by Megan Chance
“Ah,” he said, obviously no less confused.
“Mr. Price plays the piano, and I … we—”
“—were practicing,” Gideon said. As if he hadn’t noticed how intentionally I’d stepped away, he put his hand again at my waist.
Marsdon noticed. He said, “Practicing? Something for the choir?”
“You’ve heard her voice,” Gideon said impatiently. “Do you really think—”
“Yes, a special hymn,” I said. I shoved my elbow surreptiously into Gideon’s chest, willing him to be quiet. “Mr. Anderson knows all about it, but no one else does. I’d appreciate it if you would keep it secret.”
Marsdon frowned. “I see. Is it to be for the service then?”
“Apparently we’re planning a surprise for Miss Rainey,” Gideon said.
I sighed in relief. “Yes, a surprise. You won’t tell her, will you, Dr. Marsdon?”
“Of course not,” Marsdon said, though he still looked puzzled. “If that’s what you wish.”
“Thank you,” I said, giving him my broadest smile.
He gestured to the stairs, obviously flustered. “W-well then. The others are waiting for me. We needed to move some of the pews…. Good-bye.”
He hurried up the stairs, and when he was gone Gideon pressed his fingers into my waist and said, “You are a witch.”
It was a light comment, but I heard something in his tone, some disapproval that went beyond his teasing, and I was ill at ease. I didn’t like that Robert Marsdon had found us. Although I believed he would keep the secret, I was uncertain just how close he and Charlotte had become—and that bothered me too, that I didn’t know.
“Let’s go,” Gideon said, urging me up the stairs. But as we went back to the hotel and fell into bed, I was aware of that vague disapproval between us that I’d felt in the basement, and nothing I could do to him made it go away.
HE LEANED AGAINST the wall near the window, wearing only his trousers, smoking as he watched me dress. The rain was a cold and steady gray curtain beyond the glass that made me shudder when I thought of going out in it. I wanted to be drowsy, still in bed, curled against him.
As if he’d read my mind, he said, “Why don’t you stay?”
“I can’t. They’re expecting me back.”
“You’ll be leaving there soon. What does it matter?”
I concentrated on buttoning my bodice.
“How long are we keeping this secret, Sabine?”
I swept up my hair, reaching for the pins in a little pile on the dresser.
He said, so quietly his voice was nearly lost in the sound of the rain, “Do you love him?”
I glanced warily at him in the mirror. His expression was clouded by smoke. “Love who?”
“Johnny Langford.”
When I didn’t answer, he said, “You’ll be ready in another month. Six weeks at the outside. I can have you onstage in New York by June.”
I closed my eyes. The hush surrounded me; the rain could almost have been an audience, those few moments just after the curtain opened as they waited breathlessly for the start.
“We’ll have to time it right—the newspapers will want their story. We’ll pick a reporter; perhaps Simon Trask from the Times. He’s always been taken with you. You can tell him how difficult your life has been these last few years. Build the public’s sympathy and curiosity. If we do it correctly, there will be ticket lines stretching around the block.”
“Gideon—”
“We ought to be able to name our percentage. There isn’t a theater in Manhattan that won’t want you. We’ll have to discuss what our story will be, of course.”
“You mean a lie,” I said.
“Unless you want to confess to killing him.” He ground out his cigarette on the windowsill. “Since I’ve already served the time, I wouldn’t suggest it. We want you performing, not in prison.” He glanced up at me. “It would be easier if I knew what really happened.”
“I don’t like to think about it.”
“What did he do, Bina? Why did you kill him? Why won’t you tell me?”
I shook my head blindly. He sighed. I heard him cross the room. Then his hands were warm on my arms, pulling me back into his chest.
“Here I am, here we are, as we always were. Practicing and then making love in secret while you go off with some other man. You’re doing exactly what you want, Sabine, just as you always did, while I’m living in the shadows, making certain you never have to pay the consequences for anything. What are you telling people about where you come every day? Your friend Charlotte—does she know anything about this? About me?”
