Let it be Me (Blue Raven) (24 page)

Understanding dawned on Bridget, and she submitted herself quietly after that. Once her chest was bound down to an unappealing, and constricting, flatness, Veronica handed Bridget the three-quarter-length coat and motioned for her to put it on. Apparently the costume did not have a shirtwaist to go under it, but as the collar of the shirt was high and the coat sleeves were edged in lace, no one would know the difference from the stage. Veronica reached over to her little table, where a powdered wig from the last century, with side curls and a little bow at the back, rested.

“But my hairstyle!” Bridget protested. It would be impossible to get back to its original style. This was all wrong. She could not go out there with her hair as it was, set into an intricate updo with braids and side curls that had taken Molly nearly an hour to perfect. She would be recognized, no matter what Oliver said . . . she would be recognized and she would fail, and there were hundreds of people out there, and she was meant to accompany Carlos and Dominic in a routine with a piece she had not practiced with any regularity in the past months, all of her time taken up with the No. 23, and—

Apparently, Veronica could see some of Bridget’s mounting hysteria finally catching up with her, because she leaned forward and gripped Bridget’s hand, hard. So hard that the pain distracted her from her train of thought.

“We will fix the hair after—I promise,” Veronica said clearly, calmly, holding Bridget’s gaze in hers. “Now, turn.”

Bridget did as she was bid and let Veronica place the wig on her head, stuffing up her coiffure underneath it.

“I used to fix hair, you know. When I was in chorus. It will be fine,” Veronica was saying. “That was where Signor Oliver spot me. I was in chorus. Then I sing for him, and he say, ‘Bruno! Veronica should have role!’ Now, I am diva.” Veronica moved around to face Bridget again. “I do anything for Signor Oliver for that. Dress you as boy, play Auntie . . . and he do anything for you.”

“I don’t know about that,” Bridget mused, uncertain. “Besides, you are the one doing me the favor. I’m not imposing, am I? On your preparation for tonight?” Veronica gave her a quizzical look, and Bridget knew she had spoken too quickly. She repeated the question in the best broken Italian she could manage.

Veronica snorted in reply. “No—it is Herr Klein’s opera. Five hours of music, much singing for tenor and baritone, but soprano? Not so much.” She turned Bridget around and began to adjust the wig from the front. “I am Calypso, lead, and I have one aria in act three. One!” Then her eyes met Bridget’s, slyly. “And why you not so sure—about Signor Oliver? I am very sure for you.”

“Herr Klein?” Bridget asked, fear lancing through her. “Is he here?”

“No—the composer does not come to every performance”—Veronica shook her head—“and you did not answer, Signorina.”

“Oh . . .” Bridget replied, turning redder than she liked. “I know that he
likes
me . . . but I don’t know
how
he likes me.” Veronica gave her that uncomprehending look again, so Bridget tried a different tack. “He likes me as a person, but he . . . we hadn’t had the opportunity to be alone in weeks and when the chance came he kissed me on the forehead, like my father would.”

Veronica’s eyebrow went up, muttering something under her breath in Italian—the only words of which Bridget managed to catch were
men
and
idiot
.

“Signorina, you come to me for advice, so I will give to you. Oliver, he likes you. Very much. More than he knows. But if he treat you as child? You must make him see you as woman.”

And with that, Veronica took a
bauta
carnival mask, with the stern male face, and slipped it over her head. Bridget could see well enough out of the eyeholes, so she could see Veronica’s smile as she said, “But that is for later. Now you must play.”

“And so the entire Trojan horse is only three pieces of thin board?” Amanda was saying from the wings of the stage, where she had cornered Bruno, the theatre’s manager, who was being incredibly patient with the youthful curiosity in front of him and confined his annoyed comments to Italian, so only Oliver could hear them when he played translator for all of Amanda’s unending questions. He was about to distract Amanda to see if she was ready to return to her seat, when he heard it. Laughter from the audience. And underneath it, a pianoforte.

It was Bach. It was Bridget.

She was playing, and playing well, judging by the way the crowd laughed and cheered at the right times with the routine’s bigger moments. Most people did not pay all that much attention to the opening acts—indeed, most of fashionable Venice would not even have arrived yet—but the crowd that was there was enjoying the performance.

Oliver wandered away from Amanda and Bruno, edging his way to the front of the wings, where he could see.

She was there. Not in the spotlight, like Carlos and Dominic, but there all the same. On the stage, and playing Bach with verve and grace. And in front of a few hundred people besides.

