The Hellion's Waltz Read online

  Mr. Frampton the elder nodded decisively at her as if she’d confirmed a theory. “The next time someone asks if you are a composer, Miss Roseingrave, I gently encourage you to reply: Yes, I am.” Sophie blushed in mixed embarrassment and pleasure and he continued: “I know composers when I hear one, my girl—I played with Beethoven, once.”

  Sophie’s self-consciousness fled, and she leaned forward eagerly on the piano bench. “What is he like?”

  Mr. Frampton stared off into the distance. “He seemed to bend the world around him; good or bad, everyone was affected. We were friends, until we suddenly weren’t—and even that proved a useful lesson for me in the end. Sometimes I think the truest proof of genius is not just what one great mind produces with it, but what it draws out of the others who encounter it.” That keen gaze cut back to Sophie and his mouth curved in a wry half smile. “Or perhaps it only looks that way to my lonely eyes—since my retirement, I find what I miss more than anything is the company of other musicians. Performing and practicing. Living and breathing harmonies and counterpoints.” He shook his head. “I once hoped my son would follow in my footsteps and surpass my own accomplishments on the violin.”

  “Every father’s wish,” Sophie murmured.

  “He has the talent and the ear,” Mr. Frampton went on, “but his heart lies elsewhere, and so his genius follows. I encourage him, of course—every father should encourage his child in their proper sphere—but I remain a little wistful for my own sake. I spent a lifetime as a professional musician, and I had hoped to be able to use my experience and connections to further William’s career. The great temptation is to want to be useful to him, and at times it led me to press him toward music more than I believe he wished.” He uncrossed and crossed his legs, flicking the bright silk of his robes out of the way before settling back in his seat. “I have spent my months here looking for other talents where my acquaintance might offer some scope.” His eyes gleamed meaningfully.

  Sophie was surprised into a laugh. “Are you offering to send me to perform at court, sir?”

  “Should I?”

  Sophie stopped laughing, as ambition welled up and shoved every atom of air from her lungs. It was an enormous idea, so big she’d never dared to dream it on her own. To play before the king and his courtiers—to perform her own pieces, and take students of her choice, at rates that were enough to support herself—to be part of a society of knowledge and talent and passion for music . . .

  To hold nothing back. And to have what she wanted most in the world.

  She looked up at Mr. Frampton, whose eyes were still watching her so closely. “I do not believe I am ready for that yet, sir. But I—I think I would like to be.” She caught her hands fussing with the fabric of her skirts, and clasped her fingers to still and soothe them. Then she looked up, and straightened her shoulders. “I should warn you, I have not proven to be an easy student in the past.” So Mr. Verrinder had said, anyway—but it suddenly struck Sophie as odd that she should still believe him in this, when she knew so well how he’d lied.

  Mr. Frampton shrugged. “That is of no consequence: I have no intention of being your teacher. My aim is to guide you, to polish you—if it suits you—into a jewel I may present to my old friends and rivals.” He leaned forward, his smile sly and a bit fierce. “To prove that whatever may have happened to my hands, my mind and my taste are as sound as ever.”

  Sophie nodded once, sharply. She had always enjoyed a challenge. “Where do we start?”

  Mr. Frampton settled back against the sofa, and nodded at the piano. “Play me something else of yours.”

  “I think I still recall the first theme of the sonata,” Sophie offered. She turned back to the keyboard, and began.

  It was worse than the étude—she had to start and stop a few times, until she gave up on resurrecting the actual notes she’d written and just improvised the melody until she got back to the bit she did remember. Mr. Frampton asked a few questions, and offered some suggestions, and Sophie played it once more, incorporating his criticism as best she could.

  It certainly felt better—more fluid, more like a real composition—and by the end of the theme she actually found herself getting a small sip of that dizzying pleasure she used to find in performing before an audience.

  Applause startled her: her father, Miss Slight, and the younger Mr. Frampton had evidently returned while she was playing. The latter two waxed enthusiastic—but it was the proud light in her father’s eyes that tied Sophie’s tongue and lodged like a ruby in her breast.

