Shadow Duet Read online

  Shadow Duet

  A Masks and Shadows Short Story

  Stephanie Burgis

  Five Fathoms Press

  Contents

  Shadow Duet

  Afterword

  Congress of Secrets

  About the Author

  Dedicated to Galina Krasskova, with thanks

  Shadow Duet

  “So you’re the one.” Laughter glittered at the edges of Lady Bramwell’s voice as she looked Baroness Charlotte von Steinbeck up and down, from Charlotte’s smoothly upswept and powdered hair to her sedate dark blue silk gown, trimmed with silver. “Signor Morelli’s...dear friend.”

  Charlotte bit her tongue hard enough to burn as she forced a polite smile for her hostess. She had hoped to stay secluded for now in this darkened corner of the crowded salon, but Lady Bramwell had unexpectedly sought her out, accompanied by a far younger gentleman, dripping in diamond rings and lace, who appeared to be hanging on his hostess’s every word. “Your Ladyship,” Charlotte said, dipping a curtsey. “How kind of you to invite me.”

  “Oh, well…” More bright jewels flashed on Lady Bramwell’s fingers, catching the candlelight as she waved one languid hand. “They say the Signor accepts no invitations which don’t include you, so…” She traded a knowing glance with her companion. “We could hardly invite one without the other, could we, Laurington?”

  “Not if we had a taste for music,” said the young man, and smirked in a way that made Charlotte’s fingers tighten on her silk overskirt. “Calls you his favorite accompanist, don’t he? I can certainly see why. But I never heard of a baroness performing with a castrato before. At least…” His smirk deepened. “Not in public.”

  “Naughty man.” Lady Bramwell tittered and tapped his arm with her fan. “So fascinating, though, these Continental titles. One never knows exactly what they mean, does one?”

  Charlotte released her skirts as she straightened. “Mine, your Ladyship,” she said in the careful English that she had learned in months of tutoring, “means that my late husband was the Baron von Steinbeck. His estate lies in Saxony.”

  And—although she would never be so rude as to say so—in the days when she had been the proper young wife of Ernst von Steinbeck, she would never have dreamed of accepting any invitation to Lady Bramwell’s overcrowded and luridly pink salon, with its garish ornamentation and distinctly louche atmosphere...even had she ever imagined traveling so far from the safety of the German lands.

  But as it was…

  A stir across the room drew her eye, and the tension in her shoulders eased for the first time that evening. There: the reason she had left her family, her reputation, and what many would have termed her honor behind.

  “Good heavens.” A hiss of air escaped through Lady Bramwell’s teeth as she lowered her glass of ratafia. “The rumors didn’t exaggerate after all. You can tell just by looking at him, can’t you?”

  Charlotte didn’t bother to reply as Europe’s most famous castrato strode across the crowded room toward her, a path clearing naturally in his way. Carlo Morelli had been commanding the stages of Europe since his teens. The English nobility and their hangers-on could hardly stand a chance against his forceful presence now…even if more than a few of the widened eyes and whispers that surrounded him were filled with prurient curiosity.

  His shining black hair stood out in a room full of towering wigs and hair powdered white; his height would have attracted notice in any crowd; but she knew it was his smooth, hairless cheeks, with their startlingly feminine curves, that the English aristocrats were staring at and gossiping over now.

  He was so used to it that he took no notice; she should have felt the same, by now. But nearly eighteen months after their first meeting, every new whisper still made her spine clench a little more tightly with fury on his behalf.

