Sonata for a Scoundrel (35 page)

“Nicholas!”

“Clara, take care with my arm,” he said, catching her in an awkward embrace.

“What happened?” She drew back, hands on his shoulders, and studied his face.

His eyes were circled with exhausted shadows, and his hair was dusty and uncombed.

“I was set upon in the palace itself. I tried to fight, but there were five of them,” he said, and the listeners murmured in sympathy. “They knocked me unconscious and transported me out of the city to an abandoned farm. When I woke, I found my arm was broken. I was locked in an old hayloft with only a blanket, a jug of water, and a loaf of hard bread for company.”

Darien muttered a curse under his breath. “Do you know who took you?”

It seemed clear to Clara that only one villain could be responsible. Anton Varga.

“No.” Nicholas frowned. “I’m not certain I’d be able to recognize my assailants, either. They all wore ornate masks. At first I thought I’d been caught up in some kind of celebration, until they started dragging me away.”

“How did you escape?” Clara asked.

“These good gentlemen here,” Nicholas nodded to the homespun-clad men, “heard me banging on the walls. There was an old broomstick under the hay, and once my voice gave out from shouting, I started hammering away. They broke open the door, fed me, and, as soon as I discovered it was the day of the competition, rushed me into the city.”

“I’m so glad you’re safe! I feared…” Her lungs caught on the horrible imaginings she’d tried her best to keep at bay.

He was not lying dead by his own hand, or another’s, in some moldering alleyway. His body was not floating, bloated and lifeless, in the river.

Clara shut her eyes briefly, taking a firm grip on her emotions. She refused to dissolve into a weeping mess of gratitude in the middle of La Scala. Not now. Darien’s warm hands came to rest on her shoulders, and she drew in a shaky breath, glad of his strength behind her.

“Yes,” Darien said, all the force of his relief and gladness vibrating in that single word.

“But I cannot play.” Nicholas nodded to his left arm, wrapped in a linen sling.

“That doesn’t matter,” Darien said. “Henri, fetch a doctor.”

Clara glanced to the side, surprised to see the sprightly figure of the valet.

“I already have,” Henri said, “with instructions to meet us in the dressing room. This is no place for such examinations.”

“See to rewarding these good men,” Darien said, “while I escort the Beckers backstage. Come, I’ll clear a path back to the door.”

Clara squeezed Nicholas’s shoulders. “Follow Darien. We’ll keep you between us.”

She refused to take her eyes off him. The miracle of his presence was still too new for her to quite believe.

The audience did not press in on them as she and Nicholas followed Darien, though excited murmurs spread like ripples from their passage. At the door to the backstage, she saw Peter barring the way. He grinned when he caught sight of them, and moved aside.

“Thank God,” he said.

When the heavy door closed behind them, a trembling joy seized Clara. The tears she had battled surged to victory and, careful of his arm, she grasped Nicholas in a tight embrace. He smelled of wood smoke and mildewed hay.

“We must get your brother to the doctor,” Darien said.

Clara let Nicholas go, unsurprised to see that his face, too, was wet with tears.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “If only I could play—”

“Don’t regret what you can’t change,” Darien said, holding open the door of his dressing room. “It’s enough that you are here, and relatively unharmed.”

There was a wild light in Darien’s eyes, a spark Clara had not seen before. Clearly he was overjoyed to have his composer returned.

She turned her face away, heart weighted with the knowledge that she had no more excuses to stay by his side. Now that Nicholas was safely back with them, she must fulfill her promise.

The doctor waited inside, and set to work immediately, tsking and humming as he bent over Nicholas’s arm.

“The competition isn’t over yet?” Nicholas winced as the doctor unwrapped his crude sling. “Is Darien winning?”

“He and Varga are tied,” Clara said. “Varga took the first round, but Darien won the second. He played
Il Diavolo
flawlessly, without accompaniment.”

“Solo?” Nicholas glanced from her to Darien, who stood behind the doctor, his eyes watchful.

“Varga insisted upon it,” Darien said. “We’re both performing without our pianists.”

“Oh.” Nicholas twitched the fingers of his left hand. “Perhaps I could manage—”

“Nonsense,” Darien said, and Clara had to agree.

There was no way her brother could play accompaniment. The doctor snorted in disapproval of the idea, though his hands were gentle as he splinted and bound Nicholas’s arm.

“Maestro?” A rap on the door, and then the director stuck his head into the room. “Two minutes, if you will. The crowd is restless for the conclusion of the duel. Signor Varga will perform first, as he lost the last round.”

Darien set his hand on Nicholas’s shoulder. “Come join us in the wings when the doctor has finished.”

He offered his arm to Clara, and they made their way back to the hushed shadows flanking the stage.

When the director announced him, Varga strode onto the proscenium to thunderous applause. Clara bowed her head at the sound. Fear lodged in her throat, eclipsing her joy at having her brother safely returned. Now all her worry was for Darien. What if he lost the competition? She had never let herself believe it was possible, but now…

She squeezed her eyes closed, willing Varga to fail.

Instead, he stood there, absorbing the adoration of the crowd. At last he raised his hand for quiet.

“My dear audience,” he said, a smug note in his voice, “as many of you know, Nicholas Becker has managed to reappear—just in time for the conclusion of the competition.”

There was robust clapping at his words, and Clara’s heart lifted at the sound. Darien still had many sympathizers in the crowd.

Then Varga beckoned to a figure standing in the wings. His accompanist, a tall, thin man with an extraordinary reach on the keyboard, stepped forward, and Clara felt her eyes widen.

“Since Reynard has his accompanist back,” Varga said, “I’m sure you will be pleased to welcome mine onto the stage, won’t you?”