  It was an early sunset, being so late in the year, and the long orange streamers of light sliding between the buildings felt quietly triumphal as the two of them walked home to the instrument shop.

  Mr. Roseingrave was in raptures over William Frampton’s calculating engine, which apparently only partially existed. “He’s built one section of it, to prove the soundness of the idea—but there is no way for him to complete the project. The precision required of the parts is simply impossible in sufficient quantity. Yet the machine obviously works! It would do precisely what he designed it to—if only the world would allow for its creation.” He clasped his hands behind his back, and sighed. “It is the inventor’s curse, I think—to have so clear a vision, and to be unable to bring it to fruition.”

  “Perhaps the world will change, someday,” Sophie said.

  She imagined being in a concert hall, or a royal pavilion, hands flying over the keys. Sending her own arrangements of notes out into the air, to be heard and appreciated and lauded.

  But there were so many things standing between her and that vision—time, money, and the ever-shifting whims of luck and happenstance. She thought of Mr. Frampton’s apparatus, all those mechanical dreams. Then she thought of his father, missing his violin—and her mother, retired from public performance. “I have to wonder,” she said. “Is it better to have had a dream and lost it, or to have a dream that you know you will never achieve?”

  “Neither,” her father said at once. “The worst thing is to never dream at all. To go through life with the inward eye shut tight, never dazzled by the light of inspiration, or warmed by the—the sunbeams of, I don’t know, imagination? Acclaim?” Sophie snickered, and her father shook with a self-deprecating laugh. “I am better at building pianos than composing panegyrics.” His eyes turned thoughtfully to his daughter, as they turned a corner into the street that led them home. “You and the elder Mr. Frampton seemed to have got on splendidly in our absence.”

  Sophie nodded. “He is very kind—and very critical, in the best way.”

  “A rare combination.”

  Sophie chewed her lip thoughtfully, and said: “I might bring Mother for a quiet visit, just the three of us,” she said. “He expressed a wish to meet her. He misses having other musicians to talk to.”

  Mr. Roseingrave sobered a little at this. “Your mother has said much the same since she left performing. She still writes to her friends, but I know she misses the musical evenings she can’t enjoy the way she used to. We both love music, of course—but I’m such a technician. She is an artist.” His mouth curved again, the particular fond smile he wore only when speaking of his wife. “It is a good union—but often it is good because we are so different. I hope to see you find such a match yourself, someday.”

  “As the artist or the technician?” Sophie asked. It was a deflection from what she truly wanted to ask: What if I find someone I cannot marry?

  What if she’s a woman?

  “Whoever you please,” her father replied affably, and she had the eerie sense he was answering the unspoken question instead of the other one. “As long as you’re happy.”

  Sophie blinked back sudden tears at this—but they had reached the shop door, and her father went inside, beaming as his wife came forward to greet him. “Clara! You were missed, my dear. Let me tell you . . .”

  Chapter Seven

  The St. Hunger’s Day Fair had finally arrived, and Maddie buzzed l
ike a swarm of bees had taken up lodgings in her breast.

  The whole household woke early for a hasty breakfast, bites snatched in between the sorting of goods and the loading of the cart. Within the hour the four of them were trundling out into the dark streets. Their breath fogged in the chill air before dawn as they hailed friends and fellow traders, streams of people bundled against the cold, all moving toward the field beneath the ancient oak.

  The fair had once been a cattle fair, centuries back when Carrisford was entirely farmers and local fiefdoms. But since the wool and silk trades had moved in, and the traders and shopkeepers with them, St. Hunger’s Day had become a celebration of garments and fabric and clothing goods. Handweavers and shoemakers and tailors and merchants of all kinds brought wares with them—some carefully chosen for the occasion, others the unsold remains of the year’s work, now marked down to low prices that would hopefully give the maker some return on their labor.

