And today, she finally dared to hold it, to accept what it meant.
Love.
But Vienna?She’d been to the musical heartland to perform more times than she could bother to recall.It was a beautiful city, and clearly where Cassius wanted to be.
But this place was her home.The one place she’d felt like she belonged, her neighbours like the family she had never known.And what would happen once he grew bored of her body?When there were younger, prettier, less headstrong women eager for his attention?When he discovered, as they always did, that she was not a goddess at all.That she was just a pretty woman who could sing.
He deserved Vienna.He deserved the applause.He deserved to bow and know it was all for him, for the master of music that he’d become.He deserved perfect musicians, to work with genius, to conduct orchestras three times the size of any he could hope for in London.To lead them through the compositions he adored, to play them in the buildings the pieces had been written for.He would work so hard.Maybe there, he’d finally find the adulation he’d lost in his youth and been chasing for so long.
She lay in her bed, crumpled and useless, until rest began to annoy her.Then she rose.Washed.Dressed in a simple tea gown so that she didn’t need to call Nora.Walked through her halls, down the stairs, and made her way to the house next door.She rapped the knocker.Gena opened the door, and the scent of warm sugar and tea infused the cooler spring air.‘Miss Delaney?’
‘I know I am early.But can I see Albert?’
Gena wrung her hands.‘He’s not been well, miss.Even for him, as he’s been.’Gena stepped back to allow Odette to enter.‘Mr Worthington comes by after breakfast to help Mason wash and dress him.Right now, he’s still abed.But I suppose you can go up if you don’t mind him like that.’
Odette crept up the narrow staircase to the first floor, where the Abberton family had their rooms.She knew the way without direction and did not need to be announced.Walking up these stairs had always felt a little like coming home.Not to her own home, but how she imagined it might feel for a child, once grown, to return to the place where they grew up.There was so much familiarity inside these walls, so much comfort in the turn of the hallway and the edges where the flocking had been worn down by careless hands skimming corners, or by skirts brushing wallpaper.She knew the way to his room.Once, some years ago, when Albert had laid abed with a fever, she had taken a turn cooling his forehead so that Iris could sleep.Another time, they’d all drunk too much while Mason was playing the upright, all of them singing as Jonah danced.Albert had fallen asleep on the sofa in the parlour, and she’d helped Iris guide him up the stairs, dozy and sluggish, in the early hours of the morning.A precious night, better than any opening or any gala.A night all the sweeter because they took it for granted.
An angled shadow from the open door cut into the hallway.Odette slid inside Albert’s room.When she pulled back the drapes, light spilled over the floor, its soft, yellow rays a harsh contrast to the molten embers glowing in the fireplace.Albert had often said, in his off-handed way, that his room was colder than the others.He would make sure Iris had the warmer room.It was just what he did.
Now Albert lay on his side, a thin bracket of grey tucked beneath the covers of his wooden four-poster bed.He seemed smaller and thinner than the man that Jonah had carried down the stairs mere weeks before.When Odette climbed onto the bed, he blinked his eyes open.She lay down beside him, her head on the pillow next to his, and watched his face.She looked for fear, in case she was scaring him because he’d forgotten her, even as her heart burnt for recognition.For a spark of memory, of anything.But while his eyes searched and settled, there was no miracle.No acknowledgement.Nothing.
Odette sought his hand.She pulled it into the gap between them, him lying under the blankets and her on top, his hand lax against the covers.That was familiar.He had been a solid man, once, imposing and aware of his own space, with hands big enough to swallow a smaller palm and a shake that used just the right amount of pressure to put people at ease.It wasn’t much… but he moved.His grip tightened.Odette tried to hold back, but she could not prevent the slow trickle of tears.There was too much inside her, and she could not contain it any longer.
‘My dear friend,’ she said, a little louder than a whisper.‘I am sorry to disturb you.I don’t know what to do.’She relaxed deeper into the pillows as the words she’d forced into silence, that she’d hidden even from herself, tumbled out.‘Something terrible has happened.I have fallen in love.Not a little, either.I have lost myself.To damn Cassius.’
