“Bastard.” Max had indulged in some interesting bedsports in his time, but always with the full and enthusiastic participation of his partner.
Tears streamed down Tessa’s cheeks. “He came to the bed and lay on top of me. Oh God, I knew it wasn’t Domenico. He’d sent another man to take me. Larger, heavier. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.” Horror written on her face, her eyes closed. “I couldn’t move. I was so frightened and somehow I managed to scream. Angela heard me. She saved me from rape.” Her voice was choked with tears and she bent over her knees. “He broke her nose.”
*
For a year or more, Tessa had tried to avoid reliving the terror of Domenico’s ultimate betrayal. Angela and the Montellis knew, but she’d never described that night to anyone. She’d always locked the full horror away in an unexamined corner of her mind. Only in her dreams could she sometimes not control it. Hugging herself, she rocked back and forth, racked with sobs. Then a pair of arms came around her and drew her against a broad chest. The masculine touch should have terrified her. But this was Max and she knew he wouldn’t hurt her. Instead she crawled onto his lap and curled up like a baby, crying out her grief for what Domenico had taken from her forever.
He murmured soothing words, rubbed her back, and pressed light kisses on her hair. Gradually she returned to consciousness and with it came shame and sheer embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she said with a giant sniff. “Dio, this crying will damage my voice. It’s good that I’m not singing tonight.”
“To hell with your singing,” he muttered. He tightened his hold and suddenly she had to get away. Not from fear of Max but of her own reaction. She could not let herself weaken and allow him into her heart again. Indeed, it was likely too late for that, but the way ahead was paved with nothing but misery.
The moment she resisted he let her go and set her gently on the seat. She watched him stand and pace the length of the dressing room. She was glad she had told him. He deserved to know what had occurred when they shared a bed and why it could never happen again. Yet, what must he think of her now that he knew of her shame?
“Would you like some more wine?” he asked.
“No thank you. But I seem to have mislaid my reticule. Could I trouble you for the loan of a handkerchief?”
She dried her eyes on his large, clean linen square. He stood over her radiating tension, his brown eyes filled with concern.
“I’d kill Foscari if I could,” he said abruptly. “Who was the other man?”
“A French comte who had earlier made his interest known. He paid Domenico a large sum for me to receive him according to his particular… taste. Once I convinced him that I was unwilling and not even aware of the transaction, he left.”
“And Foscari?”
“I told him I wanted to live apart. We were still arguing about the terms of our separation when he was attacked and killed by footpads in a dark street.”
“I wonder if the comte had anything to do with it.”
“The police never found his assailants. As I learned later, there were plenty of others who wished him dead.” The hordes of creditors who besieged his widow. “I couldn’t bring myself to feel much sorrow but I didn’t have him murdered.”
“Of course not,” Max said, shocked.
“The police questioned me and some of the Parisian newspapers hinted at it very strongly. The scandal made my performances more popular than ever and I detested it. I was glad to leave Paris when Mortimer came calling.”
“I wish it had been I.”
I do too. But she did not say it. “Certainly my association with Mortimer caused me nothing but trouble.”
“I am not sorry you came to London.” His intense gaze set off flutters—part pleasure, part regret—in her breast.
“You need to know one more thing,” she said quickly. Perhaps the final confession would drive him away. “One thing that truly shames me. I told you that after the matter with the comte I demanded a separation from Domenico. But not only that. I was so angry that, for the first time in our marriage, I resolved to cuckold him. Not with a duke or an emperor, as he had always wished, but with a lowly singer who could give us no possible advantage. I didn’t even like Edouard but I was prepared to use him for revenge.”
Shaking her head, she remembered the decision that she had made during a duet on stage at the Paris opera. She had been a little insane at the time. Perhaps she still was. Max was waiting and she found this least important part of the story the hardest to relate, because she had certainly been at fault. “It wasn’t hard to appeal to Edouard’s vanity and entice him into my dressing room when I was alone. I flattered him, kissed him, drew him down onto the chaise longue. But as soon as I felt his weight my fear returned. I couldn’t do it and sent him away. That is why I don’t blame him too much for what he did today.”
He rocked back on his heels and harrumphed. “I’m not sure I’m ready to let him off so easily.”
“As I said, he means nothing.”
“I understand now why you panicked when I woke you that morning. I am sorry I frightened you.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“Listen, Tessa.” He crouched at her feet, placed his hands on her waist, and, when she didn’t shrink from him, wrapped them around her back. “I love you. I loved you years ago and I love you now.”
She didn’t doubt him. His strength, sincerity, and fundamental goodness were written plainly on features that she would never again see as harsh.
“Oh God, Max,” she said, her voice breaking on a sob. “I wish you did not. Domenico has destroyed me. I am no use to any man.”
“I refuse to accept that. When we made love on the floor you weren’t frightened and you didn’t fight me. It was only when I came to you when you were asleep and didn’t know me. I could have been anyone and you panicked.”
“The night before was different. I was not myself after the fire.” She lowered her eyes. “Besides, most of the time I was on top. When you woke me I knew it was you. But as soon as I felt your weight I was terrified.”
“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. Yo
u 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.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“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
The 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.
Secrets of a Soprano Page 23