  By the time the sun rose, the fair was in full swing. The field became a labyrinth of stalls and tents, each one thronged with people and swathed in all manner of textiles. Secondhand dresses and summery frocks competed with bolts of last year’s brocade and boys’ shirts, long outgrown by their first wearers. Everywhere hands reached out, testing the weight of a skirt, spreading the lapels of a jacket, handing over coins for a waistcoat shimmering with peacock embroidery. Naturally the food sellers were there, too: the scents of roasting meat and cakes and hot cider and ale breezed through the lanes like eager hounds tumbling over one another in excitement.

  Maddie helped set up John and Emma’s stall first: shoes and slippers glittering on the table like some hasty to-be-princess’s castoffs. Maddie made her way to the Weavers’ Library booth, shining with satin and brocade, where Maddie’s silk ribbons could flutter like castle pennants from a string stretched from one corner pole to the other.

  Business was brisk—it had been a bleak month, and people in Carrisford were eager to celebrate—but just before noon Maddie bid farewell to a customer, put her coins away, and pulled one closely wrapped bolt of cloth from beneath the booth where it had lain hidden since they arrived.

  Alice smiled at a prosperous-looking lady who’d stopped to stare yearningly at a length of silver silk. The girl smiled back but moved on, her regret achingly clear. Alice glanced at Maddie, her eyes flicking to the bolt of fabric under her arm. “Good luck,” she whispered.

  Maddie squeezed her hand once, and slipped out into the fair.

  She walked past the aisles where many of the Jewish old-clothesmen had set up, and stopped as she passed by the Samsons’ stall, bursting with colorful garments they’d brought from the great London rag markets and pawnshops. Mr. Samson grinned at Maddie’s wave. “Will the yellow silk work out alright?” he asked.

  “It’s perfect,” Maddie assured him. “You are a wonder, Mr. Samson.”

  He pinkened with pleasure. Maddie hefted the fabric beneath her arm and continued toward her goal.

  Beside the food and drink stalls, plenty of traders had come with toys and books and other small goods, eking out the last sales before Christmas. Here was the booth the Roseingraves had set up, small harps and whistles and guitars out for sale, and sheet music pinned up on the tent flaps like feathers on the wings of some enormous bird. Maddie tamped down on a wave of mischievous heat when she spotted the round little figure at one corner of the stall, tilting a violin to show off the shine of the varnish to a skeptical buyer. The man shrugged and moved away.

  Sophie’s smile faltered and her shoulders sagged. But only briefly. She called out to one of the younger siblings, handed over the violin, and before long four Roseingraves were demonstrating the quality of their instruments with an impromptu concert. An old country tune, simple enough for the younger ones to master, the violin singing over a cello and the strum of a guitar. Eyes bent their way, and fairgoers began stopping to listen.

  Sophie Roseingrave clasped her hands in front of her and waited for them to take the bait.

  So. She had a little light trickery of her own, Miss Anybody did.

  Maddie’s walk matched the song’s rhythm perfectly, and she hummed along until she turned the corner and lost the tune in the crowd.

  And here, at the very center of the fair, in a tent on a raised dais to show his importance, was where Raymond Giles had come to display his wares. It was the largest tent in the fairground, with room enough for a dozen customers as well as the tables full of fabric and finishing. Mr. Giles’s name was blazoned over the entrance to the tent, but a closer look showed the paint was cracked and flaking with age. It would have to be redone before next year’s fair.

  If Mr. Giles was still in business then.

  She sent a glance around the other nearby stalls. Relief speared through her when she saw what she was looking for: black silk, heavy-hemmed with trimming, above a pair of soft leather boots.

  Mrs. Money bent over a tray of feathers, shafts trimmed for millinery work.

  Maddie sucked in a breath and slipped into Mr. Giles’s tent.

  Her quarry was smiling his charming liar’s smile at a mother and her daughter. Telling them one of his salesman’s stories, she guessed—Maddie caught something about the Bastille and the next day the Revolution began and stopped listening because she knew how that nonsense went.