Something curious shot through Oliver as he watched her in that decidedly interesting costume, her back to him, as her arms worked the length of the keys, her head occasionally coming up to make sure the similarly masked and costumed jugglers were on beat with her.

She was doing it, she had no fear, and he was so proud. But some little part of him was bereft at the idea that she would not need his encouragement, his lessons for much longer.

But that was not what mattered in that moment. So Oliver let himself watch, and let her playing wash over him, joining with the crowd in enjoying the show.

Returning the ladies to their seats as the curtain was coming up on the first act of Klein’s operatic
Odyssey
was not as difficult as expected. In fact, Oliver had managed to wrangle Amanda and get her back to her seat while Bridget was still changing back from her boy costume to herself. Once Amanda had exhausted the stage manager Bruno with her questions, she didn’t have much to do backstage anyway. Although, she seemed oddly satisfied to simply hang about and occupy Oliver.

“So . . .” she had begun, “what is taking my sister so long?”

“I do not pretend to know the performing secrets of Veronica Franzetti, or how long it takes to impart them,” Oliver ventured, as he squeezed back against the narrow hallway to allow a retinue of ballet dancers through so they could change into costume. Bridget had darted back into Veronica’s dressing room after the jugglers took their bows and had not yet emerged. Luckily Amanda’s attention had been drawn to something Oliver had pointed to in the other direction at that moment. “If you like I can escort you back to your seat and come back for your sister.”

“Well, that would defeat the purpose,” Amanda replied pertly.

“What purpose?” he asked.

“Why, playing chaperone to you two.” She cocked her head to one side and, for a moment, looked uncannily like her shorter, more freckled sister. “You do need a chaperone, don’t you? She has not said as such, but I have a feeling she’s been leaving things out of our conversations. Such as how she calls you Oliver.”

Damn, but were all the Forrester girls so observant?

Before Oliver could appreciate his opponent’s canniness, he was knocked back against the wall of the narrow corridor again; this time Amanda was squeezed up against her own wall, too. All to accommodate a passing shop facade that had to be moved to the other side of the stage before the curtain went up.

And Oliver had seen his opportunity.

“Miss Amanda, this really will not do. We cannot simply linger in this busy thoroughfare; I insist on taking you back to your seat.”

Pert Amanda fell away, leaving sixteen-year-old Amanda, who knew little how to argue with such a command. Therefore he managed to get her back to her mother in her box before having to answer any of the child’s eerily on-target probes.

When he returned to Veronica’s door, he let himself in after a perfunctory knock. There, he found Bridget having pins stuffed into her hair by a hasty Veronica.

“Come, we haven’t much time,” he said, holding out his hand to her. “The curtain is about to go up and your mother will grow suspicious.”

“What about my sister?” she asked.

“She is already suspicious,” Oliver replied drolly. “But she is back in her seat.”

“
Uno momento
,” Veronica said, putting a final pin in Bridget’s dark curls.

Bridget quickly examined the diva’s work in the mirror. “It looks nothing like it did,” she murmured, “but at least it is respectable.”

“Bridget, if your mother could not tell me apart from Veronica in an old woman’s costume, then she will likely not notice your hair,” Oliver remarked, impatient now. “Come, we must go back.”

“
Grazie
, for everything,” Bridget said, embracing Veronica. For her part, Veronica pulled back and smiled enigmatically at Bridget.

“Do not forget advice,” she replied. Then Oliver could take no more waiting and pulled Bridget out the door.

He had moved quickly out of necessity, but part of him wanted to linger for just a bit, knowing that this was as alone with Bridget as he was likely to get for the rest of the evening.

Then again, he was about to be surprised by her for a second time that night.

“You played very well,” he whispered to her as they darted through the backstage corridors. “I was quite proud of you. You were in no way nervous?”

“My heart is still pounding from the experience. I confess, I did not have much time to be nervous,” Bridget replied on a blush. “But I think that was the idea behind the exercise.”

“Maybe,” Oliver replied with a smile. “Perhaps I simply thought having a performance under your belt would be worth your while.”

“Or perhaps you wanted to see me in breeches and stockings?” she asked, her tone shifting into something new. It was frank, alluring. And it piqued Oliver’s interest.

“Actually, I had no idea what costume Veronica had picked for you. You could have been in a druid shroud, for all I knew about it.” He turned to her. They had crossed the threshold from the backstage to the front of the house, where fashionable people milled in the ornate entryway, seeing and being seen before retiring to their boxes for the performance. Oliver slowed his pace and released Bridget’s hand, forcing himself to a more decorous distance. His voice, however, was everything that was intimate. “It was a happy benefit, however, to find you otherwise attired.”

