When Andie arrived home, dinner was just beginning. With a conspiratorial nod to Clement at the front door, she removed her slippers, carrying them with her up the stairs to avoid alarming her mother. She dropped them when a familiar figure appeared on the landing.
Eyes sparkling with mischief, Alexandre posed like Louis XIV and pursed his lips. In his best impression of their father, he quietly demanded, “And where have you been, young la—”
His words were cut off as she launched herself into his arms. Her eldest brother had been gone for more than a year, and she hadn’t realized how much she had missed him. “Alex, thank God.” She pulled back and looked at him properly. His dinner jacket was spotless, and he smelled of lavender and bay laurel. “You just got off a ship and you look better than I do. When did you arrive?”
“Late this morning. I made arrangements for everything to be taken to the warehouse and made it back before tea to surprise you. Father sends his love.” He took in her disheveled hair and plain clothes. “You look…different. Where have you been?”
“Shoreditch,” she said before she thought better of it. “I had an audition.”
He opened his mouth, but it was a full five seconds before any sound came out of it. “In Shoreditch?” A sudden understanding lit his eyes. “Wait—is The Crow’s Nest still open?”
“That’s where—” She broke off, alarmed by the intensity in his expression. “How do you know about The Crow’s Nest?”
“I’ve…been there before, is all.” He shrugged. “Is Frank still running it?”
A peculiar heat flooded her chest as she was reminded of that afternoon, sitting beside him on the edge of the stage, surrounded by foil stars and faceted crystal. His curious scrutiny was as bright and warm as a gas lamp, dangerous to sit too close to but undeniably delicious. Dear God, you have freckles. She still didn’t know his opinion of freckles, but she liked that he’d noticed. “He is.”
Alex wasn’t buying her feigned nonchalance. He laughed under his breath. “How’s that for a lark? Mum’s going to love this.”
“Andromeda, is that you?” their mother called from the dining room.
Andie closed her eyes, cringing at getting caught coming in late. “Yes, Mother.”
“Dress for dinner and come down. Your brother has returned from St. Croix.”
Andie stifled a laugh as Alex wiggled his eyebrows. “I’ll just be a moment.”
With a last smile, Alex jogged down the staircase, sure-footed though he’d just spent a month at sea. Andie envied her brother’s easy self-assurance. He was the life of every gathering, comfortable with himself and his place in the world even though their position had changed in his lifetime and, depending on what happened in France, may yet change again.
Born the heir to a marquis with an ancestral chateau in Chartres, by thirty Alex was all but running the London side of St. Croix Luxury Imports, a business their great-grandfather had established in the 1680s to the horror of the French court. Shunned by Versailles for his race and his working-class wife, Achille had gotten the last laugh; when the revolution began a century later, their family left France but kept St. Croix, surviving the Terror and thriving in England as displaced—yet still staggeringly wealthy—aristocrats.
Alex didn’t care about the castle or the lost title. He liked London, and he was happy with his life.
Andie was less certain about where she fit in.
Dressing quickly, Andie wondered how she would tell her mother about The Crow’s Nest. Her family had always been supportive of her music, but surely that support would not extend to Shoreditch. She’d never exactly lied to her mother, but she wasn’t eager to tell her the entire truth.
Besides, she might not take the job.
Andie snorted, tying her coral necklace and sliding a white camelia into her hair. No, The Crow’s Nest was not where she’d imagined herself, but she was oddly drawn to it. It was older, comforting yet oddly seductive, a little broken…kind of like Frank. If nothing else, she wanted to see him again.
But why? In the ten years she’d been out in society, very few men had turned her head, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Far more interested in music than marrying, Andie hadn’t encouraged them, knowing full well most wanted a fat fortune and a silent, pretty wife.
Over the years, they had sent her countless bouquets and carefully lettered poetry, but they didn’t listen to her. Even the ones who praised her singing talked through her songs. Not one of them had ever really looked at her.
Andie studied her reflection in the candlelight, noticing her own freckles for the first time in years.
It was nice to be seen.
The Crow’s Nest blazed like a bonfire on Friday night.
Dozens of people milled about in the street outside, restless but in good spirits. The crowd was mainly working class, men and women from all parts of London and much further afield if their accents were anything to go by. As she made her way to the door, she overheard bits of Italian, German, and Cockney so broad she didn’t immediately realize it was English. She had been a little nervous about coming on her own, but few paid her any mind in her oversized blue coat and dove-gray walking skirt. As strange as the situation was to her, for the first time in a long time, no one was looking at her like she didn’t belong.
