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Chapter Eleven
“Miss Black, what was your daughter’s name?” Nora asked. They sat side by side, waiting for Mrs. Cooper to show up. Since the violin belonged to her, they couldn’t begin their lessons without her. It had now been two weeks since Carmen had started to teach Nora, and as she had understood, Nora was a quick learner.
Carmen blinked, the question digging up almost a decade old memory. “I had named her Eloise after my mother. You see I missed her very much, but she wasn’t around me when I needed her.”
“Did she go to the stars then?” Nora asked.
Carmen blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Papa says that’s where Mother went after she died. He said that the stars took her because they were lonely and wanted her company,” Nora explained. “My mother was a kind woman, you see. She was always ready to help everyone in need. And Papa said that the stars needed someone just like her.”
Carmen remembered the Duchess’s portrait in Arthur’s study. She was a beautiful woman with sharp cheekbones and blue eyes that were crinkled around the corners. Even in the pictures, her happiness exuded clearly as if she couldn’t hold in her smile for the artist drawing her.
“No, my mother is still alive, but she is far away from me, too.”
“You will find her,” Nora said confidently. “As you’ll find your daughter.” Carmen had no hope to return back home. As she was the youngest daughter of her father, she had been banished from home without a second thought, but she still had hopes of locating her daughter. But despite that, Nora’s assurance lifted the cleaving pain in her heart that she had carried for the last eight years.
Carmen knew now from whom Nora had inherited her kindness because it definitely wasn’t her father. “Your mother is always looking down on you from up there.”
“Do you really think so?” Nora asked her eyes widening.
She nodded. “Mothers are always looking over their children, even if they are far away from them.”
Nora’s eyes watered. “Do you think Mother sees me?”
“She sees all that you do, and she is up there praying and wishing for your good life and health,” Carmen said gently.
“Which instrument do you love the best?” Nora asked, abruptly steering the conversation away.
“I like the violin, but if I had to choose only one instrument, it would be the pianoforte,” Carmen admitted. “But those are hard to come by.” One of the patrons had chosen to deliver an old, unused piano to the music hall.
“My mother had one,” Nora said suddenly. “I remember it. When I was younger and she wasn’t ill, she would play to me.”
“Was she often sick then?” Carmen asked curiously.
“She had a blood disease,” Nora said. “She would go months being healthy and jovial and then suddenly deteriorate out of nowhere. Papa explained it to me, but he wouldn’t tell me everything.”
Carmen wondered if the lady had passed away due to the same sickness. When she had asked around for information about the Duke, they had nothing to say about his late wife, only that she had passed away suddenly, and it came as a tragic shock to both the family and society. And there was something a little more alarming. They said he wasn’t right in the head anymore, and frankly after what he had gone through, she believed them.
“The pianoforte remains in her chambers,” Nora said and then her eyes lit up. “I have an idea.”
Carmen could tell where she was going. But she had to ask. “What is it?”
“Mrs. Cooper isn’t here yet. We can go up to the chambers, just for a little while, and you can play for me,” Nora said.
Carmen hesitated. “I don’t think that will be a good idea.”
“Nobody goes up there anyway,” Nora insisted. “Come on, we will be in and out in a jiffy with none the wiser.”
Carmen looked towards the door. Even Ramon had gone off somewhere, presumably to see to his other duties. “Come on,” Nora said, tugging on her arm. “It’s no harm at all. You said that Mother is always looking down on me. She wouldn’t mind if we play on her piano.” It wasn’t Lady Davenport she was concerned about, but her father. Oddly, he wasn’t present at the house today either, as he wasn’t in the last few days she had been here. It appeared he didn’t wish to be indoors, so long as she was here.
“Alright,” she finally said. “But just for a little while, till Mrs. Cooper comes back.”
“Of course,” Nora said. She led her out of the lesson room and both of them hurried upstairs, climbing the winding staircase. Thankfully, they didn’t run into any servants. Nora led her to the farthest wing of the manor. “Papa likes to keep it clean and in order, but I haven’t been inside in a year. The servants finish the dusting by mid-morning so nobody would look for us here.” She opened the deadbolt and they walked inside.
Carmen was stunned that these chambers had been left unused for three years. Nora was right. The servants worked diligently to keep every surface of the room clean, with not a speck of dust in sight. Sunlight streamed in through the slats above and Carmen envisioned the lady of the house to walk in any moment. At the farthest corner of the chamber, Carmen noticed that even the canopy bed was made with a feathered quilt and plush pillows. It was as if she had never left.
Nora took her hand and walked her to the piano that took up the center of the chamber. It was covered in a white sheet which Carmen pulled off to reveal a polished wooden body of the large piano. Her breath caught in her throat at its sight.