“I’m so pleased,” Bridget replied, her gaze unwavering, knowing. “You do know how to arrange a surprise for a lady, don’t you?”

“I suppose . . .” he replied, careful to keep his gaze straight ahead as they walked genteelly toward their box for the evening.

“I am afraid I must beg one more arrangement of you.” She turned to him, serious.

“Of course,” he replied automatically, his brow coming down.

“You will be returning us to the hotel after the performance tonight, correct?” she asked, a little quaver in her voice betraying the nerves behind the boldness.

“Yes . . .”

“I think that after, say, a half hour, you and your gondola should return to the hotel.”

They paused at the door of their box, Oliver unable to tear his eyes from Bridget’s.

“I should?” he asked, his voice a rumble of anticipation.

“Yes.” She stood on tiptoe, to let her lips reach his ear. “I think you would find it worth your while.”

Nineteen

T
O
say that Oliver Merric
k spent the rest of the evening counting the minutes until that precious hour at which Bridget had commanded his presence at the Hotel Cortile would be an understatement. To say that he was merely eager was blatantly untrue.

It could have started raining frogs, and he still would have shown.

He lay in wait for that interminable half hour, ordering his gondolier (in truth, a fairly unhappy Frederico, but, as Pomfrey’s gondolier was needed by the man himself, the best available option) to take a circuitous route through the canals until the appointed time.

“If I may be so bold, sir,” Frederico drawled at him in his native tongue, “you may wish to woo the lady with a little more than a boat ride.”

“Is this a wooing event?” Oliver replied in the same language, his nerves on edge. “She’s the one who set this rendezvous. After all, she could wish to talk about the music, the opera . . . the weather.”

“Still—a few flowers, a glass of champagne . . . could turn a conversation about weather to something else.”

“True,” Oliver mused, his focus fracturing by the minute in anticipation of what was to come. “But where would one find flowers and champagne this time of night?”

In this, his dour manservant surprised him by steering the gondola back to La Fenice, where women hawking floral bouquets and long-stemmed blooms were gathering up the remainder of their goods and their meager profits after a long night.

Oliver purchased a dozen long-stemmed roses, bright red and fragrant. However, by that point, there was little time left for finding champagne, as they were due back at the hotel.

And lucky that they returned on time, because there, waiting in the shadow of the hotel’s awning, was a cloaked figure that came directly up to the gondola before they even came to a stop.

She jumped into the little boat, her movements sure and purposeful. Once she was seated next to Oliver, she waved to Frederico, telling him to push off.

And once they were far enough away from the torchlight of the hotel, Bridget threw back her cloak’s hood and greeted him with smiling eyes.

“Hello,” she said brazenly.

“Hello,” he replied, struck dumb. Under the cloak, she was wearing the same thing she had been wearing all evening—a pale jade dress that made her eyes sparkle like dew-covered moss—and her hair was still arranged in the same fashion that Veronica had managed to cobble together (and one that her mother
had
noticed as different in the box, looking askance at her daughter and asking, “Did Molly try something different with your hair tonight?” to which Bridget paused before shrugging elegantly). And yet, even though she had not changed her attire, she had somehow transformed in appearance. Her eyes sparkled in the moonlight, her cheeks a high flush of excitement. He was captivated by the sight of her. By the nearness of her.

By the fact that he had her all to himself.

No, there would be no talk of the weather tonight.

“Hello,” drawled Frederico from behind them, breaking into the silent reverie of the two lovers staring at each other.

Bridget blushed dutifully and met Oliver’s eyes—and they immediately both burst into giggles, like children caught at games.

“Er, um . . . so,” Oliver said, trying to approach their situation with some gravity. “You should probably keep that up,” he said, indicating the hood of her cloak. “I should hate for anyone to spot you.”

“It’s the small hours of the morning,” Bridget countered. “Who is going to spot me?”

“No one you wish to have know that you are out here with me.” And with that, he leaned forward, took the soft, heavy velvet hood of the cloak, and brought it up around her face, shading her in darkness. This also had the side effect of bringing his hands to her shoulders—it took very little effort to lean her body into his, to put her lips so close to his . . .

“Are those for me?”

Oliver looked to where Bridget’s eyes had fallen. “Oh!” he exclaimed, shaking himself out of his reverie. Damn, but she had him acting like a green schoolboy. “Yes, of course.”

He reached behind him and—while avoiding the disparaging look Frederico was no doubt shooting at him—took the roses in hand, pulling one out of the bunch and presenting it to her.

