The week passed too quickly.
With only six days left before Andie’s debut at the Waterloo re-enactment in Vauxhall, Frank’s family was the last thing he wanted to think about. He couldn’t close the theater on such short notice, so he’d left it in the care of Alessandra and Cosimo. They’d been with him since Naples, and they knew how things were run. Their own house was right next door, though they were rarely in it. He’d reluctantly handed over his keys, feeling like he was parting with a piece of himself.
He hadn’t seen Andie all day. She’d said she had some family obligation but promised to return on the weekend to see Lulu about her dress. The dress Lu had imagined for her was so elaborate that they’d hired a local seamstress to put the whole thing together, but his daughter wanted to make a few little adjustments of her own. At fifteen, she was a prodigy. If she kept it up, she’d have her own business by twenty.
Frank smiled at her from the opposite side of the carriage. They walked almost everywhere, so riding in the hired hack was an unusual experience for her. She watched the city roll by with her serious, all-seeing eyes, no doubt cataloguing every lane. “Are you all right, Lu?”
She gave him a nod and a small smile.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“A little.” Her fine eyebrows drew together. “I knew Grandmother was a duchess, but what I don’t understand is why they want to see us now. Why not last year or the year before?”
It was around the time that Lulu turned five that Frank had stopped wondering when his family was going to visit and started feeling angry about it. There she was, the most precious little girl in the whole world, and they didn’t want anything to do with her. He hadn’t forgiven them for that. “It’s her seventy-fifth birthday. Your uncle Will thinks that’s important.”
“More important than fifteen?” she asked.
“Absolutely not.” He looked out the window, beginning to recognize the houses. He hadn’t been this far into the West End for years, but very little had changed. As the houses grew bigger, he wondered if Andie lived in one of them or somewhere closer to him. In all the excitement of the previous month, they still hadn’t called in on her for tea. “I suspect they’re hoping I’ll come to my senses and marry some society girl.” Or that Lulu will become one of them. Frank cringed.
Lulu frowned. “You can’t do that. You have to marry Miss Archer.”
Frank sat up straighter, startled. “Why would you say that?”
“Because you’re in love with her,” Lulu said slowly as if he was stupid. “It’s all right; she loves you too. She makes this little noise whenever you come out wearing kohl.” She made a high-pitched squeak in the back of her throat. “Just like that.” She did it again.
“Is there anything you don’t notice?” He laughed in spite of himself, then sighed. “She’s too good for me.”
Lulu met his eyes, deadly serious. “No one’s too good for you, Dad.”
The carriage slowed as it turned onto his old street. Up ahead, there were so many carriages lined up outside the house that it would still be several minutes before they reached the door. Frank had loved the house growing up, but he hadn’t lived there since he was seventeen. Trying to take his mind off his nerves, he returned to the conversation at hand. “How would you feel about that? If Miss Archer took leave of her senses and came to live with us.”
“It only makes sense. She’s there every day, and she has an awfully long drive…” Lulu smiled hopefully.
Frank had no idea how she knew what she knew, but he’d long since stopped asking. “You’re right about that.”
As the carriage finally stopped, Lu gave his hand a little squeeze. “It’s going to be all right, Dad.”
Nearly moved to tears, he patted her hand back, trying to be strong. “It will. Listen, if your grandmother or anybody else says anything to upset you, you tell me and I’ll sort them out.”
Lulu nodded sagely. “You too.”
Frank grinned to himself. Most would find the idea of a child defending them laughable, but he knew better than to underestimate his daughter. “All right, poppet. Let’s go.”
The house was exactly as he’d left it.
The décor hadn’t changed in thirty years. Every painting, vase, and candlestick was in its rightful place, just like Will and Marie greeting guests in the foyer. At fifty-four, Will had grown into the perfect duke, correct in all ways with a thriving estate and five children of his own. Frank had last seen Marie when she was only eighteen; she’d seemed so mature when he was a child, but now he realized she hadn’t been much older than Lulu was now. She barely acknowledged them before they made their way through to the banquet.
“Franz! Is that really you?”