“No, but—”
“What about Langford?”
“No. No, I—” My words were trapped in my throat.
“Let me tell you what I want, Sabine,” he said very slowly. “Or perhaps it’s better if I tell you what I don’t want. I don’t want this”—he gestured about the room—”no more hiding, no secrets.”
“You were the one who insisted on that before, not me.”
“Things are different now. I’ve grown tired of pretending that I’m not your lover. I don’t want to share you. It’s time for you to grow up and choose: a life with me, or to stay here with him.”
“How can I believe you?” I demanded. “The first time there was a Leonard Jerome waiting in the wings—”
“There will be no more Leonard Jeromes, not for my part. If you decide to play that game, you can do it without me.”
I did not expect this. I found myself foundering, trying to find the Gideon I knew in this man who looked at me so intensely, who demanded so fiercely.
He said, “I don’t want anyone mistaking what we are to each other. If you truly do love me, then I want you to make the choice. I want you to marry me.”
I stared at him in stunned amazement.
“Marry me,” he said again, as if it were only now dawning on him how serious he was, “or we leave each other.”
And the temptation was there, as terrible as had been the one to sing again, to take to the stage. To marry him, to claim him as my own, to never live in secrets … The Sabine who loved him wanted it so badly. But the Marguerite who had run from him—she knew what marriage would mean. To be chained to him, bound to his will, forced not just by circumstance but also by law to do as he wished, when I was already so prone to do so. How would I save myself then?
“Are you so certain of the past that you’d deny me out of fear?” he asked. “Are you so certain it’s not what you want? Is your life here with him so much better?”
“I need some time,” I said, dismayed to hear the tremolo in my voice. “Just a little more.”
“You have a week,” he said.
THAT NIGHT I flirted with the men and kept my vigil at Jim Ryan’s table when things got tense, and took my place behind the bar, just as always. I kept a smile on my face. I played my role as well as I had ever played it. But in my head, I heard Gideon’s words like a song I could not forget. “You have a week.” “Marry me.”
I watched Johnny across the room. Everything he’d done for me, everything I’d made here, seemed built of sea foam, easily blown away, and the very fact of that frightened me, the kind of power Gideon had over me, the things he made me want….
When Johnny came over, I smiled at him and tried to feel desire and it wasn’t there, though I wanted it to be so badly I wished it into existence. I turned to kiss him and brought my hands to his hips, and he laughed a little and said, “I’ve got some things to talk over with the deputy tonight about the changes here. I won’t be done until late. You’d best go on to McGraw’s.”
I was relieved and grateful, though I tried to hide it. Perhaps I wasn’t as successful as I’d hoped, because his expression was a little too thoughtful as he looked at me; I felt suddenly exposed, as if he knew … but that was only my imagination. If Johnny had known about Gideon, he would hardly be this sanguine.
I left that night well before the customer
s; it seemed the walls of the Palace were closing in around me.
I sat on my bed, huddled into the corner, listening to the rain beat down upon the roof and against the window while Gideon’s words seemed to beat in time with it. “Are you so certain of the past that you’d deny me out of fear?”
I glanced at the bureau. I wanted nothing more than to keep my distance. But I found myself crossing the room, opening the drawer, pulling out the things I’d hidden so carefully. I laid aside the brooch. Beneath it was my journal. Settled, as if it belonged, as if it were four and a half years ago and it was simply waiting in another drawer in another fine hotel for me to open it.
I gathered it into my hands and closed the drawer again with my knee, and then I laid it on the bed, and I lit the candle on the bed table and settled back into my corner against the wall.
The board covers were a little warped, as if water had spilled upon them; when I opened the first pages I saw the stain of it marking them, the slight smear of the ink where the water had touched. The writing was fluid, scrambling across the page, quick and impatient, sprawling in a race to the very right edge and then cramping as if the letters were falling over one another at a sudden stop, the edge coming too quickly, too unexpected.
Slowly, I brought my eyes to the top of the page.
New York City, December 10, 1870—Gideon is back from the tour at last!!!
