Secrets of a Soprano

by Miranda Neville

  He kissed Lydia Sackville’s hand with more enthusiasm that he usually displayed since he fully sympathized with her sentiments at being beaten by her sometimes friend and frequent rival, Lady Storrington, for the services of Teresa Foscari.

  “I hear Edouard Delorme is simply marvelous, Lord Allerton,” Mrs. Sackville said. “Your new venture will be a sensation.”

  Max would have been more gratified if he hadn’t suspected her praise was heavily flavored with sour grapes.

  He was one of the last arrivals and by the time he reached the top of the stairs and greeted the hosts, there was almost no one behind him.

  “Will you greet the rest of our guests?” the Earl of Storrington said to his wife. “I want to have a word with Max.” Leaving the countess to exchange rapturous air kisses with Lydia Sackville, he drew Max aside.

  “Is it wise to leave Lady Storrington and Mrs. Sackville alone together?” Max had known Storrington for years.

  The earl grinned. “I’m ready to intervene before the outbreak of open warfare.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “You know all about the business of singers,” he said. “I’d like to know whether my wife was charged a fair price for Madame Foscari’s appearance this evening.” He named a sum that made Max whistle through his teeth.

  “Good Lord, Storrington,” he said. “That’s almost twice the going rate, even for a singer of Foscari’s éclat. Catalani herself doesn’t earn that much for a few songs.”

  “I wondered,” mused Storrington, “but it’s no great matter. Tonight’s recital made Jacobin happy and at least it’s all in the family.”

  “Family? Are Lady Storrington and La Foscari related?”

  “Their grandfathers were twins, younger sons of the Comte de Chastelux. Madame Foscari may sing for her supper but she is well born, at least on the French side.”

  Tessa Birkett, Max remembered, was half French. She’d also demonstrated a talent for extorting large sums of money. His stomach lurched and he was tempted to act the coward and go home.

  Steady, he told himself. Tessa never said anything about a French count in the family. Drawing him in with her wiles, she was unlikely to have kept noble connections to herself.

  “I suggest you keep an eye on this new-found cousin. Don’t let her take advantage of your wife.”

  Storrington shrugged. “I won’t. Thank you for the warning. Enjoy the recital. You at least will enjoy it. I’m not too fond of opera myself.”

  Max liked Lady Storrington and didn’t wish her a grasping harpy for a cousin. Not least among the countess’s attractions, as far as he was concerned, was the faint odor of notoriety that clung to her. Although of good birth, she had lived in Storrington’s house as his pastry cook and high sticklers didn’t forget these things. The chaperones of well-bred virgins tended to keep their charges out of her trajectory.

  Shuddering at the very idea of well-bred virgins, he congratulated himself on the unlikelihood of finding anyone overly interested in marriage—in particular his marriage—at the event. His luck was out. The first person Max spotted as he headed for the saloon was his mother.

  He swore under his breath at the sight of the familiar figure in midnight-blue velvet. His eyes darted this way and that, but there was no avoiding Lady Clarissa Hawthorne in all her majesty.

  “Max!” She’d been waiting for him. “I thought I’d find you here.”

  He kissed her on each cheek. “If you wanted to see me, Mama, you had only to send round a note.”

  “A mother should hardly have to summon her son to see him,” Lady Clarissa said tartly. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t live with me. Lord knows, there’s plenty of room. Then I could see you whenever I want.”

  Which was exactly why Max had bought his own house several years earlier. He shrugged and said nothing, awaiting her next sally with the blend of affection and exasperation she always aroused.

  “I want to hear this singer everyone’s talking about. I’m surprised you didn’t get her. It’s bad enough you’re going into the theatrical business, but if you’re going to do it you might at least have the best.”

  “I’m here to see what I can do about that,” Max replied through gritted teeth. His nerves stretched to the breaking point by nearly a week of frustrated anticipation, he had even less patience than usual for dealing with his dam’s invigorating personality.