She gave a small laugh, and it came out distorted, broken and choked.He did not join in, but she could still imagine that he did.She imagined his big booming laugh and his bright voice.His sparkling eyes and the way everyone in a room settled and became more comfortable with themselves because he was there.She remembered hot coffee and sweet biscuits, mulled wine in the study when he returned with stories from his travels, and that time they’d both been in New York at the same time.They’d visited every dance hall with young Iris to try and break her melancholy after Hamish had moved away.She remembered him fighting his way through the crowds to congratulate them after her first sold-out show, the man so warm and genial that he’d put even Cassius at ease.She remembered all the things he had forgotten and held them in the space between them, hoping she would always, always remember them.
‘What was it you said, my friend?To love is to live?But how can I go?What if the doctor is right?’This fear wrapped around her tighter than any of the others.‘How can I be in the city of music and not share in its beauty?I am not the sort of woman to stay on the edges.I would come to hate him.But how can I do nothing and watch him leave?’
There was no answer.There was nothing but the ache, nothing but the thumping in her chest and the muffled sounds of morning.Curled into the pillow alongside her friend Albert, her dear, dear friend who had lived his life to help others, she watched as his grip in hers loosened, held him tight as his fingers slackened.
Albert Abberton would have hated his funeral.
Black dresses, armbands, hatbands, and waistcoats—the lack of vibrancy would have rankled.He would also have understood the need for its conformity.Far too many people came—not just his neighbours, but friends from further afield, old foremen, workers, those who remembered his good name and came to pay their respects.To give him a send-off that included the things he loved like bright music, good drink, and laughter, to dispense with the minister… it would have invited far too much scrutiny.And Albert had always been aware of when to court attention and when to play a part.
The only protest against propriety was a spray of bright purple irises and white roses resting on the coffin lid.Iris had resisted the suggestion at first, fearing accusations of arrogance from a world that already scrutinised her as the common wife of a future earl.But Jonah had insisted.‘Let him have a little of you where he’s going,’ he had pleaded.‘You know it would have made him happy.You were his world.’
‘You were, too,’ she had replied.And then the two of them had collapsed into one another, sobbing, and mixed in with the sadness was something like relief.
Cassius came.He stood on the opposite side of the grave to Odette, a few rows back, the black satin band on his top hat shimmering in the May sunshine.At least it was sunny.She couldn’t bear the idea of bidding farewell to her friend in the cold and the rain.
…even so saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labours.
Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever.
‘Amen,’ Odette murmured, nothing but a voice in the hum.
For a long minute, the group remained motionless.Above them, a bird chirruped.A robin, chattering to its mate from high up in the trees.From behind the black gauze of her veil, Odette could not see the pair, but their chirps carried high into the sky as they continued to tweet.The leaves of the oaks at Kensal Green cemetery swayed in the breeze, daisy petals scattered, someone near the back moved, and then the group broke at the edges.The tight knot of mourners unwound until the only people that remained were the ones who had known the great man best.After a while, Lawrence turned, clasping Wilhemenia by the arm.Phineas and Rosanna drifted away, followed by Benton.Elise hovered, watching Iris, then she, too, broke away.
Head bent and flanked by Hamish and Jonah, Iris continued to stare at the grave with glassy eyes until Hamish tucked his arm under hers and tugged.
Which left only Odette.One last look, and she turned, wandering down the path towards the gates.
She knew Cassius would come to her.That’s what they did.They circled other places and spaces, and then, like moths infatuated by the same light, they always spun into each other’s orbit.Theatres, operas, concert halls, even dirt paths beneath tall trees rich with green… there was no place where they could avoid the temptation of one another.Their boots scuffed the solid ground as their steps converged once more, and Odette took Cassius’s arm, the silence between them strangely companionable.He didn’t enquire how she was.He already knew that inside she was destroyed.His thumb on her knuckles, the way he adjusted his stride to her pace, and the way he pulled her against him, as if her sadness could leech into him, told her that.She did not want to talk about her friend.
And he knew that, too.
They had walked past half a dozen symmetrical rows of epitaphs and stones, skirting grief and memories, when he spoke.‘Have you thought about it?About Vienna?’
