Rhapsody for Two Read online

  He had done many jobs besides playing a horn. The question was, which would he seize upon next? He needed money for Howard, and quickly. And with one lesson at a time, one rehearsal and performance at a time, he’d never earn enough. Not while his employment and pay depended on the whims of those with more power than he.

  Miss Fairweather, now, she had it a bit better. She took the tasks she wished to and turned down the ones she didn’t. She was her own mistress. It was a striking autonomy.

  He wondered whether she might know of anyone who needed music lessons. He wondered whether he ought to be dreaming bigger than lessons and what form that dream ought to take. He had to dream for Howard first, before he dared think of himself. A man owed his old friend that much, at least, if he ruined that old friend’s life and then ran out on him.

  After returning to his lodging with his horn, he was no closer to a decision about what to do next. So he settled on the one action he’d promised: He bought a packet of hairpins.

  It was early evening before he returned to Fairweather’s, a proud, square-shouldered building on the still-bustling length of Bond Street. At this hour, the door of the luthier’s shop was locked to customers. Unexpected disappointment flooded Simon when he tried the handle. He peered through the glass inset at eye level and caught a glimpse of movement inside—and before he thought better of the impulse, he knocked.

  After a moment, a maid came to the door, with Miss Fairweather a step behind.

  “Mr. Thorn.” He heard Miss Fairweather’s voice, muffled through the door, and was gratified that she recalled his name.

  He held up the packet of hairpins to show her the reason for his visit. “Sorry about the time,” he said, hoping she could hear him well enough through the door. “I didn’t realize you’d be closed. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  He’d wanted to see her, but now he felt slightly foolish to have drawn attention to his presence.

  Miss Fairweather bit her lip, hesitating. “That’s all right. You can come in for a bit.” He saw her turn away, say something to the maid, who curtseyed and hung about, dusting idly at a counter that didn’t need dusting while her mistress undid the locks and opened the door to Simon.

  “Good evening, ladies.” He touched his hat to them both, then removed it. “Miss Fairweather, I came by with a bribe and a question.”

  “A bribe?” She was still in the blue gown from earlier, the one that matched her uncommonly clear and clever eyes.

  He handed over the packet of hairpins, enjoying her laugh. “And a question.”

  Miss Fairweather turned to the maid. “Alice, you may take your supper in here. Get it from Cook.”

  The young maid nodded, and Simon understood: They were to be chaperoned.

  Or not quite, for Miss Fairweather said, “Come into the workshop. I’m at a tricky stage and can’t leave my work.”

  He had coveted a look behind the curtain, where the heart of the business clearly lay. Now Miss Fairweather tugged it aside and allowed him to enter.

  The shop held the smell that had wrapped around him so thoroughly the last time he’d been here: fresh wood, newly planed; something astringent like varnish or glue; and materials sweetly musky from age, like degraded old tapestry cushions and crumbling leather instrument cases. A light well spilled the dusty blue evening sun, the powdery color just before the day resigned itself to sunset.

  “Time to light a few lamps,” said Miss Fairweather, and she did just that, settling them at the corners of the large worktable. The golden flames highlighted instruments and bows around the room, some in pieces and some whole, while on the worktable lay a damaged violoncello.

  It was this latter on which she was clearly working. He didn’t know all the names for the parts of the instrument, only that a long ebony-looking board with a scrolled top usually held the strings. But this was beheaded, its strings removed and neatly coiled to one side.

  Miss Fairweather resumed a task she’d been in the middle of, working with a flat brush and a sliver-thin file. She dipped the brush into an open-mouthed flask, then brushed along the seam of the broken board as she slowly worked the file alongside. That odd right hand of hers, with its short fingers, was as sure and certain as the left, and for a moment he simply admired the steadiness of her progress as she did...whatever she was doing.

  “May I ask about your work, or would it ruin your concentration?”

