A Song Unheard Read online

  “Yes.” She wasn’t sure why—it shouldn’t, not given the stack of pound notes. But it would be helpful to know who she was up against, wouldn’t it? If he were a spy, a trained one who carried around encoding devices . . . Well, that wasn’t just her average mark. He could be dangerous.

  Mr. V chuckled. “No, my dear. He is not a spy. It is simply that his father had been doing work in the field of cryptography—coding and codebreaking. It is said he developed a cypher machine that could revolutionize the field. The Crown is very interested in procuring this machine, and finding this small device that Lukas De Wilde always carries with him is the first step.” He lifted his silver brows. “Satisfied?”

  She nodded. Aside from recognizing the thing, it shouldn’t be too hard. Get into his room, snoop around. If all went well, it would take only a few days. At worst, a week or two. Although if he literally carried it on him, that would require getting close to him.

  Willa Forsythe, rubbing elbows with a world-renowned violinist. With Lukas De Wilde.

  She’d probably wake up tomorrow and find it all a dream.

  He clasped his hands behind his back and eased a step away. “Time is of the essence. I’ve already made arrangements for your transport to Wales on Monday. Take tomorrow to get what you need to convince the world you are a gentleman’s daughter off for a holiday with friends. Memorize the information I’ve provided. Have you any questions?”

  Of course she had—the leading one being why he didn’t just ask the man for this key, for the machine itself, if it was so important. And if he was not a spy for Germany. But she knew enough of her employer to guess that he wouldn’t provide those answers. She had already pushed him for more of an explanation than she’d honestly expected him to give.

  It wasn’t her business anyway. She nodded and slipped the envelope into her handbag. “Consider it done, sir.”

  His nod said the meeting was over, so she stood, angling toward home while he turned in the opposite direction.

  Her thoughts were a whirl as she hurried for the tube, as she rode the familiar train through the familiar tunnels, as she bustled toward her familiar little flat in dismal Poplar with its water-stained walls and rickety stairs. They could perhaps get something a little nicer, now that they had the payment from the last big job for Mr. V. But there was nothing better around here, and they never went more than a few blocks from Pauly’s pub.

  It was home.

  And frankly, they could none of them square the thought of not being strapped. It was too new. Too unbelievable. And depending on how this job went, it could very well not last. So why get used to it?

  She unlocked the door to the rooms she shared with Elinor and little Olivia, though she found the flat empty when she stepped inside. Rosemary had once lived in this bare little space with them too. Another something she couldn’t square—that her oldest sister, her oldest friend, wouldn’t be living here anymore. Wouldn’t be a part of their world.

  She was happy that Rosie was happy—she was. But sometimes it still cut. Was their life so bad that she could abandon it without a backward glance?

  Willa looked around at the drab space, bare and ugly. They always had to be ready to move at the first sniff of the police, so their decorations were few. Their furniture all rented with the flat. A transient, temporary life.

  No, she couldn’t blame Rosemary for wanting something better. She just couldn’t quite believe she’d found a way to get it.

  Never mind all that though. Shaking it off, Willa deposited the envelope and pinched wallet in one of her hidey-holes, grabbed her violin, and rushed back into the dusk.

  She could smell the food cooking at Pauly’s from the end of the street, and it put more speed in her step. Another minute and she was pushing through those familiar doors, into the domain of the man who was the closest thing to a father she’d ever known.

  Pauly was disappearing into the back as she walked in, but he turned at the sound of the door and lifted a hand in warm greeting.

  She didn’t need a father anyway. Not so long as she had Pauly there, willing to play the part. Willing to love the ragtag bunch of street urchins he’d helped stitch together.

  It was early yet, so the pub had only a few neighbors in it—and the family. None of them shared a drop of blood, but the bonds between them were all the stronger for being born of need rather than chance. They were at their usual table, the little ones all sandwiched between the older ones. She smiled to see Rosemary there, bending over Olivia to help her retie the ribbon on her braid.