  “Good. And I’m here to see the Tsar’s diamonds. The newspaper reports say the parure he gave Madame Foscari surpasses anything seen in England.”

  His mother didn’t sound concerned and—eyeing her own necklace—he saw why. Tonight she was wearing the Tamworth sapphires, seven massive and flawless blue stones surrounded by diamonds. Not many monarchs in Europe had jewelry to equal her collection, and if they did they weren’t liable to give it away, even to as famous a mistress as La Foscari.

  He could sense other guests covertly examining his mother’s adornment and giving her—and him—the enthralled attention he’d become wearily accustomed to. It had taken many years for him to accept the fact that people found the sight of the richest woman—perhaps the wealthiest person of either sex—in England fascinating. And as her only offspring he was subject to the same voracious curiosity.

  As a naïve nineteen-year-old traveling in Europe, he’d been alarmed and repelled by the sycophantic fawning of others. Berlin, Vienna, Madrid: Denizens of society in each of these capitals knew all about the Hawthorne heir. It had seemed absurd to him—and still hardly made sense—that his acquaintance was desirable because the wealth of two great-grandfathers made the legendary fortune of Croesus look like a modest competence. The daughter and sole heiress of a banker had wed the heir to the earldom of Tamworth. A city fortune, whose sheer size dissipated any scent of the shop, merged with one of the country’s vast landed estates to form England’s greatest fortune. Max and his mother were the sole descendants of that marriage.

  As far as Max was concerned it could stay that way, a sentiment his mother was far from sharing.

  “Hm,” she said, looking around. “A very worldly company tonight. I don’t see any eligible unmarried girls to present to you.” It was positively frightening sometimes how she seemed to read his thoughts.

  “Since I’m not interested in meeting them, the dearth leaves me indifferent.”

  This was the beginning of a discussion they’d had often since, aged twenty-two, he’d flatly turned down an arranged marriage with the daughter of a duke.

  “Will you come to the country with me next week?”

  Max fought off irritation at her request. The one thing that tempted him into matrimony was the prospect of presenting his mother with a brood of grandchildren to divert her exhausting attention from him. She could teach them to take snuff and cheat at brag and wear tiaras at breakfast.

  “The Regent Opera House opens this week, as I’m sure you’re aware. I can’t leave London now.”

  She gave him a hard look, accompanied by the poignant sigh she used to induce guilt when he failed to meet her demands. “Always opera singers,” she said. “Your pursuit—for whatever reason—of Madame Foscari is inevitable. Always opera singers.”

  His heart missed a beat, thinking, as no doubt she was, about a particular opera singer. He couldn’t help scanning the crowd, not really expecting yet still dreading to see the face he’d once known so well. Though the large saloon was thronged with the powerful, the clever, and the merely ornamental cream of the ton, they were all figures he’d encountered any time these ten years.

  No one dared approach to pierce the golden aura that set Lady Clarissa and her son apart from other mortals and save him from his controlling parent.

  “Let me escort you to a seat, Mama,” he offered in desperation. “In this crowd we’d better move now if we want to be near the front.”

  “No thank you. I may want to leave early since my tolerance for music is limited. I can view those gemstones from a distance through my lor
gnette. Something in the back row will suit me very well.”

  Rescue came in the unlikely form of a man who made a habit of being impressed by nothing. Under the circumstances Max was pleased to see the Marquess of Somerville threading his way effortlessly through the throng and into the Hawthorne orbit.

  “Somerville,” he said in his friendliest manner. “What brings you here?” As though he didn’t know very well.

  “To gaze on the beautiful Lady Storrington, of course. Why else?”

  Lady Clarissa gave a crack of laughter. “You’ll catch cold at that one, Somerville. Storrington wouldn’t have married his cook if he hadn’t loved her.”

  Somerville raised her hand to his lips. “Indeed, Lady Clarissa. That is why I only look. Besides”—Somerville was now gazing at her with his legendary blue eyes and giving Max another demonstration of his legendary technique with women—“I’ve found a better, and I dare hope more susceptible, object of my admiration.”

