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  “But I cannot play.” Nicholas nodded to his left arm, wrapped in a linen sling.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Darien said. “Henri, fetch a doctor.”

  Clara glanced to the side, surprised to see the sprightly figure of the valet.

  “I already have,” Henri said, “with instructions to meet us in the dressing room. This is no place for such examinations.”

  “See to rewarding these good men,” Darien said, “while I escort the Beckers backstage. Come, I’ll clear a path back to the door.”

  Clara squeezed Nicholas’s shoulders. “Follow Darien. We’ll keep you between us.”

  She refused to take her eyes off him. The miracle of his presence was still too new for her to quite believe.

  The audience did not press in on them as she and Nicholas followed Darien, though excited murmurs spread like ripples from their passage. At the door to the backstage, she saw Peter barring the way. He grinned when he caught sight of them, and moved aside.

  “Thank God,” he said.

  When the heavy door closed behind them, a trembling joy seized Clara. The tears she had battled surged to victory and, careful of his arm, she grasped Nicholas in a tight embrace. He smelled of wood smoke and mildewed hay.

  “We must get your brother to the doctor,” Darien said.

  Clara let Nicholas go, unsurprised to see that his face, too, was wet with tears.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “If only I could play—”

  “Don’t regret what you can’t change,” Darien said, holding open the door of his dressing room. “It’s enough that you are here, and relatively unharmed.”

  There was a wild light in Darien’s eyes, a spark Clara had not seen before. Clearly he was overjoyed to have his composer returned.

  She turned her face away, heart weighted with the knowledge that she had no more excuses to stay by his side. Now that Nicholas was safely back with them, she must fulfill her promise.

  The doctor waited inside, and set to work immediately, tsking and humming as he bent over Nicholas’s arm.

  “The competition isn’t over yet?” Nicholas winced as the doctor unwrapped his crude sling. “Is Darien winning?”

  “He and Varga are tied,” Clara said. “Varga took the first round, but Darien won the second. He played Il Diavolo flawlessly, without accompaniment.”

  “Solo?” Nicholas glanced from her to Darien, who stood behind the doctor, his eyes watchful.

  “Varga insisted upon it,” Darien said. “We’re both performing without our pianists.”

  “Oh.” Nicholas twitched the fingers of his left hand. “Perhaps I could manage—”

  “Nonsense,” Darien said, and Clara had to agree.

  There was no way her brother could play accompaniment. The doctor snorted in disapproval of the idea, though his hands were gentle as he splinted and bound Nicholas’s arm.

  “Maestro?” A rap on the door, and then the director stuck his head into the room. “Two minutes, if you will. The crowd is restless for the conclusion of the duel. Signor Varga will perform first, as he lost the last round.”

  Darien set his hand on Nicholas’s shoulder. “Come join us in the wings when the doctor has finished.”

  He offered his arm to Clara, and they made their way back to the hushed shadows flanking the stage.

  When the director announced him, Varga strode onto the proscenium to thunderous applause. Clara bowed her head at the sound. Fear lodged in her throat, eclipsing her joy at having her brother safely returned. Now all her worry was for Darien. What if he lost the competition? She had never let herself believe it was possible, but now…

  She squeezed her eyes closed, willing Varga to fail.

  Instead, he stood there, absorbing the adoration of the crowd. At last he raised his hand for quiet.

  “My dear audience,” he said, a smug note in his voice, “as many of you know, Nicholas Becker has managed to reappear—just in time for the conclusion of the competition.”

  There was robust clapping at his words, and Clara’s heart lifted at the sound. Darien still had many sympathizers in the crowd.

  Then Varga beckoned to a figure standing in the wings. His accompanist, a tall, thin man with an extraordinary reach on the keyboard, stepped forward, and Clara felt her eyes widen.

  “Since Reynard has his accompanist back,” Varga said, “I’m sure you will be pleased to welcome mine onto the stage, won’t you?”

  The crowd shouted their approval, but Clara jumped to her feet.

  “He can’t!” She turned to Darien, anger pumping hotly through her. “We have to stop him. There’s no comparison. Nicholas can’t play a note! The director must—”

  “Too late.” Darien took her elbow. “The audience has decided. Trying to change things now will only earn their ill will. Look, Varga is about to begin.”

  “But, Darien—”

  He laid a long, nimble finger over her mouth.

  “All will be well,” he said in a low voice. “Trust me.”

  He stroked his finger across her lips, his green eyes alight with excitement, challenge, and something she could not name. She could say nothing, though Varga’s duplicity scorched her nerves.

  The accompanist launched into the opening chords. Slowly, she sat, her skirts rustling like brittle stalks. It was, indeed, too late.

  The addition of the piano carried Varga’s notes to the very top balconies of La Scala. He played with a technical brilliance that could not be denied, his earlier, brutish style now melding with the accompaniment to create a music that strutted boldly forward. Varga performed with utter confidence, as though victory were assured. Listening to him holding the crowd rapt and still, Clara almost believed it was.

  Too soon, he finished. Applause cracked through the air, thunder and lightning rolled into one, and Varga took bow after bow, his accompanist a thin shadow behind him. Flowers, flung from the audience, littered the stage.