  Instead she focused on the wares on display. To Maddie’s expert eyes, the name of each maker might as well have been woven into the threads of the fabric—here was Alice Bilton’s emerald velvet, which Mr. Giles had claimed was cheaper single pile and not the three pile he’d commissioned from her. Judith Wegg’s pale aerophane, gauzy and crisp, which she was still fighting to get paid for. And, worst of all, the late Mrs. Echard’s last brocade—Mr. Giles had sent in the bailiffs to cut the cloth from the loom while the family was out at the funeral, claiming it was his by contract. The merchant had then refused to pay the grieving children for their late mother’s work. Because it was unfinished, he’d said.

  Maddie pressed a shaking hand down on the richly patterned cloth and breathed a silent vow of revenge to Mrs. Echard’s shade.

  The mother and daughter went on their way, aflutter with ribbons and flattery. Mr. Giles turned toward Maddie, his eyes glinting. “Miss Crewe,” he said, and his gaze darted to the wrapped bolt beneath her arm. “Dare I hope you have brought me something special?”

  “You’re in luck, Mr. Giles,” Maddie sang back. “I’m here to fulfill all your hopes.”

  He chuckled and waved her eagerly toward the back. Maddie opened the wrapping to show the same blue silk as before—same sheen, same odd threads of different colors. “I think I’ll be asking you twice as much this time,” she said.

  Mr. Giles’s eyes arrowed up to meet hers. “Will you?”

  “You sold it so quickly before,” she said, and folded her arms.

  Mr. Giles pretended to consider, but Maddie could all but see the wheels turning inside his conniving head. Twice her last rate would still leave him with an enormous profit—and one he didn’t have to record in any account books.

  There was no possible way he could resist such temptation.

  Nevertheless, he put on an unhappy expression. “I could possibly go as high as one-and-a-half times—”

  “Miss Crewe!” cried a voice from the front of the tent.

  Mr. Giles started. So did Maddie, even though she’d been expecting the interruption. This was the trickiest part of the thing, and her nerves were tight enough that she could feel her bones creaking beneath her skin.

  Mrs. Money stood there in black silk, a cashmere shawl tossed over her shoulders like the cloak of some ancient general. She glared daggers at Maddie, who cringed back, playing up her part. “How dare you,” Mrs. Money hissed, every aristocratic vowel fake as counterfeit coin, her expression accusing. “Mr. Giles, I regret to inform you that this woman has stolen this fabric and has no right to be selling it. At any rate.”

  “Really,” breathed Mr. Giles. Maddie could
see the hope of retaliation kindle in his gaze when he looked back her way. He’d been searching for a way to destroy her for years, and now it seemed like he had his chance. “What terrible news,” he said silkily. “Shall we send for the magistrates to have the miscreant hauled away?”

  “Absolutely not,” Mrs. Money said at once. She reached up and tugged at the ties of the tent-flap—it fell shut behind her, hiding the three of them from the view of anyone passing by. “Cover that up, you insolent girl,” she said. “Before someone sees.”

  Maddie obligingly folded the blue silk back up into its wrapping, doing her best to look chastened and fearful of the consequences.

  Mr. Giles leaned forward. “Mrs. Money—I beg your pardon, but as someone who knows something about silk I must ask: What is so special about this particular fabric?”

  Mrs. Money narrowed her eyes and chewed her lip a long while. “Very well, sir—since you have been so open and honest with me, I shall tell you the whole tale.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t think—” Maddie said, on cue.

  “Silence, girl!” Mrs. Money’s eyes flashed fire. “This secret is my inheritance to keep—or to share—as I see fit.” She strode forward, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial throb.

  From beneath her lowered brows, Maddie saw Mr. Giles lick his lips.

  Mrs. Money began: “My late husband, God rest his soul, was a brilliant chemist. For some years he had been experimenting with dyes—trying to learn how to make them brighter, longer lasting, that sort of thing. But his interests were wide ranging: botany, physiognomy, and in particular the new science of electricity. At one point he wrote a letter to a scientific journal—I forget precisely which—about a hypothetical process that combined weaving techniques with electrical charges produced by—oh, I forget the term. Some kind of pile.” She sniffed. “It didn’t sound like the kind of thing a lady should inquire into.”

  “Power looms are hardly a secret,” Mr. Giles interjected. “Though electrical power would be—”