  Lady Clarissa actually simpered at this flattery from a man a decade younger, if not two. Max interrupted the revolting display. “Would you be good enough to find a seat in the rear for my mother? I really need to be near the stage. For professional reasons, you know.”

  Without giving Somerville a chance to argue, he abandoned marquess and mother and ensconced himself in the center of the second row of gilt chairs in the Storringtons’ drawing room. Exactly two minutes later an immaculate figure slipped into the seat next to him.

  “You owe me a favor, Max,” Somerville drawled.

  “I knew you’d be able to get away from my mother more easily than I, and I was right.”

  “And of course,” the marquess continued, “you thought to steal a march on me by placing yourself closer to La Divina.”

  “I was rather under the impression that you were ahead of me in that particular game.”

  Somerville shrugged. “I don’t kiss and tell, but I can assure you that the lady is, indeed, quite beautiful.”

  Max said nothing and tried to look as though he didn’t care. Judging by the other man’s knowing smile he didn’t succeed.

  “And after all, my dear Max, your interest is purely professional.”

  *

  “Will you go out, please, and see what the audience is like?”

  Sempronio withdrew his gaze from a painting of well-dressed rustics herding their sheep and looked at Tessa, surprise crinkling his normally placid face. “Are you nervous?” She rarely suffered from stage fright, and certainly not before a private recital.

  “Not about the performance. Never mind, I’ll look.” Tessa made a final adjustment to her hair at the mirror over the fireplace. She’d decided against wearing the tiara on this occasion. The Russian necklace, bracelets and double-eagle brooch looked opulent enough against her red velvet gown, cut very low in front and lavishly trimmed with gold lace. Quite enough to announce to the London cognoscenti that Teresa Foscari was a force to be reckoned with.

  The small saloon in the Storrington house led into a huge drawing room where a stage had been constructed for the occasion. The chatter of numerous voices ascended to a roar when Tessa passed into the larger room. Her view of the attendees—and theirs of her—was blocked by a screen placed to hide the doorway between the two rooms from the audience.

  Briefly she closed her eyes, chiding herself for her unwonted nerves. It was unlikely he’d be here. If he was, she probably wouldn’t recognize him after all this time. And if she did, what of it?

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she set her eye to the slit at the fold of the screen. Almost every gilt chair was occupied and more people were standing at the back. It was always good to see a full house and this was an especially brilliant one. Under the splintered light cast by a hundred candles in cut-glass chandeliers, Tessa looked out over rich gowns and glowing jewels contrasting with the more severe tailoring of well-dressed men. Undoubtedly the cream of London society was gathered here, the very people she needed to impress if her visit to London was to meet her ambitions. But she wasn’t thinking of her future or her responsibilities. Her gaze scanned well-bred faces, reddened with heat or alcohol, powdered or rouged, pretty, handsome, or commonplace beneath elaborate coiffures and fashionable crops.

  Then she saw him.

  Her knees trembled and she held onto the doorjamb for balance. He was older now but unmistakably the shy young man who had blushed when he brought a posy to the Oporto opera house and told her she had the voice of an angel. He had the same coal-black hair, cropped short because it wouldn’t take a curl; the sharp cheekbones and hawkish nose; the olive-toned skin, once tanned to a deep bronze by the Portuguese sun but now paler in the early spring of England; the grave mouth which could broaden into a generous smile and light up an otherwise austere countenance.

  It had been such a very long time. But even after eleven years, during which she’d been married and enjoyed a dazzling career, Max Hawthorne still had the ability to make her pulse race. And she bitterly resented the fact.

  He wasn’t smiling now. Sitting in the middle of the second row, he frowned intently at the empty stage, as though anticipating something frightful. Was he expecting her? Did he know that Tessa Birkett, the young girl he’d insulted and abandoned so many years ago, was about to reappear in his life in the guise of Teresa Foscari?