  “Long live the little knife, eh?” murmured Lady Bramwell. She swept forward in a rustle of skirts, holding out one hand with imperious expectation. “Signor Morelli! How kind of you to honor our little gathering. I must introduce you—”

  “Madam.” Accepting her offered hand, Carlo bowed over it with peerless grace. “I thank you, but no. Perhaps later.” Leaving her gaping after him, he released her gloved fingers and took his final stride to stand before Charlotte, his fingers closing warmly around her own and his high, pure voice sinking into her skin like sunlight. “Forgive me for not being able to escort you here tonight, Baroness. Rehearsal was extended for an unconscionable length of time, and—”

  “I received your note.” Charlotte had been trained all her life to hide her emotions in public; still, she couldn’t resist giving his strong fingers a small, discreet squeeze as she searched his face and saw the lines of unmistakable exhaustion around his dark eyes. “You needn’t worry over me,” she murmured. “I knew you would be much occupied during this trip.”

  “Oh, no!” Lady Bramwell let out a high trill of laughter, moving closer to them with a waft of intense rose-scented perfume. “You needn’t fear for her, Signor. No, we found your little friend hiding in her corner and kept her well entertained until your appearance!”

  Carlo’s fingers tightened around Charlotte’s as his face stiffened into regal hauteur. “I thank you, Madam, but now I’m afraid I must consult privately with my accompanist for a moment.”

  “Of course.” Looking disappointed, Lady Bramwell turned away.

  Her companion’s voice drifted back to them, hardly even lowered. “If ‘consulting’ is what they call it in Italy—!”

  Charlotte forced her own jaw to relax as the two burst into unhidden laughter and Carlo’s eyes took on a dangerous gleam. “Enough,” she murmured softly. “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Carlo drew her back to the corner where she’d stood before, half sheltered by a tall, potted tropical plant that looked nearly as exotic in the English salon as he did himself. “If she’s been treating you to such blatant disrespect all evening—”

  “Only for the past few minutes.” She forced lightness into her tone, withdrawing her hand gently to maintain a proper space between them even as his warmth and his open concern tugged at her. “I was well protected in this corner until then, as our hostess pointed out.”

  His face darkened. “If I’d known when I accepted this night’s invitation—”

  “Oh, Carlo!” It had been a long and wearisome evening in a long and difficult trip; and now, past her lover’s shoulder, Charlotte glimpsed Lady Bramwell well enmeshed in a group of chattering friends, all gazing their way with openly salacious interest. For the first time since their arrival in England, her finely tuned self-control slipped from her grip. “What on earth did you expect from it?”

  Carlo drew back a fraction of an inch, his brown eyes narrowing. He might have been intensely occupied with his own challenges on this trip, but no one had ever accused Charlotte’s lover of being less than dangerously perceptive; it was why she’d had to fight so hard in these past weeks to keep her feelings hidden from him.

  All of that effort, it was clear, had just been wasted. “Charlotte,” he began.

  “You needn’t worry over it. Truly. Please, forget I said anything.” With an effort, Charlotte pulled her wayward emotions into check. The rules of social conduct held her perfectly upright, her expression as smooth as decades of aristocratic training could make it, even as sick chagrin at her own misstep coiled in her belly.

  What was the point of venting her embarrassment and frustration upon Carlo, of all people? He was her dearest friend and the source of more joy than she could ever have imagined before meeting him. It was hardly his fault that she sometimes struggled to bear the social ostracism she’d chosen with her eyes wide open. She said now, holding his too-discerning gaze steady, �
��I knew the risks ahead when we first decided upon this.”

  Their original dream of a settled home in Naples had met ice-cold water immediately upon their arrival, when Carlo’s younger brothers had greeted them both with badly disguised horror. Apparently, the fortune that Carlo had sent home to his family over the years to set them up comfortably in respectable society had been rather more appreciated when not accompanied by their notorious brother’s actual presence...particularly when accompanied by the scandal of his live-in mistress.

  Vienna had been even less palatable an option, with Charlotte’s powerful and infuriated family in residence and seething over the disgrace she had brought to their ancient name. A discreet connection between a widow and a castrato might be briefly tolerated when kept safely behind closed doors; an open love affair was an unforgivable attack upon their family honor.

