” Maddie said. “We need the story to go with the show.”

  “Resonance.” This from Sophie, who’d been standing silent at Maddie’s elbow until now. She stepped forward, her musician’s hand stroking the warp threads as though they were a harp. “You’ve got these strings in every color. You tell him that’s the special dye Mr. Money discovered. But it’s not stable on its own: it only fixes into one hue when a magnet is passed over it.” She tapped the shuttle. “You fix a magnet here—maybe with a wire or two, for show.”

  Maddie felt like the idea was so close to complete that she could reach out and take it in her hand. “So how do we explain the color change of the finished fabric?” Maddie asked.

  “Chemical affinity?” Mr. Frampton suggested. “Or perhaps—something about tuning the dye to a particular frequency.”

  “What beautiful nonsense,” Miss Slight said. “I rather wish it were true.”

  Maddie nodded sharply. “That’s perfect. That’s the feeling we want him to have. He’s an opportunist—we want him so focused on reaching out to seize this chance that he overlooks any risks or dangers.”

  Miss Slight, Mr. Frampton, and Alice continued to consult with one another about the best way to create the magic lantern and install it in the Jacquard head. Maddie let them; once they’d worked out the structure, she could make the punch cards to fit. Or even use an existing pattern, which would save time and trouble.

  Sophie had retreated to the small chair by the nightstand. At Maddie’s approach, her lips curved softly. “Crime is a more exhausting business than I anticipated.”

  Maddie sat on the floor and draped one arm over Sophie’s knees. “Like anything, it gets easier with practice. Though this is by far the most ambitious thievery I’ve ever been party to. Normally it’s more a question of nicking and running. You really only need one or two brave souls for that.”

  Sophie reached out and tucked an errant lock of hair behind Maddie’s ear. “So this is like a concerto, when you’re used to playing duets or solo pieces.”

  Maddie leaned into Sophie’s caress. “I’m sure you’re right.” She tipped her head backward until their eyes met. “And if I ever attempt a symphony, I’ll know just who to ask.”

  Sophie’s blush was just as delightful upside-down as right side up. “I like your friends,” she said.

  “They’re more than friends,” Maddie said. Sophie’s eyes cut sharply, making Maddie laugh. “Jealous, love?”

  “Should I be?” The words were tart, but her touch stayed soft, fingers smoothing along Maddie’s temple.

  Maddie snuggled closer. “Alice and I had a bit of a fling years ago—but that’s long past. She’s much happier with Judith, let me tell you.” Sophie’s hands stroked down on the back of her neck, making Maddie shiver pleasurably. It felt like approval. “Really it’s more like . . . You know how they say soldiers bond in wartime?”

  Sophie murmured acknowledgment.

  “It felt like a war for a while. After Peterloo. When my mother died. When we still called ourselves the Weavers’ Library and Reform Society, and it felt like nearly everyone was being arrested or imprisoned or harassed by the law. Printers, weavers, tailors, shoemakers—anyone who so much as whispered the word reform came in for harsh punishments. They wanted to beat us down. So we bent, rather than break.” She smiled softly, seeing Cat and Emma giggling over something wry Judith Wegg had said. “These people are my family. They’ve been aunts and sisters and cousins to me—they’re why I stayed after my mother’s death, when my father ran away out of desperate grief.” She craned her neck and looked up to meet Sophie’s gaze. “I would do anything for them, anything at all.”

  “Sounds like family to me.” Sophie’s dark eyes gleamed with understanding. “What about Mary Slight? How’d she end up helping you with all this?”

  Maddie grinned. “Mr. Giles has a habit of fiddling with the clocks in his shop. He moves the hands forward in the morning so his employees have to start early or have their wages docked, and puts them back in the evening so they work past time. The clock’s in his office, you see, so it’s easy for him to do on the quiet.” She rested her cheek against Sophie’s knee, feeling the muscles shift beneath the layers of skirt and petticoat. “Miss Slight is a clock maker. She rather objects to people who muck about with the steadiness of time. Especially using clocks that she made.”

  Sophie’s laugh rumbled through her whole body, even the thigh beneath Maddie’s cheek. She rubbed her face against it like a pleased cat.

  Even the best parties had to come to a close, however. At length the lamps were extinguished and the bright decorations folded away. The guests trooped down the stairs, trying and failing to be quiet. On the landing they passed Mrs. Crewe, who watched them with the avid gaze of someone looking to find fault. The soft voices of her daughters sounded from behind her bedroom door, half-open.

  Mr. Frampton paused to bow as he passed with Miss Slight on his arm, who curtsied. Judith nodded and Alice, tipsy, waved hard until Judith guided her down the stairs with a sigh half amused, half exasperated.

  Mrs. Crewe turned back to Maddie and said in tones of strong approval: “That was easily the politest orgy I could have imagined.”

  Maddie’s jaw dropped.

  Mrs. Crewe turned sharply with her cane and shut the door of her room behind her, cutting off any reply Maddie could have made. Sophie peered up at her expression and giggled softly.

  The teasing sound warmed Maddie’s heart, and a few other places. “Can you stay the night? There’s still a glass of the good beer left.”

