Four bars into the aria, Andromeda Archambault knew she’d lost them.
Sitting in a box at the back of the Theatre-Royal, the directors paid her no mind as they talked among themselves and shuffled papers. She could barely make out their features from her position behind the stage lamps, but she didn’t have to. Six months of training for this audition, and it was over in under a minute.
Heart sinking, she kept singing because she was a professional. Or at least she was trying to be. Every audition was the same—weeks of encouraging correspondence ending in surprised dismay when she finally introduced herself. The Lyceum. Haymarket. The King’s Theatre. The Adelphi. The Pantheon. The Olympic.
She’d even tried the Aquatic, for heaven’s sake. Surrounded by artificial waterfalls, painted krakens, and a splintering shipwreck, she’d felt more like her namesake than ever before—frustrated, helpless, and waiting to be eaten.
There was no hero swooping in to save her at the Theatre-Royal, but she was no sacrifice. She was a siren.
Angry now, she sang louder. Improvising, she added trills Mozart himself had never dreamed of, projecting with such clarity and force, she felt she might collapse in on herself. Let every empty seat vibrate with her passion so that night’s audience could still feel it when they sat down. Let the curtains tremble on their rods. Let it change the very air itself until she made the space her own, altered it on a fundamental level because she had been inside it. She wouldn’t let anyone present forget her name.
When she finished, the three directors in the box looked largely unaffected. The only indication she had of how well she did was the shock on the cleaner’s face, stunned into stillness and holding his broom in mid-air. In a doorway stage left, an actress looked on in wonder, tears streaming down her face.
At least someone had enjoyed it.
Only one director stood. “Thank you, Miss Archer. We’ll be in touch.”
“No, you won’t,” she muttered. Forgoing the traditional curtsy, she exited stage right before she burst into tears. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
As she made it into the chequered hallway leading to the foyer, the rapid click of heels on marble stopped her in her tracks.
Wide-eyed and slightly winded, the actress all but flew around the corner. “Wait!” She skidded to a stop, dashing the tears from her cheeks. “I’ve never heard anything like that in my life. You’re unbelievable.”
Warmed by the compliment, she let out a shaking breath. “They don’t seem to think so.”
The actress rolled her eyes. “No accounting for taste.” She thrust out a hand. “I’m Emilia.”
She took her hand awkwardly. “Andie.”
The door flew open and half a dozen stagehands bustled through, two struggling with a massive gilt harp. Emilia’s interest turned to horror as they nearly dropped it. “Careful with that!” Distracted, her gaze kept darting back to them as they rounded the corner. “I carted that thing all the way back from bloody Florence; if they so much as chip a cherub, I’ll scream.” Her eyes bright, she smiled and refocused on Andie. “I’d love to see you perform again. Where are you based?”
Andie sighed and shook her head. “Nowhere. No one will take me.”
Emilia’s smile faded. “What do you mean?”
“The last one outright told me he didn’t like the image of ‘a blackbird among the doves.’” She raised her eyebrows. When she’d first started auditioning, she’d only thought to make it on her own without her family’s influence. All her life, people had fallen over themselves to please her, but with a borrowed dress and a borrowed name, the situation was suddenly very different.
Emilia’s mouth dropped open. “Afraid you’ll sing their actresses off the stage, more like.” She shook her head, clearly scandalized. “What bollocks!”
Andie had to agree.
“Have you tried the Lyceum? Sadler’s Wells?” Emilia asked, hopeful.
With a sigh, Andie listed the last ten auditions she remembered.
Brittle with barely suppressed rage, Emilia crossed her arms. “The Crow’s Nest in Shoreditch. Go right now.”
Andie blinked. The Crow’s Nest in Shoreditch. She didn’t know whether to laugh or take offense. “I beg your pardon?”
Emilia waved a hand. “I know, I know, it’s hardly got the ring of the ‘Theatre-Royal,’ but Frank Creighton’s worth a dozen of these knobs. He’s an odd duck, but he pays on time, and he knows talent when he sees it.”