  Rosie would be leaving tomorrow, traveling to Cornwall with half the family, all of them who were twelve or under. It would do them all good to get out of London.

  Still. London wasn’t the same when all her family wasn’t in it.

  Then again, Willa wouldn’t be in it either by Monday. Making sure her smile stayed bright, she bustled over to the people she loved best in the world. “Getting an early start tonight, are we?”

  “And an early start tomorrow.” Cressida, the oldest of the children going southwest in the morning, leapt up and greeted Willa with a mighty squeeze. “I’m so excited! I’ve never seen anything but London!”

  Chuckling, Willa squeezed her back. “You’ll have a grand time. Be sure to mind Rosie and—”

  “We know, Will.” Cressida added a roll of her eyes for good measure.

  Little Nigel, the second youngest of their crew at seven, was bouncing on his seat. “I don’t want supper. I want to go home to bed so it’ll be tomorrow.”

  Willa chuckled and slid her violin case onto the floor under her chair. She looked over to the oldest of them—Barclay lifted a brow in silent question.

  She nodded. “I have today’s wages for you at home. And the meeting with Mr. V went well. I’ll be going to Wales in a couple days.”

  Retta, blond hair smoothed back in some new style of chignon that made her look far more elegant than usual, leaned forward. “Wales? Whatever is in Wales?”

  The words—those beautiful words—nearly stuck in Willa’s throat as she sat. “A symphony orchestra. Made up of Belgian refugees, apparently, who are touring to raise money for the Belgian Relief Fund.”

  Lucy’s mouth fell open, her dark, almond-shaped eyes going wide in her dusky face. “An orchestra! No wonder he came to you. You’ll have a marvelous time, Willa!”

  She would. Though truth be told, she’d never been away from the family for more than a few days. And never alone.

  Across from her, Rosemary grinned. “I daresay I won’t be able to convince you to come with us to Cornwall, then. I was going to try again.”

  That cut burned. It was good, what her sister was doing—taking the little ones for some fresh air and solid meals. She was, as they had always done, sharing freely what she’d found for herself.

  So why did it feel like a betrayal? Like she was abandoning them all? Still, it was Rosie. Her oldest, truest friend. Willa leaned back in her chair. “You might have succeeded, if it weren’t for this.” She craned her neck around for evidence of Pauly’s return. “Does he need help bringing the food out?” She’d eat first. Then she’d play.

  “Nah, he said it would just be another minute or two.” Barclay folded his hands over his flat stomach and surveyed the crowded table. “Our last night all together for a while. I’m glad you brought your violin, Will.”

  “Oh! The challenge.” Grinning, Retta scooted forward on her chair. “I’ve just got it!”

  Willa breathed a laugh—given that introduction, she had a feeling their little game was about to turn her way. “Now wait just a minute—I’m still not satisfied that you managed the one Rosie gave you. It isn’t exactly stealing a train when you show up with a miniature in your pocket.”

  Retta’s grin didn’t dim. “She didn’t say how big, did she? But trust me, I’ll be more precise. You, Willa Forsythe, must steal . . .”

  As usual, everyone around the table drummed their fingers against the smooth, worn w
ood, laughter punctuating their percussion.

  Retta slapped a hand to the table, silencing the finger drums. “Music.”

  Willa blinked. “Music.”

  “Music—original music, never before heard by the public. I want to see a score—that’s what it’s called, right?—that has never been seen before by anyone but the composer.”

  Not quite as impossible as some of the things they challenged each other to lift. Not given where Willa was going. “Retta, that’s hardly even a challenge. I’d barely even be able to call myself the best when I do that.”

  Retta’s blue eyes didn’t look at all uncertain. “I know for a fact most musicians aren’t composers. And symphonies mostly play tried-and-true pieces, right? Betcha it’ll be a far cry harder than you’re thinking.”

  She may have a point. But surely someone among the Belgian orchestra composed something. Right? It would be a simple matter of finding out who. And seeing their work. Then taking their work. After making sure no one else had ever heard it.