  The director finally ushered Varga offstage and sent one of his crew to retrieve the blossoms scattered over the shining wood.

  Now it was Darien’s turn. Her heart beating like an over-tightened drum, Clara met his eyes. He took her hands and stood, drawing her up with him.

  She must speak. No matter what happened, it was time to release the secret scarring her soul. She owed him that honesty. After tonight, things would never be the same.

  And perhaps knowing that she had penned the notes he was about to play, perhaps that might give Darien wings. She thought he loved her. Would that be enough?

  “Darien.” Her voice rasped her throat. “Before you play, there is something I must tell you.”

  “No.” He tightened his grip on her hands, then released her. “You must come onstage as my accompanist. Now. Look, the director is announcing me.”

  He strode the few paces to his case. Scooping up violin and bow, he turned and held up a sheaf of pages for her to see. The violin part for Amore.

  The applause from the crowd took on an impatient edge. Clara glanced to the stage, where the director beckoned urgently.

  “But—”

  Darien’s gaze was insistent. “Come with me, Clara. Please. I need you.”

  She could not refuse him.

  “Yes.” The word was a mere breath, but it was enough.

  He strode forward into the light, into the eye of the world. Trembling, she followed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Clara blinked at the heat and brightness of the footlights, and kept her gaze averted from the front of the stage. She could not ignore the audience, however. Whispers shivered through the crowd, prickling her nerves, and she braced herself for the boos and catcalls that must surely follow.

  When she reached the piano, she drew in a shaky breath and tried to calm her rushing fear. Black and white keys stretched before her, a familiar world she could gratefully immerse herself in. There could be no room for the panic hovering over her fingers, no entry to the hollow terror that wanted to curl into h
er chest. She must be steady for Darien.

  Darien offered no introduction, no word of explanation to the audience. Instead, he swept his violin up to his shoulder and waited. Two heartbeats later, the audience stilled. Anticipation flavored the air. Everything, everything hung upon this. Clara felt the crowd lean toward the stage, waiting. Watching.

  She watched Darien, too, ready for the preparatory rise of his bow, the descent that would propel them both forward. Into the music. Into the future.

  When he pulled the first long, sweet note from his violin, she was there, the piano meeting him in perfect harmony.

  Keeping her focus only on him, Clara let everything else fall away. There was no watching emperor, no theater waiting to judge the outcome, no continent spreading out from this single point of music.

  There was only one man, playing the melody she had written for him, playing her heart out into the open. The notes spiraled and twined, their breaths rising and falling together, violin and piano singing in sweet, lush counterpoint.

  The second movement quickened, fiery passion sparking from the violin, tossed back and forth between them. Clara felt her face flush as she met Darien, matched him, their notes striving together, pushing and pushing into harmonic brilliance. The echo of their nights of lovemaking infused the music, the desire and racing of the blood as bodies touched and tangled, ascending into a perfect climax of sound.

  A breath of silence, and they plunged in unison into the third section. The notes she had played earlier, the elegy for a lost brother, were now transformed. Shadow gave way to light, despair to hope.

  The melody rose from the piano, seeking, questioning. I have been searching, alone, for so long. Is there love for me, in this world?

  The violin answered, a line of notes steady as the stars. If there is love, then we share it. I have found you at last.

  Weeping turned to aching sweetness as she and Darien melded to one musical whole. Two lives, two souls, finally revealed to one another.

  Amore. Love.

  Darien reached the final, pure, high note of the piece. It spun out into darkness, asking a question. Will you be mine, now and forever?

  Clara played the concluding chord, her fingers strong and sure. I am yours. Now, and forever.

  The music was complete.

  Silence.

  For one icy moment, Clara imagined that the audience had left, departed while she and Darien were caught up in the throes of the music—the theater was that still.

  Then applause crashed down, so loud it vibrated the stage beneath her feet and set the piano strings to humming. Varga had played with technical genius; he had played for fame and immortality. But Darien had played for love. His mastery of the instrument was married to sheer emotion, surpassing Varga’s skill.

  The proof of Darien’s victory shook the gilded walls of La Scala.

  Deafened by the noise, Clara locked eyes with him. The knowledge she saw there split her heart in two, and healed it.

  He knew. Within the music, and outside it, he knew she was the composer.

  Darien motioned for her to join him. When she reached his side, he took her arm and together, they bowed before half the courts of Europe.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught movement in the wings: Varga, snatching up his violin case. The duel was over, and the cascade of applause was not for him. Knowledge of his defeat was clear in the set of his shoulders, in the way he hurried away, not once glancing back to the brilliantly lit stage.

  At last Darien held his hand up for silence. It was a long time coming.

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice projecting to the back of the theater. “Tonight, I wish to introduce you to the composer—the true composer—of Becker’s glorious music.”

  Ignoring the sudden buzz of consternation in the crowd, Darien turned to her.

  “No,” she said in a low, strained voice. “Darien, are you mad?”

  He bent to speak softly into her ear. “Clara, you deserve this recognition. You deserve so much more than you give yourself.”

  “You can’t tell them!” Panic raced through her. “You can’t risk your career for this, for me.”

