I assumed that because the graduating girls had suffered through this the year before, all that was required of them now was to sit in the audience with their parents and make fun of us.
Lillian, Mittie, and Caroline were going to take turns reading a poem they had composed. Stella and Beatrice were going to sing a duet while Malinda accompanied them on the piano.
Sophia was going to recite a passage from one of the headmistress’s favorite books, A Young Woman’s Guide to the Veneration of Modesty and Decorum, a choice so ironical that even Mrs. Westcliffe raised a brow.
And I … well, it was clear to everyone that I had but one talent. It was also the piano. But no one could sing to any of my songs, because I made them up as I went.
Despite the best efforts of Monsieur Vachon, our music instructor, I wasn’t any good at doing it any other way. I couldn’t understand the pages and pages of music he compelled me to study. It all still looked like dots and dashes to me. I couldn’t seem to remember which piano pedal did what; my wrists were never straight enough, my posture never regal enough. And I couldn’t keep perfect time, no matter how hard he smacked me on the shoulder with his wand.
I could only invent songs, not copy them.
Or so they all thought.
The truth was, I was far from the creative idiot they all believed. I’d actually copied every single song I ever played … but only Armand knew about that.
One of the most interesting aspects of living in a real castle was that it had real castle parts to it—that is, an authentic dungeon and solar and great room, things like that. Music class always took place in the ballroom. With its high vaulted ceiling and limestone walls and bouncy wooden floors, Monsieur claimed the acoustics were superb, although to me it always seemed we were battered by echoes.
No matter.
Hanging from that distant ceiling was a series of rock crystal chandeliers, massive and covered in sheets. I’d never seen them lit before, and likely I never would. Perhaps they were nothing more than giant skeletons of pendants and beads, but in my imagination, they sparkled like snowflakes in the sun.
And they never stopped giving me songs. Not even when I wanted them to.
“Once again, Miss Jones,” commanded Vachon, looming behind me in his usual spot as I sat facing the grand piano.
I set my teeth. I closed my eyes, opened them, and glared harder at the sheet music before me. “Bumblebee Garden” was the title of the piece he wanted me to perform. It might well have been “The Simplest Melody We Could Find for You” or “Just Play These Five Notes Over and Over,” but it was no good. My head was filled with the concerto floating down from the chandeliers.
My fingers fumbled across the keys, getting them all wrong. I could’ve played the chandelier song without a second thought, but trying to plink out bloody “Bumblebee Garden” was like pushing a boulder up a mountain.
A boulder the size of this bloody island.
Up the side of bloody Mount Everest.
I began to break into a sweat. Monsieur’s eyeballs burned an itchy hole in the center of my back.
“No, no, no! Mon Dieu, what was that? Do you not see the score before you, Miss Jones? Do you not see what is inscribed right there before you?”
“No,” I mumbled. “I mean, yes, I see it.”
“Seems her garden is scorched earth,” jeered Beatrice in a whisper, but everyone heard her.
“Again!” barked Vachon.
Fumble. Fumble. I was awful at this, I really was.
My classmates began, one by one, to snicker.
Vachon moved to my side. I saw the wand in his fist and switched instantly to the ripple of sound falling down around me like droplets from a waterfall, lovely and soft and intricate. It made him pause, as I’d hoped. The hand holding his wand gradually lowered to his side.
Ah, this—this was easy for me. Easy to let the rock crystal music sink into me, lap through me like the ocean’s tide, bones, blood, cells, my fingers dancing faster and faster now, everything beautiful, everything effortless. My soul lifting free.
It ended, though. I let it end, and before some new song could take me, I tucked my hands in my lap and gazed up at my professor, trying for Armand’s trademark stoic expression.
Vachon removed his spectacles. He wiped the glass lenses on a corner of his coat and then carefully put them back on, wrapping the wires behind each ear before speaking.
“You have made your point, Miss Jones. I hardly wish to embarrass myself by presenting you to the faculty and parents of Iverson with your practical skills in such a state. You may play what you wish for the graduation.”
“But, sir,” protested Mittie, either because she hated me the most or loved whining the most (probably both), “is that fair? All the rest of us have to show what we’ve learned—”
“Do you desire to sit through a ten-minute cacophony of sharps and flats, Miss Bashier? I do not. I assume your parents do not. Let us accept with grace what we cannot change in a week, ladies.”
“Or in a lifetime,” muttered Caroline, provoking a fresh round of snickering.
After class, as everyone was crowding through the ballroom doors, Sophia swung into step beside me and sent me a slanting look.
“Are you really that poor a player? Or is it on purpose?”
“No,” I answered grimly. “I really am that poor.”
“That’s too bad. I was rather hoping you were doing it deliberately. To put a tweak in Vachon’s nose.”
“Vachon carries a stick with him, in case you didn’t notice, and he’s very glad to use it. I have no interest in tweaking any part of him.”
“How disappointing,” she sighed. “And all this time, I thought you such the rebel.”
I was surprised into a laugh, and her pale eyes grew just a tad too wide.
“Well, after all, there was that business of you getting shot. Certainly no other girl here would ever have done such a thing.”
“Yes. It was so rebellious of me to have put myself in front of a bullet I never saw coming.”
She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And the fact that you’ve captured Armand’s attention, if not his heart. The mudlark and the aristocrat! If that’s not the out-and-out definition of rebellion, I don’t know what is.”
“Lord Armand and I are friends, Sophia. That’s all.”
“Oh, come! We’ve been chums for weeks! I thought we were beyond all these silly lies. He practically salivates whenever he sees you.”
Ahead of us Stella and Mittie were strolling arm in arm, whispering and tittering.
“Friends,” I said again, firm.
“Is that why he was driving you back from wherever you went yesterday? Just to be friendly?”
“He was driving me and Westcliffe,” I pointed out.
“Hmm. Where did you go yesterday, by the way?”
To see the mad duke. To hear a mad idea.
“Nowhere,” I said. “Just to the village, to see the doctor.”
“I say, Eleanore.” Mittie broke off the whispering to throw me a glance from over her shoulder. “Stella and I have had the most marvelous notion.”
“Yes!” Stella gave me a big grin. “We’re all so concerned about how you have nowhere to land soon. Summer and all that. So why not go stay with Sophia for the holiday? She could always use—” She paused, brimming with glee; I braced myself.”Another maid!”