  “If it would, you’d have already done it.” She looked up with a smile, so Simon didn’t feel chastised. “I’m using mineral spirits to dissolve the glue so I can remove the fingerboard from this instrument. You see someone broke its fingerboard and neck, and I’ll have to replace the one and repair the other.”

  “How do you repair the neck of a violoncello?”

  Brush, brush, brush. Pry, pry, pry. “I’ll drill into the sides and place dowels. Sometimes it holds, sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s best to try that first before giving up on the existing part.”

  He wondered at the amount of effort. “Is it worth it? Attempting such an extensive repair instead of replacing the instrument?”

  “It’s worth it to the owner,” she said simply. “So it’s worth it to me. I always do like to save an instrument instead of giving it up for lost.”

  “You like to bring music back to it,” he recalled, pleased when she smiled at him again.

  “Exactly. But removing a fingerboard is slow work,” she added, “so I’m glad for the company. Cotton’s deep asleep, so she’s no help.”

  With a jerk of her head, she indicated a cushion on the floor that Simon hadn’t noticed. The hedgehog slept atop it, curled into a prickly ball and making little snuffling noises as she slept.

  “Is she usually a good conversationalist?” Simon teased.

  “She’s a good listener, and I’m a good conversationalist. I can carry on a conversation entirely by myself.” Miss Fairweather looked sheepish. “The maid, Alice, doesn’t tidy in here. I do. So I spend quite a bit of time in the shop even once it closes. Sometimes Nanny—that’s Mrs. Kitt, but she’s lived with the family since long before I was born—comes down here to read to me, but the stairs are difficult for her.”

  Simon noticed a book at one side of the worktable. “How to Ruin a Duke,” he read from the spine. He had the sudden urge to fling it out the window.

  “If you’re thinking about flinging it out the window,” Miss Fairweather said with uncanny insight, “don’t. It belongs to a subscription library. And I really ought to finish it today, because I promised it to my friend. We share a subscription to a library, and I’ve the first turn with How to Ruin a Duke.”

  “Why that book?”

  “Because it’s entertaining.” She worked the slim file more deeply into the seam between fingerboard and neck, creating the first small gap. “Don’t you ever want to set aside your troubles for a few minutes? To read about someone else’s woes?”

  “Not really. I’d rather not think about woes at all.” Much luck he ever had with that.

  She gestured with the brush, flicking drops of white spirits onto the worktable. “That’s the magic of this book. The Duke of Amorous’s woes are nothing like real ruin. I can read it, enjoying knowing the wagers and races and pranks and inebriation will cause no real harm.”

  “They’ve caused harm enough to me.” He recalled his original purpose. “Look, I did say I had a question.”

  “Ah, yes. To go with the bribe.”

  “The problem is, I’ve been targeted by Lord—I’ll just say the husband of the woman who stuffed a note in my horn. As you know, I’ve lost my post giving lessons to his son. Well, he also had me sacked from the Vauxhall orchestra.”

  Miss Fairweather’s brows knit. “That’s horrible. How terribly unfair to you. He should sack his wife instead.”

  Simon felt too tired for wrath. “It was a foolish action inspired by a foolish note. I hope there won’t be any consequences for her. But I did wonder if you know of anyone who might need h
orn lessons. Or anything of the sort.”

  She capped her flask, setting aside her brush to dry, and shook her head slowly. “Sorry, no. I don’t know many people in the brass community. If you could tune pianofortes, I could give you all the work you could handle. Can you tune pianofortes?”

  “I could learn.”

  She laughed, a bit hollowly. “Not quickly enough to help me. You’d have to tune a hundred instruments before you had a knack for it.”

  “You need help?”

  “I suppose I do.” From the neat racks along the far wall, she retrieved a tool with a broad, flat blade and worked it into the violoncello’s fingerboard seam alongside the file-looking tool. “This building’s lease is up at the end of the month, and the landlord has informed me he’ll be raising the rates. Far beyond my ability to pay, but I can’t lose the shop. Fairweather’s has been a London establishment for a century.”

