Secrets of a Soprano (33 page)

“We can solve this problem. We simply have to avoid those occasions. You can always be on top.”

How like a man to believe logic and common sense could answer every difficulty. “I cannot argue away the fear because I wish it. Do you not think I have tried? Why do you think I threw that glass of wine at you?”

“You were
frightened
of me?”

“It is the only way I can be easy when my emotions become too painful.” She placed her hand over her breast. “It comes from here, not from the head.”

She could see him
thinking
while fear, misery, frustration, and too many feelings to catalog flowed through her veins.

“May I kiss you?” he said finally.

She sniffed. “If you wish.”

“I will always wish it.”

With infinite care he pressed his mouth to hers, as though she were something holy and precious. Physically his lips felt good, so familiar and dear, gently probing, inviting her response. Her heart wanted to open to his loving caress but it was locked tight and gave up the struggle. She shook her head and immediately he withdrew.

“It’s impossible.”

“If we love each other nothing is impossible. Do you love me, Tessa?”

“I trust you, and if I could love, I would love you.”

“Is there no hope for us?”

“I don’t know, Max. I will say this. The weeks I spent with you in Oporto were the last time in my life when I was entirely happy. If I could regain that joy I would.”

“I was happy too, but I don’t want that time back. I want now. We are different people. Older, I hope wiser, and richer in knowledge and experience. I loved the girl I first met but I adore the magnificent woman you have become.”

“And who is she?” The question came from the depth of her soul. “Who am I? La Divina? Tessa Birkett? I don’t know. Neither seems real to me.”

“I know who you are. You are generous, clever, witty, beautiful, and my love. I am sure there is more, but it’s enough to start and all I wish is to spend my life discovering the rest.”

“Let me up, please,” she whispered. His love was too much for her to bear. Against all reason it gave her hope. She couldn’t allow herself to hope when disappointment, more acute each time, was the inevitable result. She needed, desperately, to be alone.

It wouldn’t be fair to send Max away without explanation. She walked over to the washstand and splashed cold water on her face. Now as far from him as she could manage in the confines of the dressing room, she took a deep breath and forced herself to be strong and serene, as she would before a performance, even though her stomach was filled with lead.

“I will not complain about my life. I have friends, money—thanks to the Regent Opera House—and a talent I am proud of. Singing takes me out of myself and into a different world.” He listened to her intently, which was more than Domenico did when she expressed her self-doubts. She wanted to weep for what could not be. “But when I am not performing, if I think too much about it, I am empty. I am afraid I don’t exist. Am I English or French, Portuguese or Italian? Where do I belong? I have no home, no roots.”

She didn’t speak of her great fear, that she was doomed to wander from opera house to opera house until her voice was gone and she had nothing. Max would offer to ride to her rescue and that wasn’t what she wanted. He did not deserve the empty husk of a woman she had become.

“I tell you this because you are kind enough to say you love me—”

“Kind! I have hardly been kind to you.”

“Not always but from now on you will be. I know you and I trust you. But I cannot let myself love you. Now I must ask you to leave. I’m as tired as if I’d just sung an entire opera by myself.”

What seemed a long time passed before he nodded and removed a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. “This is for you. It’s the reason I came to find you.” He kissed her hand with punctilious gallantry, bowed, and left.

The paper bore the name and address of Mrs. John Birkett, Rose Cottage, Stoke Newton, near Bristol, Somerset and an addition in Max’s handwriting.
I believe this lady is your grandmother
.”

She had forgotten telling him about the mysterious J. Smith but Max had not. Ever practical, he’d handed her a potential solution to one of her problems. Perhaps in Somerset she would find something to fill the void inside her.

“Madame FOSCARI has undertaken to perform in TWO operas at the Regent Opera House tonight. Is this feat beyond even the powers of LA DIVINA?”

The Examiner

T
he day of
her benefit Tessa did not speak. She hadn’t sung a note or uttered a word since running through her vocal exercises with Sempronio the previous morning. With two heavy roles to perform she had to preserve her voice at all costs. For the past twenty-four hours she had sipped weak tea with lemon and studied the scores of the two operas, memorizing the places the works had been cut to shorten the evening and save the singers from exhaustion.

When she heard the door knocker she was alone, since Angela had run out to buy more lemons. Expecting a messenger from the opera house with further cuts, she opened the door to find Max, bearing the largest bouquet of white roses she had seen in a decade of extravagant accolades.

“Good morning, Tessa,” he said breezily, as though she hadn’t consistently avoided him since the scene with Delorme, exchanging only a few polite words when they met at the opera house and having Angela refuse his calls at home. “I’ve brought a letter from the musical director. May I come in? Upstairs, yes?”

She shook her head hard enough to make her teeth rattle. He ignored her, strode up the stairs of the rented house, through the open door of her sitting room, and went straight over to the table, where he deposited a letter and the flowers next to her open scores. She scurried after him and scrawled a note.
I cannot speak because of my voice
.

His years of keeping operatic mistresses clearly hadn’t gone to waste. He understood her perfectly and smiled broadly. “Excellent. In that case you won’t be able to refuse my invitation to supper tonight.”

No, no, no
, she scribbled furiously, but he wouldn’t look.

“Naturally,” he said, the picture of innocence, “the management of the Regent Opera House wishes to celebrate the end of a successful opening season and our future collaboration with our prima donna. I will fetch you from your dressing room after the performance.” His air of insouciance slipped for a moment. The heat and affection in his dark eyes made her pulse race. “Don’t worry about tonight, Tessa. You will be wonderful.” He dropped a quick kiss on her gaping mouth and left without another word.