  England, at least, was blissfully free of all disapproving relations—and in England, shockingly enough, castrati had even been allowed to marry in the not-so-distant past, under the far laxer laws of their national church. For all the inconveniences of its language and its distance, it had held enticing possibilities for a couple in need of acceptance—at least until they had finally arrived two weeks earlier.

  Carlo himself, of course, was an agreed wonder of nature, fêted every bit as intensely as he was gossiped about in the national papers; Charlotte, on the other hand...

  Well, a fallen woman was the same all the world over, apparently. Charlotte’s first sighting of one of her own caricatures on display in a London printseller’s window had been quite enough to teach her what to expect in her social reception.

  The power and purity of Carlo’s voice, when raised, could thrill theater-goers a full seven flights up from any stage; it dropped now to a whisper that couldn’t hide his pain. “If you’ve begun to regret—”

  “Morelli!” A man’s jovial voice interrupted them. “I thought that was you! I haven’t seen you in years, not since you sang at the Haymarket.”

  Frustration creased Carlo’s face for only an instant; then he assumed his cool public smile and turned. That smile eased and became real to Charlotte’s eyes as he met the other man’s gaze. “Gainsborough! You’ve pulled yourself away from the palace for once?”

  The other man, gray-haired and hearty in a plain brown coat, beamed up at him with unmistakable good nature. “Oh, they let me out from time to time,” he said. “I know they’re mad to have you back, though, whenever you can fit the poor royals into your busy schedule. And this must be...?”

  “Baroness von Steinbeck,” Carlo supplied in ringing tones, “my dear friend and best accompanist. Baroness, may I present Thomas Gainsborough, favored portraitist of the British royal family?”

  Charlotte smiled politely even as she braced herself for insult...

  But Gainsborough’s smile was unaffected as he reached out to take her hand. “Baroness.” He bowed, his clasp firm. “I am glad to see you here tonight. Our Signor Morelli, I think, has spent far too much time alone over the years.”

  We both have, Charlotte thought, her chest warming as she met the open kindness in the artist’s gaze.

  Her own isolation—beginning with her early marriage to an elderly stranger in a foreign nation, the match arranged to suit her family’s political ends—might have arisen for different reasons than Carlo’s had; still, the artist’s words were a perfectly-timed reminder: she’d spent years feeling alone even in company before she had ever heard of Carlo Morelli.

  The greatest difference nowadays—the nigh-on miraculous difference—was that tonight, unlike those other nights in the past when she’d suffered through endless social evenings, she would be going home afterwards to the sole and perfect companionship of her love, and of course—her cheeks heated irrepressibly at the thought of it—the warmth and revelatory delight of their shared bed.

  And the conversations before and afterward, intimate and unrestrained, free of all social masks and conventional rules...not to mention the music they made together, both in private and in public...

  What matter was a wearisome evening, by contrast?

  Beside her, Carlo gave a deprecatory laugh. “If you knew how crowded every theater is backstage...”

  But Charlotte nodded at Gainsborough with real warmth, accepting the connection he had offered. “It is a deep honor to meet you, sir. I’ve admired mezzotints of your work, of course—I’ve never seen such marvelous blends of portraiture and landscape.”

  “Well then!” Gainsborough gave her a cheerfully speculative look as he released her gloved hand. “I must say, I am delighted to hear you say that, Baroness. Because I confess, I could quite easily see you in a forest bower.”

  “Mm.” Carlo’s lips quirked as he shifted closer, the embroidered purple sleeve of his elaborate evening coat brushing teasingly against the wide, hooped skirts of her gown. “Garbed as Titania, perhaps? I could imagine—”

  “I think not.” Charlotte gave her mischievous lover a minatory look before giving the artist an apologetic smile. “No, Mr. Gainsborough, I’m afraid we couldn’t possibly commission you for any such picture, no matter how pleasing to the eye it might be.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t require any commission for it,” Gainsborough said easily. “I do my own work from time to time, you know, for display at the Academy and other private galleries—Morelli can tell you all about that, as I had the privilege of painting him, too, on his last visit. And I believe it could be quite a popular piece in mezzotint form as well—I know all the printsellers would certainly stock it! Might as well make the best of your current fame, eh?”