  Sophie ducked her head as though the invitation surprised and overwhelmed her. “I’d like that very much.”

  She removed her shoes and stockings as Maddie poured the last of the liquor into a single mug for sharing, then they helped one another out of gowns and stays. The beer was some of Cat’s finest home brew, strong and tart-sweet. They kissed languorously, cozying up in the darkness, waiting for the bedclothes to warm enough so they could take off chemises and be properly—or improperly—skin to skin again.

  Sophie stretched out on her back with her arms flung happily over her head. “You are a marvelous hostess, Miss Crewe.”

  “Oh, this was nothing.” Maddie leaned beside her, stroking the line of her collarbone. Tracing over the rising swell of her bosom. Skating down the side of a breast and into the soft dip of her waist, the warm roll of her belly. “You should have seen the dinners we used to throw when we were the Reform Society. There were so many reform societies around, back then.” Her mouth tilted upward, remembering. “Once, I saw Mrs. Buckhurst speak at the Crown and Anchor in London. You’ve never seen so much food devoured while people discussed who was starving on account of the price of bread.” She shook her head. “Sometimes it feels as though all we can do is talk—and sometimes not even that. Hopefully we’ll be able to actually do something soon. It’s like being slowly poisoned, to know something’s unjust and not be able to do anything to correct it.” She looked down into Sophie’s eyes, so earnest and understanding. “What about you?”

  Sophie blinked. “What about me?”

  “You’re a musician—and a compo
ser,” Maddie said. She tapped her fingers one by one over Sophie’s collarbone, repeating the melody from the duet Sophie’d taught her.

  Sophie breathed out a laugh of surprise, recognizing the rhythm.

  Maddie grinned. “When do the good people of Carrisford get to see you perform?”

  Sophie squirmed uncomfortably. “You sound like my parents.”

  Maddie groaned and buried her face in the pillow. “Just what a girl wants her lover to say in bed.”

  Sophie snorted and shoved at Maddie’s shoulder.

  Maddie leaned into it, undeterred. “You’ve told me how hard it was to have a concert go wrong,” Maddie said. “Don’t you want another chance to get it right?”

  “Of course I do.” Sophie abruptly sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I have a confession to make.”

  Maddie rolled onto her side. “Sounds ominous.” What on earth could Sophie Roseingrave have to confess in such a tone?

  Sophie’s hands fussed with the coverlet, tugging at the velvet pile as though she were plucking each thread out one by one. “I love being the center of attention.”

  Maddie had to slap a hand over her mouth to keep her chortle from being heard by the rest of the house. And possibly by Mrs. Devereaux next door to boot.

  “It’s terrible,” Sophie went on, with a quelling frown. “Every time I hear someone playing or singing, or go to the theater, or read concert descriptions from the musical magazines and papers, I am overwhelmed by the purest and most powerful jealousy. I want to be the one up there! I crave the chance to stand on stage, alone except for the piano, while everyone listens raptly. I want the audience to grow larger and larger—I want to play harder and harder pieces—I want to show off my own best work to an adoring throng and have everyone go wild with applause at the end.”

  Maddie could hardly breathe for laughing with delight. Finally she wheezed out: “And why is that terrible?”

  Sophie chewed her lip. “Because: What if I don’t deserve applause? I have a horror of trying to be something I’m not—and looking ridiculous for it.” Her hands plucked faster. “Like the jackdaw who tried to pass himself off as a peacock, strutting about in feathers everyone could see did not belong to him.”

  “So you’re a jackdaw now?”

  “Don’t be a ninny,” Sophie said. “I thought it was well established that I am a sparrow. Round and brown and designed to be overlooked.”

  Maddie shoved herself up to her knees. “Right,” she said. “That’s quite enough of this sparrow talk. One, brown is a very sensible everyday color and it suits you and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. And two—I know what kind of small brown bird you really are, and it isn’t a sparrow.”

  “Oh?” Sophie cocked a head skeptically and her hands balled up the coverlet. “What is it, then?”

  “You, my love, are a nightingale.”

  Sophie’s eyes went wide as the world.

  Maddie leaned forward. “They might look like sparrows—but only to the eye. Nobody who hears a nightingale sing would ever confuse the two.”

  Sophie’s hands slid up Maddie’s cheeks, fingers slipping into her hair and pinning her in place. Her voice was low and throbbing and undid Maddie entirely: “That is the most beautiful thing anyone has said to me in my entire life.”

  Maddie’s cheeks ached from smiling. “We’re still young. Give it time. I’ll do even better, I promise you.”

  Sophie’s mouth swallowed Maddie’s smile, coaxing tenderness into something ravenous and needy. Maddie arched back as Sophie straddled her hips, the weight of her solid and exquisite, her breath tangy and earthy from the beer. Salt touched Maddie’s lips and she licked it away—then realized Sophie was weeping. “What’s wrong?”

  Sophie broke the kiss with a sound like pain. “I want to make you feel as beautiful as you made me feel just now. Not just tell you how pretty you are.” She quirked an eyebrow. “Surely people have done that before.”