  If not she had the advantage. Thank God she’d seen him before her entrance on stage. Had she spotted him in the audience then, all her experience might not have prevented her faltering. As it was, she had time to take several deep breaths and prepare her mind to think of nothing but the task in hand. She took a sip of water and turned her thoughts to music. But before thrusting Max Hawthorne firmly from her consciousness she permitted a fleeting—and doubtless vain—wish that he would be as agitated by her appearance as she.

  *

  La Foscari knew what she was doing. There was little point challenging a fashionable audience with anything obscure. She sang several well-known Italian songs, staples of polite after-dinner entertainment, but delivered with a skill and intensity that no amateur could match.

  Max hardly noticed. The moment she emerged from the screen his deepest hopes and most profound dread had been fulfilled. It was, without doubt, Tessa Birkett. Yet what did the reserved, innocent young girl he’d fallen in love with have to do with this haughty beauty in red velvet and diamonds? But of course the reserve—and quite probably the innocence—had been a pose. The girl he’d adored had never existed. The avaricious opera singer, mistress to emperors, had always been there behind the sweet façade. Unfortunately it was his duty to use his millions to tempt her once again. His lips curled derisively.

  “Disappointed, Max?” Somerville murmured beneath the roar of applause that greeted the end of Caro mio ben.

  “Not at all, Somerville. She’s exactly what I expected.”

  *

  Refusing a third encore, Tessa braced herself to greet the horde waiting to engulf her. The praise and fond embrace of her cousin might have eased the familiar tension engendered by crowds of strangers, but the presence of the one person she was determined to avoid roiled her stomach with dread.

  “Do you need any refreshment?” Jacobin asked.

  “A glass of champagne would be agreeable, cousin, but nothing to eat. I always sup late.”

  “Call me Jacobin,” Lady Storrington replied. “May I call you Tessa?”

  “Please do. No one does any more. It reminds me of my childhood.”

  And of Max. Max had always called her Tessa.

  “And I hope I can tempt you to taste a little pastry,” Jacobin went on. “I make them myself.”

  “How unusual. I wasn’t aware that peeresses were in the habit of preparing food for their guests.”

  Jacobin laughed. “They’re not. But I was a pastry cook before I became a countess and I like to keep my hand in. I’m very good, you know. I can assure you I won’t poison you.”

  Tessa smiled, warming to her cousin
and hostess. She was beginning to feel guilty about her fee. Sofie, displaying an unexpected flair for extortion, had demanded a princely sum for the evening, expecting to come down in price. Lady Storrington had agreed without a murmur.

  “Just one, then,” she said, “but only one. It wouldn’t do for La Divina to become La Rotunda.”

  “You can afford at least two,” the countess replied. “Your figure is much better than Catalani’s.”

  “Angelica,” said Tessa gravely, “doesn’t watch her diet as carefully as she should.”

  “Is there anyone in particular you’d like to meet?”

  Tessa tossed down her glass of champagne in a single gulp to give her courage. While she was here she might as well take care of some business.

  “Pray present me to Lord Allerton,” she requested. Anything to avoid Max Hawthorne, whom, out of the corner of her eye, she could see in conversation with the Marquess of Somerville and another gentleman.

  Her hope that Allerton was on the other side of the room was dashed. Jacobin led her toward the paunchy older man who stood chatting with Hawthorne. Of course he had to be chatting with Hawthorne. Such was her luck.

  Jacobin stopped behind Max and tapped on his black-clad shoulder.

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” she said. “Please allow me to present you to my cousin, Signora Foscari. Tessa, this is Lord Allerton. Also”—indicating the other two—“Lord Somerville and Sir Henry Waxfield.”

  Tessa wasn’t sure how she managed to retain enough self-assurance to curtsey. Only years of experience in the public arena prevented her from gaping like an idiot at the discovery that the enormously wealthy impresario of London’s new opera house was also her former love. Panic seized her throat and she doubted she was capable of uttering a single word.