The emotions came bubbling up as if they’d been locked away and these first words were the key to releasing them, and I remembered: my excitement at seeing him again, my hopes rising as he’d cajoled Mama and Papa into letting me tour, the agreement that he and Barret should go with me, Willa’s anger, the words she’d flung at me. “Everything this family does is for you! I’m tired of sacrificing for you, Sabine, do you hear me? You’d take everything from me if I let you!”
I slapped the book shut without reading the rest, overcome, my vision blurring. I shoved it beneath the bed so hard it hit the wall. Then I blew out the lamp and huddled beneath my blankets and stared into the darkness. I’d never asked Willa to sacrifice. That was Gideon’s doing, even then. “I saw a fortune in you.” That was the truth. I didn’t need to read this journal to see it. I had been there.
———
I WAS NOT asleep when I heard the soft rap upon my door, but I meant to pretend I was. I lay quiet and still, but she was not dissuaded.
“Marguerite?” I heard her call, and then the door creaked open, the shadow of her leaned in. “Marguerite? You awake?”
And I said, “Yes.”
She came fully inside, closing the door behind her. Within the darkness she was a deeper shadow, and there was no moonlight to ease in through the window to make her real. She could have been a dream; I was half convinced she was until she sat on the edge of my bed and put her hand to my forehead, smoothing back my hair, which I had not bothered to twist or braid.
“I thought … you need to henna. You want me to do it?”
“No,” I said.
Her hand shifted from my forehead, down my cheek, that strange half-numb touch at my scar. She hesitated, as if she’d touched it by accident and didn’t know best how to proceed, then when I said nothing, she traced it down, from my temple to my jaw, the way a lover might, the way Gideon had.
I turned my face away. Her hand slipped to my neck.
“You planning to go off with him?” she asked—so quietly, as if she had to ask the question but was dreading the answer.
I didn’t pretend shock that she knew. I didn’t pretend anything at all. “I don’t know,” I whispered.
She sighed. “You remember that night on the wharf? With the phosphorescence?”
“Yes.”
“You were happy that night, weren’t you?”
I couldn’t speak.
“You were happy here for a long time, before he came. Or were you just pretending?”
“I was … trying,” I managed.
She was quiet. Then she rose. “I’ll let you get some sleep.”
I grabbed for her hand as she turned to go. I got her wrist, and wrapped my fingers tight around it, but once I had her I wasn’t certain why I’d done so; I had nothing to say. She turned back to me and leaned down, kissing me lightly. “Good night.” I released her, and she straightened, and neither of us said anything more as she went to the door, where she paused and looked back at me, and I felt the weight of her worry in the darkness between us, and I could do nothing to appease it.
THE NEXT MORNING I went to the church with a heaviness in my chest I could not dislodge. Gideon was standing outside the front door, huddled against the wind with the folio beneath his arm, his hair blowing in his face as he smoked his cigarette. In that moment before he saw me, I paused, staring at him, soaking him in, and then he looked up.
“There you are,” he said, throwing his cigarette to the ground. “You’re late.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep well.”
He gave me a sharp look; I knew he was looking for the reason, but he only stood back to let me go into the church before him, and together we went to the storage room.
Halfway through the warm-ups, he stopped playing. When I looked at him in surprise, he said, “Let’s not do this today.”
“What?”
“Let’s not practice. Come with me. We’ll take a walk. We’ll have lunch. We’ll go back to the hotel. Whatever you want.”
“But … why?”
“Because you’re unhappy,” he said quietly. “I never meant to make you unhappy, Bina.”
“I’m not unhappy.”
“You don’t want to leave him.”
“I don’t want to hurt him. But that’s not it, really. It’s—”
“Yes, I know. You don’t trust me.” He sighed, and I heard his disappointment and his pain in the sound, and that was different too. I meant to say something to soothe him, but he ran his hands over the keys before I could speak as if he knew my platitudes already and had no wish to hear them. It was just notes at first, and then they coalesced into a song, and one that he knew by heart. Of course he did. He’d played it a hundred times before. Nearly as often as I’d sung it.
