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“That too,” he said, with a wry grin.

“I had no idea! You certainly didn’t act as if it was a new experience. I thought you had slept with hundreds of women.”

“I wanted you to think that, of course. Back then, I was trying to cover up every imaginable shortcoming by pretending they didn’t exist.”

“What shortcoming?” Helene said. She was trying to avoid looking at him. Even a glimpse of his muscled buttocks seemed to do odd things to her stomach.

“That I was a virgin, among other things,” he said. His smile was sardonic. “I bungled your first time, Helene, and I’m sorry about that.”

“I don’t see what you could have done differently,” she pointed out, liking the apology though. “From what I’ve heard, every woman dislikes the first time.”

“Whereas men are supposed to love it,” he said and there was a distinct tone of self-derision in his voice now.

“But you didn’t,” she said, saddened. “I’m sorry if I bungled my part in it.”

He stood up and pulled on his shirt. “I should get to work,” he said, obviously dismissing the whole memory from his mind. “We’ll try again tomorrow night, shall we?”

“What is going to be different tomorrow?” Helene insisted, watching him pull up his smalls.

He didn’t answer, so she persisted. “What’s going to be different tomorrow night, Rees? We have to do this every single day in order to ensure conception.”

“Every day, hmm?” A flash of amusement crossed his face.

“Unless you have some serious objection. Esme says there’s no way to know what particular day is the right one, so we can’t miss even one day this month or we might have to continue into next month. And if I disappear for two months people will think I’ve come down with consumption!”

He pulled on his boots and went to the door, then paused. “I’ll speak to Darby tomorrow and ask him about bedding ladies. I’ve never been the sort to engage in that sort of conversation at the club and my brother—” he shrugged. “Sometimes I feel as if Tom must have been born in that black frock of his. We certainly have never discussed women.”

“Thank you,” she said, watching him leave.

Twenty-one

Andante

Four hours later, Helene realized that she was not going to be able to sleep. She had been staring at the ceiling for hours, thinking. One sentence kept sticking in her mind: Rees said he was going to ask Darby about bedding ladies. So what was so special about bedding a lady? What was different between her and Lina, for example? Why did she need special treatment? She just wanted him to do it, and get it over with.

Far downstairs, in the depths of the house, she could occasionally hear pings from the piano. Apparently Rees meant it when he said he was going to work throughout the night on that lackluster score of his.

Finally Helene rose and pulled on her dressing gown. He could damn well do to her whatever it was he did to women who weren’t ladies. She marched down the stairs, her bare toes curling against the smooth wood. The house was so old that each stair dipped a bit in the middle, presumably from the tramping feet of Jacobean Hollands, making their way up to their wives’ chambers.

Outside the music room, she paused. He was still working on the same piece but it sounded a bit more adventurous now. Finally she pushed open the door. He threw up his head immediately and stared at her. The room was lit by two candelabra perched on top of the piano. His hair was standing on end, and there were black circles under his eyes. He looked desperately tired and, somehow, defeated.

Helene gave up the idea of bedding on the spot. “Can I help?” she said, tightening the cord of her dressing gown and walking into the room.

He shook his head as if to wake himself up. “I think it’s improving.” He played the bit that Helene had heard outside the door. “What do you think of this?”

“I like it.” This time it felt natural to nudge him over and sit down. “What if you ended on D in alt? Can your soprano reach that high a note?” She played it again. “You could pause here on A-natural, and then either up or down to the D.”

“Better the first time,” Rees said. “It sounds a little florid with that triplet, but I like this minor chord.” He pushed her hands off and played it himself. “Nice! You always were the better musician of the two of us, Helene.”

“Not so,” she said. “You write real music; I just play with notes. Real musicians don’t spend months reworking Beethoven for four hands. They write original pieces, as you do.”

He closed the top of the piano over the gleaming keys with a quiet click. “I write poppycock, Helene. You knew it, even back when we first married, before I’d had a single piece staged. You told me that I was doing nothing more than writing squeaky duets and that my harmonies were unremarkable.”

“I didn’t!” she said, startled. “I have never said such a thing, and I certainly don’t think it either! Last year, for example, I didn’t love everything in The White Elephant, but there were parts I thought were brilliantly conceived.”

That lock of hair had flopped over his eyes again. He leaned against the closed piano keys and gave her a sardonic smile. She could see wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “I can list precisely what you disliked in the Elephant. The tenor aria in Act One, the oboe and clarinet duet in Act Three, and the minor scale that opened the Finale.”

“True,” Helene said. “As I told you last year. But I also thought your delineation of character was dazzling. The repeated pianissimo high F’s in the Duke’s aria were exquisite. The sense of pandemonium during the thunderstorm, when the elephant is running loose, was brilliantly executed. And the soprano mezzo duet, as everyone in London undoubtedly told you, was a glorious bit of inspiration.”