Andie was still stuck on Shoreditch. She had been to New York, St. Croix, and all over Europe, but although she’d lived in London all her life, she’d never been to the East End. “Frank Creighton,” she repeated. “The Crow’s Nest.”
She could remember that. Her mother often attended Lavinia Creighton-Crowley’s salons, but Andie very much doubted the dowager Lady Bodmin would appreciate such an association, even an imaginary one. The stately old woman had always treated Andie with detached courtesy, but if she knew what she was about to do, she’d drop her petit fours.
With that image in her head, Andie finally smiled.
Whatever Andie had expected, this wasn’t it.
Across the street from St. Leonard’s, The Crow’s Nest was an Elizabethan behemoth, six stories high, perhaps thirty feet across, and listing ever-so-slightly to the side. Thinking of the plywood shipwreck at the Aquatic, Andie inspected the splintered wood beams for cannon damage. As the sun set behind it, several dozen crows suddenly swooped off the roof and headed for the churchyard behind her.
Across the front of the building, the gas lamps were already lit, and the diamond-paned windows glowed invitingly. Between them, illustrated playbills advertised upcoming acts in Cruickshank-style caricatures and garish letters. Maggie the Singing Moll. The Bearded Boy’s Nocturnal Orchestra. Somnabule the Hypnotist. Frank’s Phantasmagoria of Horror and Mystery.
Not exactly Handel or Haydn. Andie turned the collar of her spencer against the wind and shivered into her cashmere scarf. Twenty years of music lessons, and here she was—not singing in Figaro at the Olympic, but potentially opening for Prospero Pudding’s Talking Poppet.
She pinched the bridge of her nose. Her mother had offered to pull strings for her. Would it really be so awful to compromise just this once?
Andie sighed. She couldn’t. If she let her mother get her a part now, she’d never know if she could have done it on her own. Her tutors had told her she was good and her performances at parties had always been well-received, but singing on stage was different. And if she couldn’t out-perform Winifred and the Winchester Geese, maybe she should give up and get married instead.
“I think not,” she said to herself, re-pinning her hair in the reflection of a dark window. After the day she’d had, it looked as if lightning had struck it, her carefully pinned chignon giving way to frizz. She looked tired, and her dress was rumpled but still clean. Smoothing a little rose pomade over her lips, she took a breath and straightened her spine.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she strode through the open door.
The Crow’s Nest was surprisingly warm, given its size. It smelled of musty old velvet, fresh tobacco, and oranges. Andie began to relax as she heard a piano playing in the distance. Not exactly the Paris Opera, the wooden floors were covered in rushes, rosemary, and sawdust, and they sloped outward to the wider main hall at the back.
Andie stopped in her tracks when she saw it. There were no seats at all on the ground floor, only an open pit for standing with a long bar to the left. The stage was shallow and high, with trapeze equipment hanging between blue curtains decorated with glittering stars. Six levels of balconies were stacked on top of each other like the layers of cake, the ceiling so high she could barely see it. She couldn’t tell if the balconies had seats, but each was lit by half a dozen mismatched chandeliers.
It was a mess, but it was magic.
The piano stopped.
“Are you lost?”
Bristling, Andie turned toward the voice. “I beg your pardon?”
A man stood behind the upright piano and leaned over the top of it. Tall and lanky, he seemed more liquid than man with an easy posture and a lazy smile. “You’re not the kind of lady we get around these parts, is all.”
Andie folded her arms. She was sick of the implication that she didn’t belong. “And what kind of lady is that?”
He cleared his throat for effect. “The, erm…evening variety.” His smile widened at the play on words as he slunk from behind the piano. “You are very clearly a lady of quality. What are you doing in Shoreditch?”