Don’t worry about tonight
was all very well, but which part? The benefit made her nervous, because of the vocal feat she was undertaking. Every seat had been sold and she would earn a splendid sum, enough to keep her for a year or more since she had reformed her extravagant habits.

But supper with Max she feared. Whenever she so much as glimpsed him, longing and misery crushed her. She’d been counting the days till the end of the operatic season when she’d no longer have to see him at the theater. Her body’s eager reaction to his quick kiss filled her with hope and terror. Terror because of the certainty that her hope was only a delusion.

She prayed that by “management” he meant Simon Lindo as well as himself. If the supper was a purely business affair, she could just about get through it.

*

Leonore was a
breeches part and La Divina looked magnificent in breeches. Nothing like a boy, but that wasn’t the point. The minute she arrived on stage the hoots and whistles from the pit were deafening.
Fidelio
was an opera of lofty ideals and noble music, but that wasn’t what the benefit audience wanted. Tessa knew her job was to please.

Nancy Sturridge, who had joined the Regent company soon after Tessa, played Marzelline, the girl who is infatuated with the woman disguised as a youth. During the first act Tessa whispered to the other soprano. “Let’s give them what they want.” Nancy understood at once. When Marzelline tried to flirt, instead of fending her off at once, Tessa allowed a lengthy kiss on the lips and the audience, or at least the male portion, went wild.

After that nothing could displease the spectators, not even lofty ideals and noble music. By the time Tessa/Leonore rescued her husband from death and she and Delorme (without his shirt) performed their soaring love duet, there was scarcely a dry eye in the theater. By the end of the second opera,
The Barber of Seville
, no one could doubt that Teresa Foscari’s benefit would be the talk of London for years.

When the curtain fell on her last bow, Tessa, delirious with pride and exhilaration, picked her way through the mounds of flowers thrown onto the stage and summoned enough voice to thank her fellow singers for performing at her benefit when she’d been in the company for such a short time. “That’s all right,
madame
,” said the bass who sang the roles of Rocco and Figaro. “It’s always an honor to sing with you, especially since we were paid for our work tonight.”

Smiling graciously, Tessa’s mind worked furiously. If the company wasn’t performing gratis, the management of the Regent had taken a huge loss on the evening. Her suspicions about the source of this largesse were confirmed by Nancy Sturridge. “Are we not fortunate?” she said on the way back to the dressing rooms. “Lord Somerville made up my loss after the Tavistock fire and Lord Allerton has done the same for you. A good voice is an excellent thing to have, but a generous protector is even better.”

“Lord Allerton is not my protector,” she said.

“Whatever you say,” Nancy replied. “I didn’t know it was a secret.”

When Tessa finally drove away the mob of well-wishers from her dressing room and had a chance to change her clothes, Max and Lindo awaited her at the door. As luck would have it they emerged from the theater at the same time as Nancy, on Somerville’s arm. Nancy winked at her.

Mr. Lindo is here too
, she wanted to scream. Did everyone in London believe her to be Allerton’s mistress? She was not pleased when the carriage stopped in Piccadilly to let the manager off, and she and Max proceeded alone to his house.

“I thought this was a party,” she said huskily. Everything she would say all evening would be husky.

“A party of two.”

“This isn’t wise.”

“I know you are tired and won’t want to go out in public again tonight. Let me take care of you. I won’t do anything against your wishes.”

She knew that. He had never deliberately hurt her, except over the Chelsea Hospital affair. He had been angry at the time, repented, and made amends. Never at any point in their acquaintance had he given her reason to fear him. The terror came from within.

A quiet supper in Max’s comfortable house sounded perfect. She was safe with him, trusted him. It was herself she did not trust.

“I have a bone to pick with you. You paid the singers for my benefit.”

“Just a matter of business,” he said evenly. “You wouldn’t agree to sing at the Regent without one.”

It
sounded
reasonable. “The entire company believes you did it because I am your mistress.”

“Not a very good mistress, if you don’t mind my saying so. You’ve barely spoken to me in weeks.” Unwillingly her lips twitched at his teasing tone. “I’m glad to see you smile.
I
haven’t been at all amused by your neglect.”

“What nonsense you speak.” Enjoyable nonsense, she had to admit. Relieved at getting the benefit and the season over with, she felt more cheerful than she had in ages.

“I’m sorry about people having the wrong idea, Tessa, but there will always be talk, whatever the truth of the matter. You know that better than most.”

“It’s true. And I needed…well, thank you, anyway.” Although Max probably had guessed her financial straits, she still preferred not to discuss the matter.

A stately butler admitted them to the house in Upper Grosvenor Street and showed them into the library where a supper table had been set up. Embossed leather wall panels of dark orange polished to a high gloss complemented the gilt spines of the books stored in bookcases with gilt trellis doors. The curtain hangings were of red velvet, as was the upholstery. She was glad she had dressed simply this evening, in a pale blue silk evening gown that didn’t compete with the splendid surroundings. Max seated her at the table and the brush of his fingers on her back when he pushed in her chair made her shiver.

“Are you cold? Do you need your shawl?”

“No, thank you. It’s quite warm in here.”

She turned down champagne in favor of Madeira because the sweetness of the wine soothed her throat. A pair of footmen served a series of delicious light dishes, perfect for a tired singer who’d eaten nothing since breakfast, then withdrew.

“I must thank you, Max, for finding my grandmother. I wrote to her and she has written back. I have an aunt too. I’m so happy to have discovered that I have some relations.”

“Did you learn why your father lost touch with them?”