Andie smiled to herself, breathing deeply of the temperate evening air. The people milled about, talking and laughing. Carriages rolled by slowly, delayed by the crowd and the half dozen food stalls set up in the street. One sold bacon baps and picked eggs, another paper cones of roasted nuts, and a third sold tea in china cups. The tea smelled more like chicory than Darjeeling, but it was hot enough that great clouds of steam billowed into the sky every time a new cup was poured. To Andie’s amazement, it was drunk just as quickly, the cups returned to the stall keeper for a quick rinse in hot water before they were passed onto the next customer.
As the sun touched the horizon, a cloud of crows seemed to rise from the churchyard outside St. Leonard’s. Dozens if not hundreds of them soared above the crowd, swarming up and up and up until they disappeared over the top of the theater. The crowd tittered, but Andie could only stare, aghast.
“It’s not just a clever name.”
Andie turned at the sound of Frank’s voice behind her. He stood in a side doorway with his arms crossed, unbothered by all the people waiting to get in. In a starched white shirt with a high collar and braces, he looked rather more debonaire than the previous day. He’d shaved and taken such care with his hair that Andie might have mistaken him for a gentleman if not for his sleeves, which were once again rolled up to his elbows. Curiously, she didn’t mind the oversight.
“The Crow’s Nest. Very clever.” She smiled. “Were they already here when you moved in, or…?”
Frank gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head and motioned her closer. “Between you and me?” He lowered his face to hers until she could smell the orange-flower water in his skin. “It’s sunflower seeds.”
Andie was so unnerved by his nearness that she didn’t immediately register what he’d said. “Did you say sunflower seeds?”
He nodded. “Get them at the ‘change, cheap as anything. I take out a handful, give them a shake, and—” Frank mimed throwing seeds like he was rolling dice at a gaming table. “Works every time.”
Unsure if he was joking, Andie laughed. “You’ll have to show me sometime.”
“I’ve got lots of things to show you. Let’s get started.” Clearly in his element, Frank pulled himself to full height and spun on his heel. He offered her his arm with all the melodrama of a pantomime. He was playing for cheap laughs. Andie knew that, so she was startled when she heard herself giggle.
Frank led her through the side door and down a twisting corridor of back hallways filled with scattered costumes and performers in various stages of undress. Two men assisted each other with affixing collars while three chorus girls layered garish petticoats over old-fashioned paniers. An older woman hauled an enormous tambourine toward a flight of narrow stairs, a thin cigar clamped between her serious lips. Another man followed with a percussion instrument Andie couldn’t identify, then the neck of a gargantuan string instrument appeared like a giraffe charging above the melee.
The woman carrying it was younger and smaller than Andie was. She stopped in front of Frank, almost tripping up a mustachioed gentleman carrying what Andie could only assume was a hurdy-gurdy. When the woman spoke, it was with a thick Spanish accent. “Is it bass tonight or not? Tell me before I haul this bastard up the stairs.”
“Theorbo,” Frank said, and Andie finally recognized the instrument. She had only ever seen illustrations; she didn’t expect them to be so big. “We have a guest tonight. We must show her what we can do. Miss Archer, this is Antonia. Antonia, Miss Andie Archer.”
Andie extended her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you…is it Mrs. Creighton?”
Antonia’s eyes grew huge, then she let out an ear-splitting laugh. “Mrs…” She laughed until she wheezed. “No, no, no. I would murder him before lunch. You see what he makes me do?” She hurled the theorbo onto her back, and Andie and Frank both ducked as the neck swung toward him. The whole instrument was easily two yards long. Without ceremony, she headed toward the stairs.
“Thank you, Antonia,” he called.
“Bugger yourself, Frank,” she answered.
Frank ran a hand through his hair with a laugh. “She loves me really.”
A man standing behind Frank with a guitar shook his head at her, and Andie had to stifle a laugh. “Is it always this…chaotic?”
“Chaotic? This is just Friday.” They continued through the hall toward a more central set of stairs. “I suppose it would seem chaotic if you weren’t accustomed to it. You’ll get to know everyone soon enough. I’ll introduce you around properly later.”
As they passed the main doors, Andie noticed the crowd outside had doubled as well. “How many people work here?”
If Frank noticed the crowd, he ignored them as he led her up the stairs. “The orchestra has twelve at the moment, then there’s half a dozen regular performers for the show, not counting guests. Of course, some of the musicians are also performers—Pietro and Lorenzo are acrobats, for example. I’d have them on stage every night, but where would I find another oboe da caccia expert in these parts?” He laughed to himself, and Andie began to wonder if he was quite mad. She knew for certain he was when his gaze fixed on a seemingly empty space and he cried, “Lulu!”