“I’ve been asking myself that for the last twenty minutes,” she admitted, relaxing. He was just a flirt. She took in his light linen shirt—collarless, open, and rolled up the elbows. It was tucked into a pair of smart if faded trousers. A musician of little consequence, he probably tried his luck with every woman who walked through the door, and a fair few would take him up on it too. Though the charcoal of his hair was rapidly giving way to gray ash, his manner and mischievous expression gave him an ageless quality that made her think of the fae kings in her fairy stories. He shouldn’t be handsome—his chin was too prominent, his skin too pale, his smile too wide—but she couldn’t look away. Worse, his gaze was sharp, focused, and above all, interested. A woman could lose herself in eyes like that.
He knew it too.
Andie looked away with some difficulty. Get it together. You did not turn down a prince, an earl, and three barons to shag an East End piano player.
“You will.” He shrugged, returning to the piano and shuffling his music.
Blinking, she tried to remember what he was responding to. Surely he couldn’t read her mind? Oh, right. Shoreditch. Flustered, she followed him. “I’m looking for Frank Creighton. Is he here?”
“Usually.” He looked up, raising an eyebrow. “What do you want with Frank?”
Andie fiddled with the bottom button of her spencer. Perhaps she should have written first. What if he didn’t like her just turning up out of the blue? It wouldn’t do to get off on the wrong foot. “I’m a singer,” she said. “I had an audition at the Theatre-Royal this afternoon, and an actress there told me I ought to come here instead. Emilia. Do you know her?”
“Emilia?” The man blinked. “Emilia Virtue? Short, Welsh, says whatever’s on her mind faster than you can take it in?”
She smiled in spite of herself. “I believe she plays the harp…?”
“What are you waiting for?” He gestured toward the stage and sat behind the piano. “Sing something.”
“Now?” Andie laughed.
“Yes, by God.” He played a few notes for emphasis. “Anything you like.”
Encouraged and relaxing more by the minute, Andie climbed the few steps to the stage and took in the view. The hall was cramped but beautiful in its way, and the chandeliers glittered like dozens of scattered constellations throughout the cavernous balconies. The audience was less likely to have opera glasses, but they’d be so close, they wouldn’t need them. She idly batted the trapeze ring, wondering what to sing.
“All right,” she said. “Here goes.”
The moment she started singing, it was over for Frank.
He would have thought he was dreaming, but his dreams were never this good. A few actresses and dancers made their way in every week, but this woman was something else. Shy but self-assured, she had appeared in his doorway like a mirage, a vision of buttoned-up beauty in a girlish coat and expensive scarf. Though everything about her from her posture to the pins in her hair screamed that she was pure class, she took in her surroundings with an unguarded wonder that made his heart skip. World-weary and unimpressed from birth, London girls didn’t look at anything like that. When the chandeliers sparkled in her soft brown eyes, he wished he had twice as many.
Frank was no stranger to wonder himself, but this was another experience altogether. He couldn’t look away if he tried. She climbed up on stage, opened her mouth, and the world shifted. That was the only way he could explain it; he lost all awareness of himself and his surroundings. It was a joyful, note-perfect “Der Hölle Rache” from The Magic Flute in the original German, but it was more than that. She became the Queen of Night. He had seen the opera plenty of times, but he’d never expected the most convincing rendition of what was essentially a detailed curse to come from a smiling young woman dressed like a love letter in lilac and lace.
It was a disguise, he realized. The violet spencer, the suede gloves, the lip rouge as subtle as pink champagne. Demure had never done it for him, but when she let go, she was anything but. Precise, measured, and a little stiff, yes, but the power and passion in her voice were enough to put the fear of God into any man. More terrifying still, she wasn’t even trying.
She was playing with him.
Frank had never been more frightened in his life.
When she finished, she looked a little surprised by the sudden silence. She gave a perfect curtsy and laughed. Her smile was like someone had ignited the sun.
Stunned, Frank pulled a cigar from behind his sheet music and lit it with a match.
He could see her as the Queen of Night. Not Mozart’s, but something better. She could preside over the variety show, or she could be a new heroine in the Phantasmagoria—those always did better with a beautiful woman fleeing the monsters. He’d dress her in gold dust and diaphanous silk, Grecian sandals, and a crown—no, a halo of stars. No—
“Was that all right?”