  A wonderful idea began to form from the misty half plans at the back of Simon’s brain. “Then let’s work together. I’ll help you and we’ll settle things for you.”

  She bit her lip. “Why should you help me?”

  “Because you have too much to do and not enough money.”

  Rocking the flat-bladed tool back and forth, she opened a gap between neck and fingerboard and moved down the length of the violoncello, doing the same. “That’s the case for everyone in London except the Duke of Amorous or Emory, if this book is to be believed.”

  “Not quite. As of today, I have not enough to do and not enough money.” He nodded at her hand. “And there’s the matter of your right hand.”

  She halted her work at once as if blasted by frost, and he knew he’d said the wrong thing. “I just mean...” He wasn’t used to fumbling for words, but it was very important to put this correctly. “I have a friend with an injured right hand. I wish I could help him more.”

  I wish it wasn’t my fault. I wish it never happened. I’ll never be able to help him enough.

  He was still saying everything wrong. Too much, too little at once. For a long moment, she regarded him, and he felt as if she were a judge about to render a verdict. “I was born like this,” she said. “It is not an injury, and I don’t need extra help because of it.”

  “I understand. I put that badly.”

  “Indeed you did.”

  “But you do need help,” he pressed. “You just said everyone in London does. I certainly do. So maybe we can help each other.”

  She popped free the long strip of ebony from the neck of the violoncello. “I don’t have money to pay an assistant, Mr. Thorn.”

  “Call me Simon,” he offered. “If you like. And I wouldn’t ask for any pay until you’ve exceeded what you need for your lease. I’ve a random assortment of possibly useful skills, so I’ll handle everything for your shop but the repairs. You might try a new marketing strategy, perhaps: How to Ruin a Violin.”

  A surprised laugh burst from her lips. “Fairweather’s is the luthier to the Crown! Such publicity would be undignified.”

  “Perfect. The Crown is undignified at present.” An understatement. The Prince Regent was notorious for his profligacy and scandals.

  “True. And the Crown has not paid the shop for some years.” Miss Fairweather took up a piece of fine-grained sandpaper. “There’s too much work for me already. How can I keep up if your methods succeed?”

  Simon thought about this, then ticked off three possibilities. “You could charge more. Be more exclusive. Or you could move the shop elsewhere.”

  “No. I can’t move the shop.” With the sandpaper, she rubbed at the roughened wood face exposed by the missing fingerboard. “For more than a century, people have found Fairweather’s here. Without the building, there’s no shop. Without the address, there’s no Fairweather’s.”

  “All right, then you’ll have to charge more. That’s the best way to appear more exclusive while actually being less exclusive.”

  “I would be excluding anyone who can’t pay an exorbitant price.”

  “And why should you not? This is a business and your livelihood. You’ve the endorsement of the Crown, so why chase further blue bloods? You should be basing your decisions on money, not rank.”

  “That’s a fair idea,” Miss Fairweather mused. “The ton is the worst at paying their bills.”

  “Ah! Maybe you need a skull-cracker to dun your clients who don’t pay.”

  She choked. “Is that one of your random assortment of possibly useful skills?”

  “Not so far, but I’m keen to try it out.” He shrugged. “I’ll do whatever’s needed to help you. What do you have to lose?”

  “My home, my business, the reputation laboriously built by my forebears. But I suppose that’s the case whether you help or not.”

  Drawing a lamp closer to the instrument, she eyed its sanded surface. Her every action indicated expertise, experience, a certainty that she was doing what she ought. It was lovely to watch, and he realized that he envied her. Not only her skill, but her place in the world.

  For years, Simon had avoided having a place in the world. Or a home or a business. His reputation in Market Thistleton? Best not to think of that—which was why he had left, moved on, tried new employment, moved on again.

  Miss Fairweather spoke up. “What do you want out of this partnership, if I agree? Are you keen to become a skull-cracker, or do you just need a way to make money?”

  “My wishes are purely mercenary,” he admitted. “I need to send money home, and teaching one horn lesson at a time would never be enough. I need something steadier. Right now, I’m not busy enough for my own liking.”