His second brother, Gustav, was loitering near the pork pies with Fritz, his fourth. Both looked at him as if seeing a ghost. Frank joined them at the table and accepted a glass of sherry. He introduced Lulu before she wandered deeper into the party on her own, distracted by something.
Frank scratched the back of his neck. Anxious, he tried to focus on what they were saying. Now fifty-two and forty-eight respectively, they’d both had decades of adventures of their own they were eager to fill him in on. When he mentioned the theater, they grew quiet. “That’s brilliant, Franz, truly,” Gus said, not meeting his eyes. “We’d love to come see it, but…erm, you know.”
“The children,” Fritz interjected.
Frank rolled his eyes. They’d both just finished telling him about how their children were all but grown, so they could surely handle a night without their fathers. Unless a great deal had changed, the both of them likely still spent most nights in the gaming hells anyway. “Where’s Mother?” Frank asked, looking around. If the night was going to be awful, he might as well get it over with now.
“With Albert,” Fritz supplied, referring to their third brother. “She’s dining at his house this evening to give us the chance to set up. Felix should be along anytime.”
Frank nodded. The party was well underway already. Dozens of guests in opulent clothing flocked between the rooms. In her new orange and white dress, Lulu was lost among them. “I’d better find my daughter,” Frank excused himself.
Walking through the house again was a peculiar experience. Everything looked the same but felt completely different. He no longer recognized anyone. Even his brothers felt like strangers to him.
That was down to them, really. When he’d at last returned from his Grand Tour—which had, admittedly, gone about nine years longer than most—they’d expected him to set his music aside to fulfil his “duty to the family.” As the youngest son in a family of six, there was very little “duty” left to be fulfilled. All the others had married and promptly had children, taking their places in society exactly as their mother had instructed them to. Frank too had a child, but not in the right way; his mother expected him to set Lulu aside.
When he’d refused to send her away, his mother had stopped speaking to him. When he used his savings to purchase a disused theater in the East End, she’d started telling people he was dead.
That was when Frank had started dressing up as a corpse. Over time, the role had stuck.
I shouldn’t be here. This was a mistake.
Then, quite suddenly, he heard it.
It was the opening notes to his favorite aria from Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice. The voice was so clear, it sent a cascade of chills through his body. A string quartet joined the voice, and the guests slowly started to make their way into the music room. The voice stopped him in his tracks, bringing tears to his eyes with its beauty. He stopped in the doorway and just listened.
Every note, every trill was perfection. It almost sounded like—
Oh no.
Afraid to look, he peered around the door. Sure enough, Andie stood at the far end of the room, but this was not Andie as he’d ever seen her before. In a gown of sparkling silver and white, she looked like his every fantasy of a woman come to life. Unlike like borrowed clothes she wore to rehearsals, this dress actually fit her properly, and it skimmed her every curve in a way that made his mouth water. There were three camellias in her artfully arranged hair, and three strings of pearls around her long, graceful neck.
She sang with her eyes closed, almost smiling. She was doing it from memory and loving every second of it.
Frank closed his eyes, letting the music pull him out of himself. For a minute, they were back at the theater, and she was singing just for him. They were at the Theatre-Royal as she opened to a packed house; they were in Paris, Brussels, and Vienna. She could sing anywhere she wanted to, and he would follow her there.
Except they weren’t in some distant opera house or empty Elizabethan theater; they were in his brother’s house, Frank’s childhood home, and he was feeling more out of place by the minute.
Turning to leave, he stopped a passing gentleman. “Say, who is that singing?”
“What, you don’t know?” The man snorted a laugh. “That’s Andromeda Archambault.”
Andie Archer.
Frank could have kicked himself.
Andie wasn’t only a lady; she was part of one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the city. Her father Boniface was a legend, a French marquis and war hero who’d fought alongside the Chevalier de Saint-Georges and General Dumas. When Napoleon had attempted to bring back slavery in 1802, he’d reportedly camped out on the beach of St. Croix with a cannon for two years until he was certain the threat to his island had passed. One of his sons was an abolitionist, and another captured slavers in the West Africa Squadron. The family would have been more controversial if people didn’t like them so very much.