  Perhaps not quite so simple. But she pushed away from the table. “Piece of cake. I’ll play it for you when I get home. But for now . . .”

  Dinner could wait. She bent down, grabbed her violin case, and extracted the precious bits of wood and string. Amid the whooping and clapping of her family, she climbed onto the box of a stage Pauly had built for her. Lifted her bow. Closed her eyes. Called to mind that melody the violins had been singing from the practice chambers that afternoon, letting it fill her head until it spilled out into her veins and traveled to her fingers.

  And she played.

  Two

  Aberystwyth, Wales

  The throb in his shoulder was a palpable thing. Lukas De Wilde didn’t just feel the ache as he lowered his bow and gritted his teeth, fingers digging into the dense wood of his Stradivarius’s neck. He tasted it—wine gone sour. He smelled it—metallic and hot. He saw it—grey edges to a world once colored.

  As a boy, he had spent many an hour of practice staring with more longing out of his window than at his études. Even so, he had never been more glad for a practice to end than today.

  Now he had only to make it back to his rented room without collapsing. And then to rid his mind’s eye of that image of the garden outside his music room’s window. The garden that was now a heap of rubble, smoking and smoldering still in his mind as it had been when he saw it a fortnight ago. His house—his father’s house—destroyed.

  But empty. If his lips had remembered how to pray, he would have offered a praise to heaven for that. Or perhaps a plea. Because he didn’t know what it had meant that it had been empty, whether it was a good sign or a bad.

  He hadn’t found them on the road between Louvain and Brussels. Nor in Brussels. Not before the world collapsed upon him.

  His colleagues were all standing, murmuring in English flavored with French or Flemish. A few of them who didn’t speak English well would interrupt themselves with a huff and switch to their native tongue. Their friends would provide the needed English and answer in the words of their host land.

  Another day—week, month, lifetime—it might have amused him, this polite insistence upon speaking English, even when there were no Englishmen in the room to hear it. Today, with the echoes of pain reverberating in his ears, he could not manage it. Careful to keep his right arm immobile, he stood.

  Jules stood there in front of him, frowning. When had he even approached? He carried his cello with the ease of one whose arm was not screaming in hot, sour pain. But his eyes spewed hot, sour accusations. “You promised you would not push yourself too hard.”

  Lukas sidestepped his friend and turned to the wall. His case. The first step toward leaving and walking out into that still-unfamiliar street, to go to his not-his-own rooms. “It was only a practice. If that is ‘too hard’ then I had better tell our patronesses now that I am worthless to them and be sacked.”

  Jules muttered in that way of his. The one that had absolutely no discernable words in any given language, but a rather close resemblance to many in several that would have earned him a tongue-lashing from his mother. Or, for that matter, from Lukas’s mother.

  No. Best not to think about Mère until he was somewhere he could crumble in peace.

  Jules elbowed his way past a cluster of nattering woodwind players to keep pace with him. He shot a glance back at the flautists though. There were a few young women in the bunch, and on another day, Lukas would have turned to see which had caught Jules’s eye. But not today. And his friend soon redirected his attention anyway. “You’re not even moving your arm. I can call the doctor again when we get back—”

  “To what purpose?” The doctor would just give him that same impossible advice again. Rest your arm. Do not play the violin for several weeks, until the wound has healed.

  He might as well have said, Swim the Channel and then fly to Brussels under your own power.

  Lukas stopped in front of his case and bent down to open it. He couldn’t contain the wince when he had to move his right arm—but he averted his face so Jules wouldn’t see it.

  Jules apparently didn’t need to see it. “Then perhaps you should heed their original advice. A week or two of not playing will not lose you your place here. You know that as well as I do.”

  Perhaps it wouldn’t actually inspire the Davies sisters to sack him—but they were getting paid per performance, with only a bare stipend between for living expenses. He had to perform on the weekends. And he had to, therefore, practice in between.