  She looked curious. “Does something drastic happen if you’re not busy?”

  He tried to sound glib. He desperately wanted her to count on him, or to think he was the sort of fellow worth her time. “Too much thinking. We’ve all got things we want to forget, and it’s easier to forget things if I’m busy.

  “Anyway, I’ll work hard for you. And once I’ve...oh, maybe twenty pounds in my pocket, I’ll be on my way.”

  Naming a figure, planning to leave—there, that was familiar. He immediately felt more at ease.

  Of course, two hundred pounds would be better than twenty. Two hundred would be enough for an annuity, so Simon would never have to scramble for Howard again. But twenty was a start, more than a start. It might even be an ending to some of the ongoing burden he’d lived with for more than a decade.

  “Twenty pounds is a significant amount of money,” said Miss Fairweather.

  “I have a significant purpose in mind for it,” countered Simon. “And remember, your lease gets paid before I earn a penny.”

  “Should I be worried about these things you want to forget? One scandal and I’m done for. Generations of work are done for.”

  Simon eyed How to Ruin a Duke. “Not if the social trespass is of your choosing. Haven’t you learned anything from that blasted book?”

  She blinked. “Not that particular lesson.”

  “Think about it.” Ideas were beginning to shuffle and take form in Simon’s head. Oh, this could be fun. “You’re not part of Society. You work for Society. I know, because I work for them too—or did until earlier today. You need to be proper, but you don’t have to meet the same standards as one of their unmarried daughters on the marriage mart. You’re not competing. You’re...yourself. There ought to be no one to compare to you.”

  He studied her: frank blue eyes, freckled nose, tidy black hair from which lamplight plucked chestnut and mahogany. “There is no one.”

  “All the easier to dismiss, then.”

  “Or all the easier to remember. We just have to sort out how to make people think of stringed instruments all the time.”

  “We?” She arched a brow.

  “Do you prefer going it alone?”

  She sighed. “No, I don’t. All right. Would you like some tea? I would like some tea.” She crossed to the curtain and drew it aside, saying, “Alice?”
>
  The young maid presented herself in the doorway. More tidy of dress than of manner, she was young and coltish, with a cheerful, generously freckled face and dark red hair peeking from under her starched cap.

  “Alice,” said Miss Fairweather, “bring us a pot of tea. Very strong.” She looked toward Simon. “Sugar? Lemon? Milk? What sort of trappings do you prefer?”

  “Whatever you’re having is fine.” Tea wasn’t always easy to come by. He’d never bothered to develop much of a preference.

  “Nonsense. No one is fine with tea in any old way. Alice, bring them all, since our guest is shy.”

  Once the maid had bobbed her head and tromped off the way she’d come, Miss Fairweather returned her attention to Simon.

  “Miss Fairweather, I really don’t need tea.”

  “Rowena,” she corrected, then boosted herself up onto the worktable. “And I do, and you’re keeping me company. Come, sit beside me and let me hear all your brilliant ideas for saving my shop. I’ll try to be as good a listener as Cotton.”

  More clumsily than she, he clambered atop the table, careful to avoid instruments, lamps, and the damned copy of How to Ruin a Duke. “You’ll allow me to work with you, then? We’re partners?”

  “Yes, until my lease is renewed.”

  “Partners, then. Rowena.” Her name was a tune on his lips.

  She extended her right hand. Simon shook it, that unique hand that didn’t look like any other hand he’d seen and that could carry out dexterous tasks he’d never attempted.

  “Partners,” Rowena echoed and grinned at him.

  It spread through him, as bright and playful as a horn dancing up a musical scale. And he knew he’d do anything to help this woman, to make her need him—even if it could be for only a short while.

  Chapter Three

  “A duke takes to vice like a duck to water. One might think a duke sunk in sin is a square peg in the round hole of Society—but trust this author! The Duke of Amorous’s peg is his greatest preoccupation.”