Finding Ever After: four fairytale-ish novellas Page 15

  “It’s dreadful.”

  He held up a piece of music. “It’s Mozart.”

  Esther had looked forward to the music. To the freedom from Thomas. To the air and the walk from Beacon Hill. To passing the Conservatory and imagining its sculpted stone before entrapping herself into the mouse hole of a rehearsal space. She had not known she should have also been looking forward to Mr. Ricci. They were running through the lower scales comfortably situated in her range. Esther engaged and activated her diaphragm, rose a little on the balls of her feet and kept her shoulders and back aligned to proper position, tongue tucked behind her teeth and throat open to elicit the best sound. This part was second nature, so she allowed herself a study of Mr. Ricci. The moment she stepped over the dusty, creaking boards of the dismal rehearsal space she had noted the way the slightly swinging bulbs overhead courted the midnight black of his hair. He hadn’t shaken her hand: truly she wasn’t sure what the protocol was in this instance, but she noticed that the hand with which he took Widow Barclay’s contained long fingers and the sort of grace an artist might spend a little extra time to capture when sweeping pencil over paper in deft grooves and lines.

  He was a tall man with broad shoulders and a distinctive profile. His chin was strong and his eyes as black as his hair. His smile had a secret to it that whispered around the edges as if the corners of his mouth always wanted to turn up a little but were kept in check.

  The bearing with which he lowered his tall frame to the teetering stool behind the age old upright might well have seen him behind a shiny Bösendorfer Grand at the Symphony Hall.

  Esther swallowed. Her cheeks flamed a little and she sloped into a sharp end of the scale, vibrato uneven. He was attractive. Very attractive.

  “My apologies,” she said in response to his look.

  “Would you like to try again? In F#?”

  “Please. I lost my train of thought. Not very professional of me.”

  Nic swept a scale on the tinny piano. “You are only acting in response to the venue.” He smiled. “No, truly, you sound quite wonderful.” There was something in his voice evading her, but his smile was genuine.

  He opened the Schubert piece, An de Musik, and she spun the German words that often filled the corners of her brain into a heady, rich sound. She kept the tone sweet and yet with a trained richness her childhood teacher referred to as her chocolate topping. Something that set her voice apart and imparted the tone of the speaking voice that set her apart from a dozen high-voiced school girls of her ilk. The quality that loaned her distinction.

  She knew her German was perfect. She had enough diction classes to assure that certainty. So, she wasn’t quite sure why Nic was staring at her as he was: eyes completely focused on her profile even as his fingers moved in deft memorization over the keys.

  Esther tried not to look at him, instead focusing on a spec of a hole in the back wall, just beyond snoozing Widow Barclay. But it was hard: his eyes had a power to them. They were a living, black thing like a magnet. She blinked and refocused. Finished the song and let her rich chocolate sound soften into a clear trill of a vibrato which she held and held as long as her breath would let her. For, surely, she would have no idea what to say to him when it was over.

  “It has surprisingly good acoustics.” Esther said. Nic swallowed a lump the size of the Rock of Gilbratar in his chest.

  He was somewhere between the stars and feeling perfectly ridiculous so, of course, he nodded enthusiastic agreement. Of course there was a good acoustic space, how else could there be when they were high in a different stratosphere? She sang like an angel. But an intelligent and smart and rather funny angel. And the first preliminary moments of attraction that deepened with the connection he felt the moment she spoke to him had burst into something like a sonnet when she sang.

  How could this voice be contained to a horrible dust pile of a room and then sent to a congregation of cows in upstate Massachusetts? Whomever this fiancé was, he loathed him.

  “You have a magnificent voice.” Nic said plainly. She was too good for false panderings of praise.

  Esther brightened. “Truly? You’re a wonderful player, too. You follow me so well. It’s like we are having our own conversation, isn’t it? You seem to anticipate when I was going to change my tempo and …”

  “That in short is the definition of an accompanist, Miss Hunnisett. As you well know.” He risked a small wink at her.