Frank’s heart dropped. Disgraced as he was, he’d known he didn’t have much of a chance of anything serious with her being a lady, but Andie was not just any lady. As far as society was concerned, she was very nearly royalty.
Devastated, Frank left the room and went in search of his late father’s liquor.
Andie finished the song with her eyes closed, wanting to prolong every perfect moment.
When the audience had responded so positively and settled down to listen, she’d relaxed, singing for the joy of it. The air was charged with a familiar energy that reassured her and made her tingle from the inside out. Closing her eyes, she could almost feel Frank there, watching her with wonder as he often did from behind his piano. She sang it for him, counting the minutes until she could return to The Crow’s Nest.
When it came, the applause was louder than she expected. Andie curtsied and went in search of water. Her mother stopped her briefly on the way. “There’s a director from the Theatre-Royal here tonight.” She nodded toward an elderly man in a powdered wig. “You impressed him.”
Andie shared an excited smile with her mother. She’d forgotten all about the Theatre-Royal. As much as she would still like to sing there, she had unfinished business in Shoreditch first.
As she glanced up toward the drinks table, Andie spotted someone out of place.
Lulu was leaning against the wall with a glass of lemonade. She was so still, Andie thought she imagined her.
Andie blinked, but the girl remained. Tonight she was wearing a demure girl’s dress in ivory lace with little orange flowers embroidered all over it. Her hair was pinned up in a ladylike chignon, and she watched everything with those haunting brown eyes. “Lulu?”
Spotted, Lulu shot her a mischievous smile and disappeared into the crowd in the hallway. If Lulu was here, surely Frank must be too. Her heart speeding up, Andie went to follow her, but she was stopped by the Duke of Bodmin.
“Your Grace.” She curtsied.
Lord Bodmin inclined his head in greeting. “Outstanding performance, Miss Archambault. Quite magnificent.”
“M-my thanks, Your Grace,” Andie stammered, caught off guard by the praise.
The duke was a distinguished older man, finally growing into his features in his fifties. He shouldn’t have been handsome, but oddly he was; he had a certain charisma in spite of having a prominent nose and a jaw like an anvil. She’d seen similar features before, but with his close-set blue eyes and faint brows, she couldn’t quite place them.
“If you don’t mind, Miss Archambault, there’s someone here I’d very much like to introduce you to. He’s an accomplished musician himself; I’m sure you’ll have much to talk about.”
Andie looked over his shoulder, trying to hide her impatience. She wasn’t interested in Lord Bodmin’s attempts at matchmaking, but it would hardly do to say so. She had a girl to find. “Of course, Your Grace. I’m always happy to discuss music.”
“Very good.” Lord Bodmin smiled pleasantly. “He was here a moment ago. Now, where’s he gone…?”
Several yards away, Andie saw a white skirt with orange flowers move swiftly down the hall. She had to catch up before she lost her again. “I’m certain you will locate him, Your Grace. If you’ll excuse me, I find myself in desperate need of a glass of water.”
“Certainly, you must protect your voice,” he said. “I will find you later this evening.”
“Your Grace.” Andie curtsied once more, then slipped out of the crowd and down the hall.
Lulu was nowhere to be found. Had Andie imagined her?
The hall seemed to stretch forever, a Baroque tunnel of pale blue plaster and gilt moulding. It led past half a dozen parlors and sitting rooms of various sorts and ended in a glass conservatory that opened out into the gardens. Andie was just about to give up when she heard a familiar song drift through the hall.
“Love is patient, but it’s unkind…”
Andie’s pulse hammered in her throat. It couldn’t be. It was impossible that he was here, but that was her song she was hearing. And the voice…
“Frank?” she whispered to herself, following the sound.
Not far from the conservatory, she found a private room with the door ajar. In the hall outside, the sound was unmistakable. Frank was playing her song and singing inside.
“It’ll break your nose and rob you blind. You’ll feel so good, you’ll forget the bad, she’ll make you want everything you never had…”
He’d changed some words, slowed it down, and played it in minor chords. He sounded battered, his voice mournful and raw.