The crowd shouted their approval, but Clara jumped to her feet.

“He can’t!” She turned to Darien, anger pumping hotly through her. “We have to stop him. There’s no comparison. Nicholas can’t play a note! The director must—”

“Too late.” Darien took her elbow. “The audience has decided. Trying to change things now will only earn their ill will. Look, Varga is about to begin.”

“But, Darien—”

He laid a long, nimble finger over her mouth.

“All will be well,” he said in a low voice. “Trust me.”

He stroked his finger across her lips, his green eyes alight with excitement, challenge, and something she could not name. She could say nothing, though Varga’s duplicity scorched her nerves.

The accompanist launched into the opening chords. Slowly, she sat, her skirts rustling like brittle stalks. It was, indeed, too late.

The addition of the piano carried Varga’s notes to the very top balconies of La Scala. He played with a technical brilliance that could not be denied, his earlier, brutish style now melding with the accompaniment to create a music that strutted boldly forward. Varga performed with utter confidence, as though victory were assured. Listening to him holding the crowd rapt and still, Clara almost believed it was.

Too soon, he finished. Applause cracked through the air, thunder and lightning rolled into one, and Varga took bow after bow, his accompanist a thin shadow behind him. Flowers, flung from the audience, littered the stage.

The director finally ushered Varga offstage and sent one of his crew to retrieve the blossoms scattered over the shining wood.

Now it was Darien’s turn. Her heart beating like an over-tightened drum, Clara met his eyes. He took her hands and stood, drawing her up with him.

She must speak. No matter what happened, it was time to release the secret scarring her soul. She owed him that honesty. After tonight, things would never be the same.

And perhaps knowing that she had penned the notes he was about to play, perhaps that might give Darien wings. She thought he loved her. Would that be enough?

“Darien.” Her voice rasped her throat. “Before you play, there is something I must tell you.”

“No.” He tightened his grip on her hands, then released her. “You must come onstage as my accompanist. Now. Look, the director is announcing me.”

He strode the few paces to his case. Scooping up violin and bow, he turned and held up a sheaf of pages for her to see. The violin part for
Amore
.

The applause from the crowd took on an impatient edge. Clara glanced to the stage, where the director beckoned urgently.

“But—”

Darien’s gaze was insistent. “Come with me, Clara. Please. I need you.”

She could not refuse him.

“Yes.” The word was a mere breath, but it was enough.

He strode forward into the light, into the eye of the world. Trembling, she followed.

CHAPTER THIRTY

C
lara blinked at the heat and brightness of the footlights, and kept her gaze averted from the front of the stage. She could not ignore the audience, however. Whispers shivered through the crowd, prickling her nerves, and she braced herself for the boos and catcalls that must surely follow.

When she reached the piano, she drew in a shaky breath and tried to calm her rushing fear. Black and white keys stretched before her, a familiar world she could gratefully immerse herself in. There could be no room for the panic hovering over her fingers, no entry to the hollow terror that wanted to curl into her chest. She must be steady for Darien.

Darien offered no introduction, no word of explanation to the audience. Instead, he swept his violin up to his shoulder and waited. Two heartbeats later, the audience stilled. Anticipation flavored the air. Everything, everything hung upon this. Clara felt the crowd lean toward the stage, waiting. Watching.

She watched Darien, too, ready for the preparatory rise of his bow, the descent that would propel them both forward. Into the music. Into the future.

When he pulled the first long, sweet note from his violin, she was there, the piano meeting him in perfect harmony.

Keeping her focus only on him, Clara let everything else fall away. There was no watching emperor, no theater waiting to judge the outcome, no continent spreading out from this single point of music.

There was only one man, playing the melody she had written for him, playing her heart out into the open. The notes spiraled and twined, their breaths rising and falling together, violin and piano singing in sweet, lush counterpoint.

The second movement quickened, fiery passion sparking from the violin, tossed back and forth between them. Clara felt her face flush as she met Darien, matched him, their notes striving together, pushing and pushing into harmonic brilliance. The echo of their nights of lovemaking infused the music, the desire and racing of the blood as bodies touched and tangled, ascending into a perfect climax of sound.

A breath of silence, and they plunged in unison into the third section. The notes she had played earlier, the elegy for a lost brother, were now transformed. Shadow gave way to light, despair to hope.

The melody rose from the piano, seeking, questioning. I have been searching, alone, for so long. Is there love for me, in this world?

The violin answered, a line of notes steady as the stars.
If there is love, then we share it. I have found you at last.

Weeping turned to aching sweetness as she and Darien melded to one musical whole. Two lives, two souls, finally revealed to one another.

Amore
. Love.

Darien reached the final, pure, high note of the piece. It spun out into darkness, asking a question.
Will you be mine, now and forever?

Clara played the concluding chord, her fingers strong and sure.
I am yours. Now, and forever.

The music was complete.

Silence.

For one icy moment, Clara imagined that the audience had left, departed while she and Darien were caught up in the throes of the music—the theater was that still.

Then applause crashed down, so loud it vibrated the stage beneath her feet and set the piano strings to humming. Varga had played with technical genius; he had played for fame and immortality. But Darien had played for love. His mastery of the instrument was married to sheer emotion, surpassing Varga’s skill.

The proof of Darien’s victory shook the gilded walls of La Scala.

Deafened by the noise, Clara locked eyes with him. The knowledge she saw there split her heart in two, and healed it.

He knew. Within the music, and outside it, he knew
she
was the composer.

Darien motioned for her to join him. When she reached his side, he took her arm and together, they bowed before half the courts of Europe.