  “I’m vain enough already,” Maddie said with a low laugh.

  Sophie’s thumbs stroked possessively over her cheekbones; Maddie hummed at the yearning that shot through her.

  “I want to make you feel it,” Sophie repeated. “In your skin—in your heart. So you’ll never forget it as long as you live. So that—so that it transforms you, just a little bit.” She pulled in a shaky breath. “I suppose that’s terrible too, in a way.”

  Maddie’s arms went tight around Sophie’s waist. “It’s not terrible to want things.”

  Sophie’s lips curved shyly. “I want to surprise you.”

  Oh, that made Maddie’s heart ache. “Sweetheart,” she murmured, “you already have.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  You, my love, are a nightingale.

  Sophie wore those words like a ribbon tied around her heart, bound tight to keep it from bursting with happiness as she walked home the next morning. All day every bird in Carrisford seemed to be singing at her: robins hallooing the morning, sparrows chattering in the afternoon, chickadees singing for scraps of supper outside the Mulberry Tree. She whistled back whenever no one was around to hear her and think her silly.

  And when the shop had closed and she sat down to the piano to work on the waltz, the melody came like it had only been waiting for her to listen properly: a whistling warble of a tune that flew liquidly from note to note. The wall, that damnable barricade she’d once felt between her hands and her heart and the music vanished—as though it were no more substantial than a cloud. Sophie’s hands felt like wings; her fingers were feathers, arching out to snatch at the sky.

  Her pencil couldn’t jot fast enough when she rushed to pin the song to the staves of her sheet music. She worked until night had fallen and her eyes ached with straining against the candlelight.

  She’d written down as much as she could. She could only hope the rest of it would still be there waiting in the morning.

  The bedroom Sophie now shared with her younger sister was always in chaos. Julia was intensely disciplined as a musician and utterly careless in everything else, so despite her stated intentions and frequent flurries of tidying, her belongings were usually strewn over floor and furniture as though a giant hand had picked up the room like a toy and shaken it.

  They’d had their own rooms in London, but after the move the children had been compelled to share. Robbie and Jasper and Freddie had the larger room, and Sophie and her sister had resigned themselves to the smaller. It felt as though it shrank an extra inch with every day that passed, leaving less and less space for either sister to feel comfortable.

  The younger Roseingrave daughter was cramming petticoats and stockings into the wardrobe even now. Sophie began helping her and folding things much more neatly. Julia fixed her with a stern look. “Why won’t you consider doing a concert, Soph?”

  Sophie groaned. “Not you, too.”

  “Out of all of us, you’re the best on the piano,” Julia was saying. “Father’s started building one again and of course he’ll want to build more—and Mother wants to have Father out of the shop so Robbie can take his place and learn more of the business—but we need a market for our pianos first—and the best way to create a market is to have someone brilliant—someone, for instance, like you—play our pianos in public. In some sort of performance. So”—Julia shrugged—“a concert.”

  “Father is building a piano again?” Sophie had missed that somehow.

  Julia bit her lip, looking chagrined. “I wasn’t supposed to let on,” she confessed. “It was going to be a surprise.”

  The damage from Mr. Verrinder’s crimes was melting away from her father like frost beneath the springtime sun. “A new piano, then a concert, then I go off to court to astonish the royals.”

  “Just like Mother did.”

  “But I’m not Mother.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well . . . It’s a fairy tale, isn’t it? Going to court. Impressing a prince. How can that be someone’s life—my l
ife?”

  “It’s only a fairy tale if you tell it like one,” Julia said.

  Sophie blinked. “Pardon?”

  Julia shrugged. “You can make anything sound like a fairy tale if you want,” she said. “Once upon a time there was a poor instrument builder. He went to a concert with a friend one night—and a woman came out on stage. She wasn’t the prettiest woman there—”

  “—but when she sang he fell in love at the first note,” Sophie finished. It was how her father had met her mother: he’d been telling the same story in the same way for over twenty years of Sophie’s life.

  Julia nodded. “But I asked Mother once if that was how it really happened.”

  Sophie’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

  “And . . .” Julia clearly wanted to drag out the moment and her position of superiority, but didn’t have the patience. “Mother said she peeked out into the audience before she started—and there was Father, in the first row, straight as a tuning fork, eyes wide and eager. Starving for the performance. She liked the look of him, so when she went out on stage she aimed her first song directly at him.” Julia’s grin was mischievous and knowing. “She said there was never an easier conquest.”

  Sophie chuckled: she could just picture it. Her father willing to be pleased, her mother seeing something she wanted and putting everything into it. “She got Father, and a family—us,” she said. “And now she wants to put me on stage, right where she started.”

  “So?” Julia said again. “It’s not like you’ll be doing it alone.”

  “I won’t?” A moment ago Sophie had dreaded the prospect of a concert; now the thought that other people would share the stage with her rankled. She pursed her lips and rolled the stockings in her hand extra tight out of injured pride, and irritation at her own inconsistency.

  “Jasper and I have been working on our duet for ages,” Julia said. “And we have that trio with Robbie, too. Freddie’s still a little young, probably—”