It was better.
Checking that no one could see her, Andie slipped inside and closed the door.
Frank sat behind the piano. The room appeared to be a study, mainly books but with a few older instruments displayed throughout. A single lamp glowed weakly on the wall, filling the room with rose-colored light and shadows. He looked up, the relative darkness making him look like his stage persona for a moment. Her eyes adjusted, and she noticed that he was wearing a sharp jacket with a high collar, silk waistcoat, and elaborately tied cravat. Absurdly handsome by any measure, he’d shaved carefully, and his hair was as neat as it had been her first night at The Crow’s Nest.
Suddenly it all made sense.
“Oh, Frank,” she sighed. “You had a secret too.”
“I didn’t. Not really.” He played a few notes before nodding in polite greeting. “Miss Archambault.”
Andie looked around the room. Lulu was nowhere to be found. The little mischief-maker had led her down here and left.
She sat beside Frank on the long piano bench, her fingers automatically finding a compatible chord. “Frank Creighton-Crowley, is it?”
“It’s actually Franz.” He took a swig of brandy straight out of a faceted crystal decanter, then offered it to her. “Wilhelm, Gustav, Albert, Felix, Fritz, and Franz. She just stopped trying after number four.”
Andie accepted the decanter. It was heavier than it looked, and she had to steady it with both hands. “Is your family German? I thought they came from Cornwall.”
Frank kept his gaze on the keys, not meeting her eyes. “My mother was born in Hanover. Seventy-five years ago today, in fact, and Pandora’s still trying to get the lid back on the box.” His shoulders slumped and expression defeated, Andie had never seen him so dejected. She’d seen him anxious, impatient, and even frustrated, but this was something worse.
He was resigned.
“I should have told you,” he said, finally glancing up at her. “It doesn’t change anything. I didn’t know what to say.”
Andie took a deep breath. She knew families could be difficult, and titles and property only complicated matters further. It was clear his relationship with his family was strained. “Why don’t you tell me now?” she asked softly, playing a couple of hopeful high notes. “What happened?”
“I don’t know where to start.” Frank stared straight ahead. Unconsciously, his hands found the opening chords of the Phantasmagoria, and he gently started to play in a new, pensive pattern, the overture to some tragedy. “I always loved music. It was everything to me. I started with a viola, then cello, then piano, harpsichord…” He let out a long breath. “I set out for my Grand Tour with Felix and Fritz when I was seventeen. Did you or your brothers ever do that? You’re meant to ponder ancient ruins and produce mediocre watercolors.”
Andie shook her head. “They had other interests. I traveled around to study with various tutors, but I didn’t do a lot of drawing.”
“Me neither.” He moved up a key and continued playing. “I was too young to go, really, but old enough that I knew what I wanted out of life. Then one night in Padua, I got the chance to play with an orchestra, and I found I couldn’t stop. By the time my brothers returned, I had joined one and was playing nightly in Rome. I only returned to England when the war broke out. By that time, I was twenty-eight.”
Andie’s hands paused over the keys. “You were gone for eleven years?”
“Just about.” Frank nodded. “My brothers had all grown up and married, and I was alone with a two-year-old daughter. Mother was horrified, naturally.” He gave Andie a tight smile. “She couldn’t understand why I’d brought Lu back with me at all. She insisted I marry, and I even tried courting for a time, but the ladies were the most wretched…” He stopped himself. “Suffice to say, they weren’t anything like you. Few could accept that I already had a child, and those who did insisted I send her away. One even offered to ‘keep her on in service,’ like it was the most generous notion in the world. Can’t get in the way of any legitimate children, you understand.” He hit a few low notes, his expression disgusted. “Of course, Mother agreed with them. What would people think?”
The notes got brighter as he continued. “I had some money of my own. I’d worked nightly for years and never had time to spend it. It wasn’t enough to maintain all of this”—he looked around the room— “but it was enough for a little theater. When I saw the apartment on the top floor, I knew I’d found the right place. Lulu and I moved in that week, and my mother hasn’t spoken to me since.”