After a moment’s pause, a girl peeked out from behind a gold-painted pillar. Younger than the other performers by a good few years, she was perhaps fourteen. Tall for a child, she had olive skin and a pair of huge, oddly solemn dark eyes. “I’m here.”
Frank’s whole face warmed up when he saw her. As they reached the next floor, he introduced them. “This is Miss Archer, the singer I told you about. Would you be so good as to show her the ropes tonight? Give her the famous Lulu tour?”
The girl smiled shyly, but she nodded.
“Lovely. Miss Archer, this is Lucrezia. She’s our costume designer, set designer, crow wrangler, and accounts clerk. She keeps the tomatoes alive—old tomatoes very much included—and incidentally, she is also my daughter.” Frank bowed.
Lulu rolled her eyes dramatically but gave a little curtsy. “Miss Archer.”
Utterly charmed, Andie couldn’t help but grin. “I’m delighted to meet you, Lulu. What will you show me first?”
Lulu looked to her father for guidance.
He shrugged. “I trust you. I’d better be off, but you two sit in the box tonight. I want Miss Archer to have a good view.”
“But the bridge…?” Lulu frowned.
“Let’s not scare her away just yet.” At Andie’s questioning look, he explained, “There’s a hidden walkway just below the top floor, between the stage and the orchestra’s gallery.” He lowered his voice and whispered, “It’s terrifying. Obviously, it’s Lu’s favorite spot.”
“Obviously,” Lulu emphasized.
“The box,” Frank repeated. With a wink and a bow, he took his leave. “Enjoy the show.”
Frank disappeared in a flurry of activity, the sound of dropped instruments and indistinct shouts echoing in his wake. The hall immediately felt emptier without him in it.
Andie let out a sigh. She had briefly forgotten Lulu was there. Frank was all presence, but Lulu was almost the absence of it—quiet and calm, even her breathing was silent as she studied Andie with an artist’s eye. Suddenly wishing she’d worn something less dowdy, Andie smiled awkwardly, only just noticing that the girl appeared to be wearing a sort of Greek dress of violet paisley. It had a fraying ribbon belt and a raw hem, but it was more beautiful than half the things Andie’s modiste came up with. “Your dress is remarkable. Do you really design the costumes?”
Lulu nodded. “And the sets, although everybody helps. Sometimes I feed the crows, but that’s mostly my dad. He is rather prone to exaggeration. He doesn’t need me or anyone to keep him alive. He’s less scatter-brained than he seems.”
“Does your mother help?”
“My mother?” Lulu wrinkled her nose as if Andie had just enquired about her tobacconist. Her voice dropped as she deadpanned, “She’s no longer with us.”
Her expression was so straight that Andie couldn’t tell if she was joking. “Oh…erm, I’m sorry to hear that.”
Lulu shrugged and headed down the hall toward the center of the building. “It’s quite all right. This way, Miss Archer.”
As fast as Frank was, Lulu was quicker. Over the next twenty minutes, Andie was shown every back corridor, seating area, dressing room, and secret passage. Although the theater itself was indeed Elizabethan, it had been modified by three hundred years of eccentric owners who’d thought to use it for every kind of trade and entertainment under the sun. It had housed a potters’ guild during the Civil War—the furnaces of which were still used in the kitchen, now at lower temperatures for daily cooking—then became a temporary shelter for those displaced by the Great Fire. Though the Restoration had brought the return of the theater, the top floor was still fitted with Jacobean apartments. Thinking of her mother’s interest in art and architecture, Andie wanted to ask more about those, but Lulu was already halfway up the final set of stairs to the roof.
Six floors up, Andie could see for miles.
She could have stood there for ages, just looking at the city lights, but the sound of a piano playing to roaring applause drew them back inside.
In “the box”—one of many, but the lowest central balcony—Andie finally caught her breath. Sitting beside Lulu on a plush velvet settee, she felt more like royalty than she ever had at the opera. Worn as it was, the sofa was preferable to the hard benches and stools of other theaters. The atmosphere was lively and cheerful, no one was spying on her with opera glasses, and best of all, the stage was so close, she could hear and see everything clearly.