  He could probably sneak back into Belgium with little more than the tuppence in his pocket, but getting back out again with Mère and Margot would require cash enough to line the pockets of whoever saw them, not to mention purchasing the actual passage—likely on some rusted fishing boat that could still escape the harbor at Antwerp without arousing German suspicion. And then he would have to set up his family in some quiet, out-of-the-way hamlet where they’d go unnoticed by English and Germans alike.

  He set his violin into the molded case that fit it perfectly. Then moved the bow to its place. Blast, but it felt heavier than obligation. How could sixty grams be so hard to lift?

  To Jules’s observation about his position here he made no reply.

  Another something his friend didn’t need. Jules’s sigh was as fraught with meaning as his muttering. “How long will you be angry with me?”

  Forever. Or until he knew where Mère and Margot were. “Why would you think I am angry with you?”

  Jules crouched down too and flung his cello’s case open with far less care than usual. “Would you just shout at me? Rant and rail as you usually do? I cannot handle this ice, mon ami. It is unlike you. It worries me.”

  Lukas closed his case, fastened it, and stood with it in his left hand. “There is nothing to rant about. You saved my life.” And he couldn’t forgive him for it until he knew it hadn’t cost his mother and sister theirs.

  Jules stood a moment later, his dark eyes flashing behind his spectacles. “You would have done the same had our situations been reversed. I looked for them—I did. But had I left you there, you would have died. Could you have found them, do you think, if you were dead?”

  Rolling his eyes, Lukas turned away. Toward the orchestra hall door and the afternoon that stretched before him. He wouldn’t have died in the streets. He had woken on the boat, hadn’t he? He would have done the same had Jules left him at his Brussels home. Woken and found them and gotten them all to safety, not just himself.

  But while he usually enjoyed a good, rousing row, he couldn’t fight with his friend about this. Not this.

  He angled for the door.

  Muttering another almost-curse, Jules dogged his steps. “Hit me, if you like. Yell at me. Do something other than ignoring me.”

  “Do not be an idiot, Jules.” His shoulder shot fire all the way down to his fingertips. It streaked down his back. If he listened, he could hear it galloping through his veins, pounding like the timpani. E
ach pulse was an echo of those German shouts that had battered him seconds before the bullet had found his shoulder.

  Commotion at the door brought his gaze back into focus and his feet to a sudden stop. He looked up, but too late. Too late to wheel around and melt into the crowd of musicians. And he was too close to the door for the women coming in not to have spotted him immediately.

  Spot him they did, the moment they came through the door. He had done a fine job of avoiding Gwendoline and Margaret Davies thus far, and he had intended to continue the practice. One of their representatives had made him this offer—safety, the chance to raise money for the Belgian Relief Fund, in exchange for coming here to Wales and touring with this orchestra.

  He wasn’t so sure it was another of their representatives who had made him the other offer. But he wasn’t about to take any chances. If they had anything to do with the man who had introduced himself as V, then he wanted nothing to do with them.

  With their gazes latched upon him, though, he had little choice but to smile and pretend his arm didn’t hurt. Pretend he was still the same man he’d been a month ago, before the world turned inside out. The man who would have been quite happy to make their acquaintance.

  The sisters exchanged greetings with those closest to the door, but he was quite clearly their aim. They maneuvered toward him quickly, always blocking his path to the door. Not that he was rude enough to go around. Though today, he rather wanted to.

  Only when one of the sisters stood before him, a bashful smile curving her lips and a hand outstretched, did it occur to him that he quite literally couldn’t be polite without pain. He had to concentrate fully on not moaning and grimacing as he lifted his right arm to receive her hand, to bend over it. “Miss Davies. A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”

  “Mr. De Wilde. What an honor. We saw you in Paris some time ago, when you were touring as a soloist.” Miss Davies—he wasn’t sure which Miss Davies—turned to her sister. “It was Paris, wasn’t it, Daisy? Or was it Rome?”

  “Rome, yes. We then went to Paris to buy a few pictures.” The other Miss Davies—Daisy, though he hadn’t thought that one of their names—stepped forward and offered her hand as her sister reclaimed hers.