his way to Cambridge, allegro and grave fighting to win each instrument's soul, his body the score.
All was cacophony without Lilith, only the cadence decipherable without her, driving him to march toward her, the only conductor who could make the music pitch perfect.
“Are you certain, Esther? I feel that I am asking too much of you.” Lilith switched between excitement and guilt, waiting for James to arrive and wishing her friend would disappear – and take the Mexican rat with her.
“Of course I am certain! I suggested it. The prying eyes in your father's home make it too dangerous, though I give James credit for his fortitude and resourcefulness in breaking into John Stone's home for your earlier rendezvous. The gossips ruined that one already. Even my maid knows.” Esther stroked the head of the chihuahua, making the creature's eyes bulge even more. It looked less like a rat and more like a creature from an H.G. Wells novel.
“Thank you.”
“I hope this meeting is worthwhile, Lilith.” Her voice softened and Esther put the dog down. The tic tic tic of the animal's nails on the Turkish tiles sounded like teeth chattering in the cold. “I suppose this makes me a Madam of sorts.”
“Esther!”
“What other word would you use for a woman who arranges to have another woman gain full freedom to spend the night with a man?”
“A friend.”
Esther smiled, then moved in close to Lilith and whispered, “Anything that angers your father is worthwhile. More important, if James is your true love, then you need this final night before he leaves.”
“I feel so stupid. Dr. Burnham helped me to understand – ”
“It's not about what you understand, Lilith. The question is whether James understands.”
“That's the point! He did! I am the problem.”
Esther's face reddened and her typically calm self shifted to a more primal, angry side. “Dr. Scott was the problem.”
Lilith blinked rapidly, absorbing the words. “Yes, I guess so.”
“And your father knew exactly what he was doing.”
“Yes.”
“Tonight, though, John Stone has no control. He has no control. Your destiny is yours.” Esther nodded, deferring to Lilith. “Mi casa es su casa, as they say in the land where my little Rodrigo originated. I will go off to visit my aunt in Weston and you, Lilith, can have your James.”
A quick hug between the two cemented the deal. Esther picked up her bag, stuffed a whiny Rodrigo in it, and walked to the door. She turned back at the last minute, a sly smile on her face.
“Lilith?”
“Yes?”
“A honeymoon at Niagara Falls might be most appropriate.” She scurried out of the room, crooning sweet words to the rat dog in her purse before Lilith understood the comment, her laughter ribboning down the hall.
I won't chase him. Nine o'clock came and went and now, as the mantel clock ticked its way toward ten, portions of Lilith's heart died with each passing second, hope fading and a thick, metallic taste filling her.
'You already chased him.' The internal voice, so clearly her father's berated her, the words flying so fast they were no longer distinct, simply a raging white-water rapids of berating and shame. 'Of course he won't come. What respectable man would?'
And why did he need Lilith when he had Maria? He simply used women to gain access to their fathers.
The voice was so clear she checked the room, twice, to make sure her father wasn't present.
Yet he was. He lived in her head, silent and crouched, ready to pop out for moments like this.
Boston rat. Ether's words made her grin, neutralizing the fear.
A Boston rat, indeed.
If James never appeared, what was the worst that would happen? He would leave for Chile, she would go home, and in less than a year she would receive her trust, freeing her from her father's financial control. Perhaps she would share Esther's home; her friend had suggested it, and looking around the Cambridge mansion, tightly tucked into a side street behind Harvard Square, she wondered whether freedom meant that her father's voice would disappear.
Right now she wanted to replace it with James' voice. Sweet James, protective and sincere, loving and compassionate. He could provide her with affection and wit, street smarts and passion, everything but money. Yet she would have money, and the unlikely coupling mattered not to anyone but her father and high society. Lilith wouldn't be attending teas and séances if she were married to James. They would have to find their own path, a group of peers so exquisitely class blind as to