  “Too late.” He lifted his head and raised his voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, nobles and commoners, I give you Miss Clara Becker!”

  There was no applause. The air stilled, hardened, and cold pressure gripped Clara’s lungs. Oh, he had ruined them all. She could not look at his face, nor the audience who had turned from friend to foe in a heartbeat. Staring at the floor, she willed herself not to weep. Willed her feet to carry her back to the sheltering shadows of the wings.

  Her family was ruined, Darien’s fame tarnished—possibly beyond repair. What had he done?

  Before she could turn away, Darien caught her arm. Humiliation burned through her as the silence continued, with her and Darien pinned on the stage.

  Then, out of the darkness beyond the footlights, came the sound of a single person clapping.

  The audience stirred and murmured like fallen leaves, the rustles growing louder as they turned to see who would do such a thing.

  Her mouth dry as sand, Clara lifted her eyes, searching. The sound was coming from the most opulent box at the front of the theater, the stage lights reflecting off the standing figure of a woman in a pale dress. Diamonds glinted at her throat and from the tiara in her dark hair, and Clara could just make out her strong features.

  Caroline Augusta. The Empress Consort of Austria.

  Beside her, Emperor Francis gave her a look from beneath his stern brows, then rose to his feet, adding his heavy applause to his wife’s. A gasped breath later, the entire theater followed suit, the air once again pulsing with applause.

  Clara glanced into the wings, her heart squeezed with worry for Nicholas. How would this acknowledgement affect him? He stood just at the edge of the shadows, and she saw a slow smile spread across his face as his world righted itself. All was well.

  Then Darien did the unthinkable.

  There, before the assembled nobility of Europe, in front of an enormous crowd, he went down on one knee and grasped Clara’s hand.

  “Clara,” he said, shouting over the applause. “Clara Becker, I love you. Would you do me the utmost honor of becoming my wife?”

  She looked down at him, and the crowd quieted once more. Such a spectacle! The musical duel nearly paled in comparison to Darien’s revelation that she was the composer. And now, consummate performer that he was, the audience was witness to his shocking proposal of marriage.

  Yet there was no calculation in his expression. His eyes were full of determination and sincerity. And love. It was the only thing that could save them.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Louder.” He squeezed her hand.

  “Yes.” More strongly this time, but it was not enough. Clara gathered air into her lungs and, in a most unladylike way, shouted her answer.

  “Yes!”

  The audience exploded into cheers, a huge wave of acceptance washing over her and Darien. She blinked back tears, to see Nicholas yelling approval from the wings, Henri and Peter beside him.

  A moment later, Darien was on his feet. He set his violin on the piano bench, then swept her into his powerful embrace. Her heartbeat was the pounding of hands and feet, her breath the cries of approbation careening up five stories of balconies and echoing off the painted ceiling.

  His lips met hers in a passionate kiss. A kiss full of love, full of fire, resonating with the perfect harmony of two souls who have finally found one another.

  EPILOGUE

  Last night’s performance by the Reynards in King’s Theatre marked the triumphant close of this musical family’s latest European tour. As usual, Maestro Reynard compelled the audience with his sublime mastery of his instrument. His wife, ethereally lovely in silver satin, premiered a new composition commissioned by Queen Victoria, to the monarch’s enthusiastic praise.

  The couple’s ten-year-old daughter, a violin prodigy in h
er own right, took the stage with her father to perform Telemann’s Canonic Sonatas with breathless virtuosity. And their young son’s command of Bach on the keyboard promises great things.

  Indeed, the Reynards will leave the world a lasting musical legacy.

  -The London Times, April, 1841

  Clara curled up on the divan, sipping her tea while Darien read the latest reviews out loud. It was good to be home. Although the children enjoyed traveling and performing, eight-year-old Benedict was prone to mischief, and Annabel to poutiness.

  It was easier to knit their family together in the months they did not tour. Not to mention giving the children some semblance of a normal upbringing, although Annabel spent hours a day practicing her violin. She kept demanding new pieces from her mother, searching for an elusive melody that Clara was unable to capture.

  She would not be surprised if her daughter turned to composing her own music within the year.

  Just as Nicholas had, at last, embraced his poetic muse and begun publishing his own works to some acclaim, Clara knew that her children would have their own paths to follow. No matter what their parents might think, or demand.

  “Well.” Darien folded the newspaper away and took a sip of his coffee—a taste she had never managed to acquire. “The reviewers liked our concert well enough.”

  “I don’t care what the reviews say. It’s the audience that matters.”

  She smiled at him. It had been over a dozen years and hundreds of successful concerts since their marriage, yet his features were still most beloved to her. The brush of silver at his temples and the lines at the corners of his eyes bespoke the years passing, but when they played, time had no meaning. Together, they reached the pure, perfect heart of the music.

  And together, they always would.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Sonata for a Scoundrel is set in 1830-31, midway through the era now called the Romantic period in arts and music, which roughly spans the years from 1800-1850.

  Although there were a few women composing music during that time, they did not have the societal approval to do more than “dabble.” Penning a few small pieces was acceptable, but it was unthinkable for a woman to aspire to become a professional composer.