  “I know that. I have had dozens before. It’s just… with you…” she caught her breath.

  They tried another song and again, Nic was light headed and very attentive to her face and less to the keys and blessed the Holy Lord above that his fingers knew Mozart better than his wandering brain did.

  They continued and fell into an easy rhythm. She got frustrated and he fudged a note. She laughed at a mouse scurrying over the floorboards and Nic delighted in the fact that she didn’t squeal and retreat as he assumed most ladies of her station would at a rodent. All too soon, their first rehearsal ticked to a halt.

  “You know, Miss Hunnisett”, Nic gathered his music, “I am proficient at transposition. If there is a piece out of your range, I can work with it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ricci.”

  “We can’t always change our fate.” He lowered his voice to her ear, noting the now awake and quite attentive Widow Barclay. “But we can change a key.”

  4

  Nic wiped the chalk from his palms having imprinted several shapes and their definitions for tomorrow’s geometry lesson on the board.

  There was something safe and measured about an Equilateral Triangle. It was a language Nic spoke. One he knew. A world familiar. Not the new world he entered yesterday with an heiress and her drowsy chaperone.

  “Mr. Ricci, a successful day I presume?”

  “Father Francisco!” Nic always smiled when the priest was near. He did so much to sew up the community in the neighbourhood. And for Nic. He so quickly found him this position at a boy’s school when his father was ill and in hospital.

  “I know you must be exhausted after your day of teaching and there is your father to tend to. But if I assured you that Mrs. Leoni was bringing him his supper, would you be kind enough to accompany Sister Aurora this evening? She is giving a small musical treat for our charity benefactresses.”

  “With pleasure, Father. As long as my father is taken care of.”

  Father Francisco appraised Nic a moment. Squeezed his shoulder. “You are storing a mighty reward in heaven, my son.” He tilted his chin proudly.

  Nic laughed awkwardly. “Do you think the holy sisters might spare me a sandwich?” Nic patted his stomach. “Geometry is an absolute trial on an empty stomach and I would be satisfied with an earthly reward right now.”

  Nic played familiar hymns with guarded solemnity. The sister then performed a small repertoire of popular romance ditties like Swanee and Mandy. After playing Schubert for Miss Hunnisett, Nic’s fingers easily navigated Gershwin, Berlin and other Tin Pan Alley composers for a voice sweet and airy.

  After, he bowed to the resounding appreciation of the attendees who made a beeline for him to shake his hand and fawn.

  “What a good son you are,” chirped Mrs. Russo. “My Marco left the day after he turned 17. Chasing some skirt named Angelica.”

  “Oh, Mr. Ricci, you have turned into such a fine musician.” Mrs. Columbo leaned up on all of her five-foot frame and pinched his cheek. Nic’s ears reddened.

  Mrs. Bianchi, never as forward as the other ladies from the charity drives and bazaars, spoke softly as she pressed a tin of baking in his hand. “There is more where that came from, my dear boy.”

  Nic smiled and parted through the enthusiastic crowd hoping at any moment they would turn their attention on the star of the night, Sister Aurora, instead of their obvious attempts at pairing him with their daughters.

  “My father comes first.” Nic said more than once. “I must take care of him.”

  He hoped t
his would quell their enthusiasm. It just led to more cheek-squeezing and baked goods.

  “Mr. Ricci.” A voice not rimmed with the cadence of his ancestors broke through the crowd.

  “Widow Barclay!” He smiled at the chaperone he had met the day before. “How are you? Did you enjoy the musical programme?” He wondered if she had dozed through it. She certainly had no trouble sleeping through the rehearsal yesterday, even when the movement called for fortissimo.

  “I did, Mr. Ricci.”

  Nic smiled. “I am glad. I suppose I will be seeing you again shortly.”

  Widow Barclay nodded. “Mr. Ricci, I know that we have just met but may I ask a favor?”

  “Of course. If I can.”

  “Miss Hunnisett is very dear to me. As you can see she is not… well…she is rather a unique young woman is she not?”