“All Things Love Thee.”
My heart felt squeezed. But when my turn came, I sang for the simple joy of it—this was no coloratura aria, and there was nothing difficult about it, but thousands of people knew me by this song. Since the day Mr. Wilson had given it to me to sing, it had been mine. It said Sabine Conrad as nothing else did, as nothing else ever would.
“‘When thou dost in slumbers lie, All things love thee, so do I. All things love thee, all things love thee, all things love thee, so do I.’”
It was over before I was ready. Gideon settled on the final chord, and then we both stayed there, still, listening as the echoing notes melted slowly away.
Then he said only, “Beautiful.”
He stood up, gathering the music. The smile he gave me was heartbreaking. As he put the folio beneath his arm and went to the door, I wished he would hold me. I wanted him to tell me we were going for the walk he’d suggested, or to lunch, or back to the hotel.
He said none of those things. He blew out the lamp and opened the door. I followed him out. The door clicked shut behind us. Gideon stopped short. I nearly walked into him before I looked up, before I saw who was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
It was Charlotte, with Robert Marsdon.
And Johnny.
CHAPTER 24
Johnny leaned against the wall, and when he saw me he pushed away, straightening. He clapped his hands in slow applause. “Well, well. That was beautiful, Miss Conrad. I heard you sing that once in San Francisco. I think I’d recognize your voice anywhere.”
I threw a horrified glance to Charlotte, who gripped Robert Marsdon’s arm.
Marsdon said, “Forgive me for not keeping your secret, Miss … Olson. But you seemed troubled, and”—he threw a wary glance at Gideon—”and I wasn’t certain of the situation. Then Ch
arlotte was so worried…. Well, I meant only to help.”
Gideon looked at me. “Your friends, I take it?”
Dully, I said, “You know Dr. Marsdon. And this is Johnny Langford, who runs the Palace. And Charlotte Rainey. Gideon Price.”
Johnny stepped forward, offering his hand. His eyes were like stone. “Ah yes, Mr. Price, I’ve heard a great deal about you. I helped run the Luxe Theater when you were in San Francisco last. Your company—and Miss Conrad, of course—was very popular, I remember.”
Gideon shook his hand. He was rigidly courteous. “San Francisco was good to us.”
“I remember watching them pull her carriage down the middle of the street,” Johnny said. His gaze came to me. “The Angel of San Francisco, they called her. Of course, that was before that Frenchie’s murder.”
“Johnny, please,” I murmured.
He ignored me and said to Gideon, “How’d you like Sing Sing?”
Gideon’s smile was wry. “It left a great deal to be desired.”
“Sing Sing?” Charlotte said loudly.
Johnny said, “Why, Charlotte, how is it you don’t know this about your friend? That ain’t Marguerite Olson you’re looking at, it’s Sabine Conrad. Didn’t she tell you that?”
“Sabine Conrad,” Charlotte said flatly.
“The premier prima donna in America,” Johnny told her. “Didn’t she tell you the story? She and her manager here killed some French impresario. Mr. Price went to prison. She ran off. No one’s seen her since. Don’t you read the papers? Why, I heard she fled to Africa. Or maybe it was Turkey. Some far-off land, anyway. I’m disappointed she didn’t see fit to share it with you. I guess you must not have been the friends you thought you were.”
I saw the pain in Charlotte’s eyes. I looked away.
“But then again, I been fucking her the last four years, and she didn’t tell me.”
I had not thought the horror could be worse. I felt Gideon stiffen beside me.
“Johnny.” My voice sounded constricted. “Please don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what, honey? What’s wrong? Oh, were you planning to keep this all a secret? Pardon me. My mistake. You’ll understand, though, why I might be a bit … annoyed? What was it we were all talking about just the other night? And there you sat, mute as a stone. Well, now, I guess Prosch knew what he was saying, didn’t he? Price got out of prison and ran straight to you.”