  Charlotte winced, her smile fading.

  Carlo cleared his throat. “And are you here with Mrs. Gainsborough tonight?”

  “Alas, no.” Gainsborough sighed with mock-chagrin. “She’s chosen our grown daughters’ company over my own this evening, I fear. A shocking betrayal of her wedding vows! But she claims she’s been shepherded around quite enough hot drawing rooms over the years for my sake, smiling through her teeth at too many noblemen with clammy hands. Now she insists upon a quiet night at home with the family now and then...and I can’t say I truly blame her.”

  He gestured toward the far corner of the room. “Still, we have plenty of good friends assembled here tonight, working for their own bread and ale among their betters. Why don’t you two come and grace us with your presence—unless you need to do more meeting and greeting of your own first?”

  Charlotte felt Carlo’s glance touch on her. She kept her face carefully expressionless, conscious of his professional obligations...but deep relief sank through her as he replied, “We should be delighted.”

  In all the evenings they’d spent in company in the past two weeks, she’d met aristocrats of every sort, officious theatrical managers who’d ignored her, and a few famous female singers who’d taken pains to make it clear that they had no time to spare for a mere accompanist hanger-on...but she’d never before been greeted with the sheer friendliness of the motley group of portrait and history artists in the corner, an assemblage which included more than one woman among its numbers.

  “You must have heard of the great Angelika Kauffman, of course.” Mr. Gainsborough led Charlotte to a seated woman of about forty with an appealing face and warm brown eyes. “Miss Kauffman is our sole female member of the Royal Academy, you know, and astoundingly gifted—apart, of course, from her abominable taste in friends.”

  “Hmm,” said Miss Kauffman, and gave the older man a repressive look, apparently answering some private jest. But her smile looked sincere as she took Charlotte’s hand and drew her down to the couch beside her. “I am pleased to meet you, Baroness. It is so rare for me to have the chance to speak German again—would you do me the honor of visiting my studio in Soho soon, so that I may keep in regular practice?”

  Charlotte blinked. “Why...I’d be delighted to.”

  She’d never met a professional woman artist before, nor had she ever received such
an unconventional invitation, but the idea—unexpected and surprisingly charming—continued to turn itself over in her head as she and Miss Kauffman conversed upon music and several other topics over the next quarter of an hour, all with increasing pleasure and agreement.

  To visit a male painter’s studio, of course, she would require a proper escort...but a woman’s? That was something she could easily do with only a maid to keep her company.

  She’d never seen a working artist’s studio. And the very idea of experiencing agreeable female companionship again for the first time since her fall from social grace—moving out and about in the world, conversing with interesting and unconventional other women, rather than waiting alone and isolated in all those endless hours when Carlo was occupied with rehearsals and meetings at the opera house...

  “...Oh, and I must introduce you to my student Miss Bigelow, too, once she’s finally won her latest debate.” Miss Kauffman gestured to a younger woman who sat nearby with a flamboyant red ribbon wound about her powdered hair, gesturing vigorously in support of her own heated arguments. “And of course this”—she tilted her head—“is my very good friend and fellow artist, Signor Zucchi.”

  “Sir.” Charlotte nodded politely as a nondescript man nearby broke off his own conversation to bow to her.

  “Madam.” His voice was quiet, and his smile flashed only briefly across what appeared to be a habitually grave expression; but the smile itself looked perfectly genuine. Charlotte did not miss the warmth in his gaze as it passed over Miss Kauffman; nor was she blind to the way the two artists instinctively leaned closer to each other as their eyes met.

  “I beg your pardon, Baroness.” Carlo had been involved in a separate conversation with Gainsborough and two other men, but now he leaned down to offer Charlotte his arm. “The time has come, I am afraid, to make our own public statement. Would you mind accompanying me for a brief aria?”