Rhapsody for Two - Theresa Romain Page 0,6

the ache. Only a grand dose, a grand investment, would do that. And playing a horn didn’t pay Simon enough, just as training horses hadn’t, working as a law clerk hadn’t, selling vials of gin labeled as cures for baldness hadn’t. And a dozen other jobs he had tried over the years, always moving toward London, always away from the place he’d once called home.

Rehearsal stretched on under the watery afternoon sun. Simon settled his horn in his lap and picked at the peeling paint of the railing surrounding the orchestra pavilion, waiting for the conductor to finish squawking at the fiddles. One of them—Hawkins, as usual— was horribly out of tune. Just as usual, Hawkins was blaming the fiddler next to him.

“Hawkins wouldn’t have this job for a minute if he wasn’t married to the conductor’s daughter,” muttered Botts, the other horn player in the Vauxhall orchestra.

“Right you are,” Simon agreed. “I met a luthier today who could set Hawkins straight.”

“Wish he’d come by and do it,” Botts replied. “Then we’d get through our rehearsal and I could get home for a bit of sleep before tonight’s performance.”

Simon decided not to correct the pronoun Botts had applied to the luthier. It wasn’t as if Miss Fairweather was his personal discovery, but somehow he didn’t like the idea of Botts making light of her. Or worse, pursuing her with one of his tawdry notes.

Like Simon, Alfred Botts was a bachelor; unlike Simon, he had no other financial obligations. Playing at Vauxhall paid the bills during the Season. Botts confided that when Vauxhall closed for the year, he planned to try his luck with a few orchestras on the Continent.

“Might as well learn what French women are like,” Botts gloated. “Or Italian women, or Austrian women. M’time’s my own.”

“Your time,” Simon reminded him, “is also Violetta’s, and Frances’s, and Mariah’s, and Bertha’s, and…who else have you sent love notes to in the last few weeks?”

“All right, so I’ll leave a few fluttering hearts behind me.” Botts winked. “None of ’em have to know about the other ladies, do they?”

“Horns! Quiet!” The conductor, a well-padded man named Clarke, slapped a flat palm onto the music stand before him, sending his papers into a disorderly shuffle.

Botts lifted his hands in a gesture of apology. Simon picked another fleck of white paint from the railing. Since he wasn’t giving lessons to Lord Farleigh’s son anymore, maybe he could get work repainting some of the faded buildings at Vauxhall.

As Clarke grumbled and rearranged his music, a messenger hared across the quadrangle of the Great Walk. The youth tramped up the pavilion steps and thrust the paper at the conductor. “His lordship said I wasn’t to wait for a reply, but that you’d best obey.”

When Clarke unfolded the message, his thundercloud expression turned yet grimmer. He darted a look at the horns. “Very well. Thank you.”

And Simon developed a bad feeling about what was written in that note.

The messenger left the way he’d come. Crumpling the message, Clarke said, “We’ll end rehearsal now. You’re all dismissed. Be back half an hour before the park opens tonight.”

Amidst the chaos of people rising, of instruments being stowed in tight quarters, the conductor’s voice floated above: “Thorn. A word, please.”

And Simon’s feeling went from bad to worse.

He didn’t inhabit lofty circles of Society. So if a “his lordship” was involved in the note, and obedience, and Simon too, there was a non-zero chance that Lord Farleigh was involved.

Damnation. After packing his horn as slowly as possible, letting the other musicians drift away, he strolled through the lessening crush to stand at the conductor’s side.

“Sir? You wish to speak to me?”

Clarke took too long squaring his music sheets, then slipping them into his satchel. As tall as he was broad, he finally looked up and caught Simon’s eye. “It’s about the note brought by that messenger.”

And Simon knew his bad feeling was justified. “From Lord Farleigh,” he guessed, and Clarke nodded.

“I don’t know what you did to him,” said the older man, “but he’s displeased with you. Says you’ve a bad character and he’ll blackball Vauxhall throughout the ton if you’re kept on in the orchestra.”

Simon cursed.

“Exactly,” agreed Clarke. “He’s influential enough to do it. The Barrett brothers are trying to cut costs, to keep Vauxhall profitable. They’ve asked me to reduce the size of the orchestra, but I’ve been fighting them on that. If there’s a chance you could lose them business in the beau monde, though…well, I’m sorry.