He was startled out of his reverie by a ridiculous question in a honeyed voice. When he looked up, she was sitting in the trapeze hoop, spinning in slow circles like she was sitting in a crescent moon.
Feeling like lightning had struck him between the eyes, he jolted back, then took another puff of his cigar to steady his nerves.
“All right?” He ran a hand through his hair. “‘The Wrath of Hell.’ Interesting choice.”
She sighed. “I had an…unpleasant afternoon.”
“Evidently.” Frank laughed. His was getting better by the minute. “What’s your name?”
“Andie,” she said, hopping off the trapeze hoop. “Andie Archer.”
Frank nodded. “I’m Frank Creighton.”
Andie stopped mid-step. “You are?”
“Not what you were expecting?” He stood and shuffled through the music in his bench, brushing fragments of ash away as it fell. It hadn’t caught fire yet, but the music was battered enough without adding burns to it. Finding the piece he was looking for, he propped his cigar in the dish on top of the piano and took the music to the stage.
Her eyes bright and her shoulders a good deal stiffer, Andie lamented, “I’ve made a fool of myself.”
“Not at all,” he insisted. “That’s the most I’ve enjoyed a performance in years.” Well, ever, but he didn’t want to scare her off. “I would like nothing more than to put you on that stage and let you sing anything that pops into your head, but this isn’t exactly an opera house.”
Clearly disappointed, she straightened her scarf. “Well, thank you for your time—”
Before she could leave, he threw himself between her and the door. “Don’t misunderstand me; I need you—” Too keen. Scale it back. “Erm, I want you—” Goddammit, Frank. He cleared his throat. “You’re too good for me. For us, for this theater. We don’t do a lot of opera in the traditional sense, but if you’d be open to singing other parts, they’re yours.”
Her face lit up, but her immediate joy was quickly replaced with a wariness that wasn’t unfounded. “What other parts?”
Bracing for a slap, he handed her the sheet music.
Andie looked over it quickly, focused on the notes. “This looks simple enough…” Then she read the lyrics. “There was a young girl from Regina, who had an oyster shell for a—” Her mouth dropped open in shock. “I’m not singing that!”
Frank shrugged. “It’s a different audience. The humor’s coarser, and everything’s a double entendre, if not a single one. Is that a thing? If you can get past that, there’s a lot of love in it. We work at it every day, try to make people laugh and forget for a few hours. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Andie considered him, unconvinced.
“Come to the show tomorrow at seven,” he offered. “Be my guest. I’ll give you the best seat in the house. You can watch what we do and decide then. Can’t say fairer than that.”
She held his gaze for a long moment, and he could only guess what she was thinking. Reserved but determined, Andie didn’t look away or back down. She wasn’t intimidated by him. Despite her girlish attire, he rather suspected she was older than he’d first thought. But why would a dazzlingly beautiful woman dress like an incognito society miss?
The answer was too simple. She was an incognito society miss.
Oh, well. No one was perfect.
Andie was unreasonably close, however, or would be until her father or brother or aristocratic cousin called him out for letting her sing in public. Well and good, that was a risk he was willing to take. If he succeeded, the theater’s future would be secured. If he was shot, he’d go down having accompanied a classically trained soprano on a nine-verse ballad about shagging nuns.
Few men were able to choose the manner of their deaths, but Frank reckoned he could do worse.
He blinked first, his gaze briefly flitting lower. “Dear God, you have freckles,” he mumbled, forgetting himself and his surroundings as he noticed the constellations across her cheeks, only a shade or two deeper than her golden-brown skin.
Andie’s eyebrows drew together in an annoyed frown. “Is that a problem?”
“No,” Frank blurted. Only for my sanity. “No problem at all.”
She wasn’t sure about him. He couldn’t exactly blame her. Who he was and how he lived his life was unusual, to say the least, and kindred spirits were getting harder to find as the years went by. She could still say no—and likely would if she sat through the entirety of his Phantasmagoria—but if there was any chance of having her on his stage, he’d give the performance of his life.
Finally, she nodded. “Seven it is.”