  Nic recalled a moment where Esther Hunnisett had muttered something about her fiancé bearing the likeness to a Canadian muskrat under her breath. “Yes. Unique. That is one word.”

  “I am going to request that your rehearsals be expanded beyond their usual hour. But she cannot know that I have requested this.”

  “But why? She is a marvelous singer and truly I don’t think she needs as much time as we have been given.”

  “Exactly.”

  Nic puzzled. “Well, I cannot charge you for extra time for a singer who does not need it.”

  “But you will accept the extra amount I will pay.” It was not a request.

  “Widow Barclay, I also have an infirm father to care for and I teach math four days a week and …”

  “We will make it seem like it is Esther’s idea.”

  “I’m confused. If we are extending the rehearsal time and she doesn’t need the practice then what are we to do?”

  Widow Barclay smiled. “That is for you to decide, Mr. Ricci. Perhaps you might play a game.”

  Mozart was on the phonograph and Thomas Weatherton was oafishly dissecting every movement of Cosi fan Tutte through the film of Ralph Von Witterhorn.

  Esther, sipping wine, wondered how anyone, Weatherton or Witterhorn, could sift all of the joy and passion and life out of something with a few dull interpretations. And then, as Thomas refilled a barely-touched wine glass to the brink, her wonder turned to the ease and availability of spirits in her father’s house.

  While the country was in a spirit-free prohibition.

  She was aware of the world enough to know men with money and power would never truly be without the substance they desired as the nation pledged dry. But, her house, especially of late, seemed a rather free-flowing fountain of high quality liquor in her father’s house of late.

  “Thomas, I am quite fine without any more wine, thank you.” Esther could usually take a sip or two before feeling sleepy and ringing for tea.

  “Esther, my darling, this is high quality and I want you to relax.” He looked at the phonograph, mimed conducting a few bars in the air several beats off the music’s measure.

  Esther held the amber liquid up to the light of the chandelier in her father’s grand drawing room. “Thomas, where does it all come from?”

  “Grapes, my love.”

  “Don’t patronize me. We outlawed spirits and yet they are plentiful here.”

  Thomas was disengaging the lid of a bubbled glass decanter, pouring port liberally into a glass. “You’re not one of those tee-totallers, are you?”

  “No. But I am wondering if it is quite… legal to have this much liquor. Surely…”

  “Darling, the law is in place for people who abuse it. Debauched ruffians by the docks who abuse it and cause riots. Italians. Irish. That sort.”

  Esther’s cheeks flushed. She thought of Nic Ricci with his long hands tripping over the piano keys and his kind smile. Mr. Ricci had better manners than Thomas. Sure, Thomas was well-bred to act a certain way but every movement and sentence was underscored with arrogance.

  “And my father?” She pointed upward, indicating the second floor bedroom where Paul Hunnisett was dressing for dinner.

  “Your father reaps a lot of what his decision has sewn, my love.” Thomas seized Esther’s hand and kissed her palm with a sensation akin to a seal flopping on the sand. “What is mine is his. As it is yours. My connections, my wealth.”

  Several moments and Von Witterhorn observations later, dinner was announced and Esther was ushered to a gleaming table as rigid as a starched Sunday collar complete with equally stiff conversation about stocks and trades. Through courses of consommé and roe, beef and parsnips, Esther imagined she was back in a dusty rehearsal hall opening her throat so that notes she made vibrated over creaky floorboards.

  Neither her father or Thomas asked about her day or her music. Esther had long been a nothing but a point of a lopsided-triangle: necessary to determine the shape but with little of the even angle of the other essential vertices.

  Neither asked about her rehearsals, so she stabbed through one of their sentences and told them anyways.

  “Turns out the North End rehearsal pianist you found me is wonderful, Thomas.”

  “Very well, sweet.”

  “You just don’t know how important it is that this night go off well, Thomas. If your friends are entertained, perhaps I can do similar performances when we move. Or even come back for a weekend or two.”