Andie rested her hand over his on the keys. “I’m so sorry.”
“Do you think less of me?”
The question broke her heart. “How could I?”
He met her gaze, his eyes filled with the pain of old wounds that still refused to heal. She raised a gloved hand and brushed her fingers through his hair, the silver silk bright in all the dark. He didn’t say anything but let her do it, closing his eyes at the sweetness of her touch. This was enough. He was everything she’d been looking for but hadn’t known she’d wanted. When he opened his eyes, she saw herself in them, recognizing something she’d only felt hints of before.
They were the same.
They understood each other in a way that no one else ever had, because they’d had the same drive, made similar sacrifices, and faced the same impossible decisions. Frank’s decision had ultimately been made for him, but Andie could still choose. She was on the precipice of something irreversible, looking over the edge but still holding on.
She jumped.
Andie kissed him. It was a kiss of understanding, of love, and a promise of the union to come. She had sensed he wasn’t telling her everything, but now that he had, there was no more hesitation.
Frank felt it and kissed her back, passion and relief making him careless. In one swift motion, he pulled her onto his lap. Elated and suddenly ravenous, Andie straddled his hips and wrapped her arms around his neck. After weeks of sneaking kisses in a packed playhouse, they were finally, blessedly alone in the dark, and Andie was going to enjoy it as much as she could.
Lost in sensation, she seized his cravat and pulled him closer, a few keys fluttering as her back bumped the piano. Frank pulled her closer, his lips on her throat as his hand slid up her stocking to her bare thigh under her petticoat. Feeling him there was alarming, but she found she didn’t mind. She had his cravat untied and two buttons popped before he pulled himself away, drowsy with want. “If anyone found us…”
Andie groaned. “I don’t care.”
Taking her at her word with a cheeky smile, he grasped her hips, lifted her, and sat her down on the piano keys with a single discordant bang. One hand pinning her petticoat to her hips, the other brushed the heat between her thighs. After weeks of frustrated want, Andie was so aroused, she nearly screamed at the contact. “Tell me to stop,” he murmured against her lips.
At the press of his arousal against the inside of her thigh, her legs seemed to open of their own accord. She pulled him closer. “Don’t you dare.”
Focused on the heat of his mouth and the scent of his skin, the first press of his fingers came as a surprise. She was so wet, they slid inside her easily, teasing her toward breaking point with long, slow strokes. The man really was good with his hands. Her heart skipped as the tension built, her breath coming faster and faster under she shuddered, only breaking the kiss as she gasped his name.
She held onto his shoulders for dear life as he briefly let go of her hip and fumbled with his falls. Frustrated as his hand left her, she squirmed on the keys, sending a few scrambled notes into the air. Thank God she’d closed the door.
Suddenly something warm, thick, and very hard was pressing up against her. His nose brushing hers, his breath was shallow as he asked, “You’re sure now?”
If Andie was any surer, she’d burst into flame. “For God’s sake, Frank, yes!”
He held her gaze as he slid into her, wary of causing her pain. She gasped as she felt it, but the initial discomfort passed as she adjusted to the new sense of fullness. The feeling that took over was nothing but sublime. But it was slow, too slow. Close, so close to the edge, Andie buried her fingers in his hair and dragged his mouth to hers.
Understanding without needing to be told, he braced her lower back with one big hand and hammered into her harder, deeper, and faster, the piano banging louder with every thrust. It was an unholy racket, but Andie had never heard a song she liked quite so much. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and the tension inside her burst, erupting in a scream she muffled in his shoulder.
Undone, Frank withdrew and spent into her petticoat. Not caring a fig for the ruined silk, she kissed him slowly as she came down, needing the moment to last as long as possible.
It wasn’t to be. Frank had barely fastened his trousers when the door opened quite suddenly to the Duke of Bodmin with the dowager duchess on his arm.
Lord Bodmin took one look at them—Andie still sitting on the piano with Frank, disheveled and missing his cravat, standing between her legs—and said, “Ah. I see you’ve already met.”
The dowager duchess fainted.