The lamps were lower than they were for most performances, the audience in darkness. The brightest thing in the whole theater was the glittering plaster moon affixed to the trapeze ring, now suspended a little higher over the stage. To the left, a comically large top hat bobbed back and forth behind the piano. There was no light back there—Frank was playing the music by memory, or he was improvising it. A galloping rhythm, it was almost a reel, gathering in speed and intensity with stormy minor chords inserted jarringly into random offbeats. The crowd began to clap along, faster and faster until a curtain dropped, light spilled in, and Frank took the stage.
Andie couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of him. In the coat and cravat of a funeral director, he’d powdered his face stark white and lined his eyes in kohl until he was the very image of a gothic villain. Affecting a stagger, he hobbled to the center of the stage and took in the crowd, his every expression sinister and every gesture exaggerated. With a lift of an eyebrow, he had the crowd rolling with laughter.
The audience fell into an uncomfortable silence. Frank let it sit, looking out over their expectant faces. “You again?”
The cheers were thunderous.
Frank let them make all the noise they wanted for a moment, then calmed them with a disgusted shake of his head. “Can’t a body enjoy the hereafter in peace?”
All at once, the crowd shouted, “No rest for the wicked!”
Andie jumped. Were they supposed to do that?
Frank nodded, humoring them. “And no one would know better than you lot, hey? When’s the last time you slept, Billy boy?” he asked a man to the right of the stage.
“May 1803,” came the answer.
The crowd laughed, and though Frank didn’t join them, he looked delighted by the clever response. “Could say the same for Old Boney and all.” When the cheers died down, he continued, “Speaking of bones…”
As the curtains behind the stage parted, Andie gasped. Above the stage was another balcony directly opposite. Sitting or standing in two rows, a dozen musicians burst into feverish song. They all wore black, and like Frank, their faces were powdered into ghastly shades of gray. They wore various amounts of kohl around their eyes, some having extended it to their noses and the hollows of their cheeks to appear like skeletons or cadavers in various stages of decay. The music was not like anything Andie had heard before—a lively cacophony of unusual instruments, it was more akin to Frank’s first reel combined with Bohemian folk music. As an eerie fiddle rent the air, the hair on Andie’s neck stood on end. “What am I watching?” she whispered to herself.
Lulu shot her a glance and giggled.
Frank spread his arms and shouted, “Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between,”—he wiggled his eyebrows at a group of unusually tall ladies to the left of the stage, who whistled and applauded in appreciation—“I’m Frank Creighton, and this is my Phantasmagoria of Horror and Mystery.”
Between introducing the various acts, Frank sat behind his piano and dabbed at his face with a towel. At this rate, he’d sweat all his makeup off before the closing bit. He told himself he wasn’t nervous, only that the year had been unseasonably warm and—
He pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t lie to himself, even in his own head. The year had been miserable, only marginally better than the previous, and Britain hadn’t seen a real summer since 1815. Oh no—he had no one to blame for his stage fright but himself.
Stage fright. You’re forty-bloody-two, and you’ve done this every week for going on fifteen—
Almost missing his cue, he grabbed the horn under the piano and honked it. The crowd laughed.
It was a good lot tonight, full of familiar faces. He always watched the audience to gauge their reaction, but tonight there was only one person he was concerned about.
Sitting in the box with the poise of a visiting dignitary was Andie Archer. Though she watched with rapt attention, there was no telling what she made of it. It was ridiculous. He was ridiculous, but he had a good time. Life wasn’t all stuffy musicales and tired concertos, was it?
Almost as if she sensed his gaze, Andie looked down, spotting him in the shadows behind his piano. He couldn’t look away. The few dim lamps in the box limned her face in gold, highlighting the warmth in her expression and the delicious darkness of her eyes.
For a full minute, the noise that always filled his head stopped.
Without warning, confetti fell like rain over his hat and into his lap. The audience applauded, and Frank realized he’d missed the end of the final act. Flustered, he played a few notes, then leapt up to take his bow with the others. He rushed his conclusion, automatic as it was, and managed to mention that the orchestra would be playing at the Waterloo re-enactment in Vauxhall the following month. At least he hoped that was what he said; he could have invited them all to Westminster as far as he knew. Even when he managed to look away from Andie long enough to address the crowd, he was aware that she was there, so he stood a little straighter and smiled a little more.
Good lord, he was pathetic.
Things progressed as usual; the audience reshuffled, some heading to the bar for one last drink, while others filed out in search of entertainment elsewhere. Frank dashed into the kitchen and washed his face in the sink, hanging up his hat and running cold water through his hair. He pulled off his cravat in a single practiced motion and left his coat on a hook by the door. Without the makeup and few costume components, he looked like anyone else and could blend into the crowd without being stopped by people wanting an encore. He was tempted to pour a drink for himself, but he wouldn’t chance missing Andie when she inevitably fled screaming into the night, scandalized by the performance.