  Thomas cocked his head, studied her under the chandelier light. “Esther, this is a perfectly acceptable hobby and a wonderful opportunity for me to show you off as the beauty you are. The Hunnisett heiress given a second chance at life. But you will be so busy with the children and playing hostess to our guests that I cannot see this being more than an amusing whim now and then.”

  Esther looked to her father. “Don’t you think, father, that my continued performance could help the Hunnisett name thrive and be remembered. What mother would have wanted.”

  Esther’s father didn’t look up from trailing a pea around his plate. “You have no need of being a Hunnisett or proudly carrying the Hunnisett name at all now, my dear. It is far more important that you be a Weatherton.”

  Esther took her time with her lemon ice and asked the maid to deliver tea to the study. She tried to concentrate on her novel but kept drifting to Thomas’s open briefcase on the settee near the window. It was rare he left any of his paperwork or business around their house.

  Satisfied that she could hear Thomas and her father deep in conversation and brandy in the study across the foyer, she risked a peek. Her father was selling her to Thomas for these facts and figures and shouldn’t she at least know what her going price was?

  Inside, she looked at the numbers and dollar signs: the cogs of the wheel of fortune that would spin her away. She wasn’t schooled in business, but she did notice a few things were off. For example, while shipments of meats, cheeses, sundries and textiles had several red marks beside them, a ledger bearing high quantities of No. 7 F showed a great surplus. The contrast between the listed expected profit and the actual profit was staggering.

  No. 7 F. Esther took a moment, carefully fanning the papers out. She recognized that from a bottle her father kept on a shelf in the library. Esther heard the study door open and quickly returned the contents to the briefcase. She scooted back to her chair, sat poised with a cup of tea and thumbed through her book as Thomas pressed a sloppy kiss to her ear, collected his case and bid her goodnight.

  5

  It was on a whim that Nic brought the second-hand chess board from the St. Stephen’s rectory to the dusty rehearsal space. He was still a little confused by his conversation with Widow Barclay but he wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to spend more time with Esther. Over the past handful of rehearsals, he had become even more delighted by her. She had a marvelous sense of humor, was buoyant and energetic and sang like an angel. Truly, she didn’t need any more rehearsal time. Yet, she always wanted to practice. Nic determined this was something ingrained from a life of aiming for perfection. At least, at first. Then he listened more car
efully to the way she spoke of her fiancé and what undercut her flippant and humorous tones. Their time cloistered in the dusty North End space was her escape. The more he listened to her, the more he understood what Widow Barclay was attempting to do: give her a reprieve.

  He introduced the chess board while Widow Barclay snored in the corner. He didn’t know what she did outside of being Miss Hunnisett’s companion but he figured it required a great deal of energy and sleeplessness. Perhaps her request on Esther’s behalf was for her own comfort and release as well.

  “Miss Hunnisett,” Nic said as Esther’s pitch perfect note of Liszt faded through the dusty air. “I think if you sing anymore today you will make yourself hoarse.”

  “Surely you don’t mean for us to end our rehearsal early?” Her voice was panicked. “Come, there must be…” she scrambled through sheet music.

  “No. I don’t mean that.” He looked emphatically in Widow Barclay’s direction. “Wouldn’t want to disturb a very good nap. I thought you might care for a chess match. The first day you came you compared chess to Mozart and if I am not being too forward, I would love to play with you.”

  Esther’s smile dazzled and Nic felt a funny flip in his heart. “I would love to, Mr. Ricci.”

  While Esther set up the board on a squat side table, Nic scoured the dark musty space for suitable seating. Deciding on two milk crates in relative working order, he turned them upside down and scraped them across the floor. When Esther moved to help him she grabbed the same side he did and their fingers met over the end. Nic startled as if singed. There was something in that touch. She noticed it too, eyes widening, slowly disengaging her fingers.

  “I don’t want you to get a splinter.” He said softly.

  “I don’t either.” She finally broke their eye contact, fanned her skirts beneath her and settled.

  “This is perfect!” she mused.