Frank took a deep breath, then charged through the door.
The theater was a good deal quieter after the show, only a couple of dozen regulars drinking with the performers while Marcel, Cosimo, and Antonia improvised a little music from the balcony for their own enjoyment as much as anyone else’s. Frank looked up toward the box to find it empty, almost stumbling over Andie as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Mr. Creighton!” she blurted, as surprised to see him as he was her.
He impulsively grasped her elbows to steady her, his breath catching at the excitement in her face. “You’re still here.”
Andie laughed, stepping out of the way of a passing group and moving toward the empty center of the room. “Of course I’m still here.” She shook her head, not knowing where to look. Her expression lost a little of its mirth as she met his eyes. “You’ve…erm, washed.” She motioned toward her own eyes to indicate kohl.
“Oh!” He glanced down sheepishly, only just noticing the confetti still stuck to his shirt. He tried to brush it off to no avail. “Missed a bit as a well. Don’t know why I bother. The whole bloody place is likely three-quarters confetti at this point. It’s the only thing holding the old beast together.” Stop talking, Frank. “Didn’t want to scare you, is all. Which I appreciate is ridiculous, given…” He glanced up at the musicians still dressed as skeletons and the plaster graves on the stage.
“I loved it.”
He looked up, warming at her praise. “Truly?”
“Truly.” She bit her lip, mulling something over. “If I might ask…how did all this come about? It’s like Don Giovanni, but the whole of it’s in hell.”
Frank felt his eyebrows shoot into his hairline. “Bugger me, I’ve never been compared to Mozart before.” That wasn’t strictly true, but it had been a while. “It started out as a variety show to fill the days between acts. The audience always responded better to gore—the bloodier, the better. The horror draws them in and keeps them there, and the laughs are bigger because they’re more of a relief. There are theaters all over town singing about coconuts and fishwives and what have you, but some of these people work eighty-hour weeks. They don’t want twee songs about courting squires in country lanes. They want to see someone get stabbed.”
Andie cocked an eyebrow, a dimple appearing in her cheek with her smirk. “And the giant spider?”
“Well, how could I resist?” Frank spread his arms wide, making her giggle. “He lives on the bridge, by the by, so be warned in case Lulu ever takes you up there. You may come face to face with a six-foot wool tarantula.”
“I’m most obliged to you for mentioning.” Her smile eased and puckered ever so slightly to the side, and those dimples appeared again. Andie Archer had at least seven different smiles, and each was more glorious than the last. “What I don’t understand is how I’ll fit into”—she motioned toward the carnage of the stage—“all of this.”
“You’ll ride the spider, of course,” he blurted without thinking, sending her into fits of laughter. “Does that mean you’ll come back?”
She bit her lip, considering him. Finally, she nodded. “I’ll come back.”
He wanted to shout, to dance, to punch the air. Instead, he let out the breath he’d been holding all night and gave her a short bow. “I’m most relieved to hear it.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Andie extended her hand to shake. “Mr. Creighton.”
Frank caught her hand and immediately raised it to his lips, kissing her glove. “Miss Archer.”
She left with a smile, her eyes still bright with laughter. “I’ll see you Monday.”
Frank didn’t fully relax until Andie was long gone and the theater was finally closed for the evening. As the sounds of the orchestra carousing on the roof drifted down the stairs with the strains of Matthias’s accordion, he checked the locks, turned down the lights, and looked in on Lulu.
He found his daughter in bed, falling asleep over a book. He paused in the doorway for a moment, trying not to laugh as her head dipped toward the pages.
She caught herself drooping and startled awake.
“You should sleep, poppet.”
She yawned. “I’m not tired.”
“I’ve heard that one before.” Sitting in the chair beside her bed, he held out a hand to take her book. She gave it to him with no further protest. Frank held the cover up to the lamp. “Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude. Sounds like a right laugh.”
“Shelley always is.” Lulu studied him carefully. It was still surreal to see his own eyes staring back at him from her sweet face. “Will Miss Archer be singing with us?”
Frank nodded, more excited than he cared to admit. “We’re going to give it a try and see how she likes it.”
Lulu snuggled deeper into her blankets. “I like her.”
“So do I.” Frank put out her lamp with a sigh, quickly kissing the top of her head. “Good night, poppet.”
She yawned again. “Night, Dad.”