“Would it be an embarrassing admission to tell you no one has ever given me flowers before?” she whispered, taking in the rose’s scent.

“Embarrassing? No.” Oliver shook his head. “Surprising—very much so.”

“Yes, well”—she blushed—“I told you, my first season lacked a certain amount of sparkle necessary to attract the attention of men who send flowers.”

“I can only be honored to be the first, then.”

Frederico smothered a cough at that moment. Oliver couldn’t be sure, but his manservant’s hacking sounded suspiciously like the phrase
my idea
. Luckily, either Bridget did not hear the same hidden message or she was happy to ignore it, because she took the rest of the flowers from his hands, put them together with the first, and placed them on her lap. She looked over them reverently as she spoke.

“I feel this is the time in my life for many firsts,” she said quietly, before meeting his eyes from beneath her lashes.

A streak of lust lanced right through him, causing his body to tense imperceptibly. What other “firsts” did Miss Bridget Forrester have in mind for that evening?

“I don’t suppose I am your first, as well?” she asked.

The tenor of Oliver’s racing thoughts before her inquiry had him rocketing back and forth between the wealth of possible “firsts” with Bridget Forrester and the logistics of achieving them in a gondola with the morose Frederico paying witness. Thus, her innocent question brought him sharply back down to earth, making him jump so much in his seat that the gondola wobbled beneath them.

“My first?” he asked, trying to hide the crack in his voice. “No—why on earth would you think that?”

“I . . . I didn’t,” she replied, blinking in astonishment. “I was just being silly—I assume you’ve bought flowers for hundreds of ladies.”

“Oh,” he sighed, relaxing visibly, and then he could not help a laugh. “You meant buying flowers.”

“Of course—what else could I mean?”

Oliver decided to ignore that and answer her first question instead.

“Sadly, you are not the first lady for whom I have bought flowers, it is true. The theatre world seems to support the flower markets single-handedly at times, and one way to keep things running smoothly is to have flowers ready at a prima donna’s door.” He reached out and took one of her hands, brought it to his lips. “But these could very well be the first flowers I’ve purchased that meant so much.”

Something must have caught in Frederico’s throat, because his infernal hacking began again, this time with enough lack of subtlety that the gondola stopped moving and drifted over to one side of the canal.

“Have a care, Frederico,” Oliver chided, turning to his erstwhile gondolier. “We almost hit that house!”

“So sorry, sir,” Frederico replied stiffly, returning both of his hands to the long oar he used to steer and propel.

Oliver returned his attention to the lady in front of him—hooded though she might be, he could still see the light of mirth in her eyes, but now there was something else. A nervous uncertainty. She had surprised him by asking—nay, demanding—this assignation. And suddenly, the light of understanding struck. She had surprised him even more with the prepossession she had displayed up until now. But underneath that—she was completely out of her element. It was as if she had thought out a plan of attack, of getting him alone, he realized. But beyond that—she had no idea what she was doing.

And neither did he. Here he was, acting as nervous as an adolescent, completely enraptured and eager, and having no clue what to do. And he could only find relief in the fact that she was nervous, too. It put them in the same boat. So to speak.

And it gave him the confidence to turn the tables.

“You are smiling at me, sir,” Bridget said, biting her lip, her glance unconsciously ending up on his lips.

“That I am, miss,” he replied.

They were in danger of simply smiling and staring into each other’s faces the whole of the evening. Unless, of course, one of them made the first move.

Oliver decided it should be him.

“Bridget, I am going to kiss you now. Just to get it out of the way,” he said, his voice a low grumble.

“You . . . you are?” she stuttered. Her freckles stood out against the pallor of her face—even under the hood.

He did not answer her; he did not have to. All he had to do was slip his hand around her back—which was halfway in place already—and press her to him. He held her near, his lips so close to her luscious, full mouth. Her eyes were wide with wonder, her body tensed to flight, until the moment that a decision was made and she let herself relax in his arms, her eyelids fluttering closed, her mouth parting of its own accord.

Then, and only then, did he plunder. Took what he wanted, what he had been aching to take. This was not the gentle persuasion he had begun in the cobblestoned alley. He did not force himself to keep his hands at his sides until the time was right, nor did he give her time to adjust to his intensity. No, once he had seen her decision made, he wanted her to be pressed against him, to know the full force of his feelings. He wanted to frighten her with it, to entice her. To leave her head spinning.

When he broke the short kiss, they were both reeling, both breathing heavily. He found her eyes in the darkness of her hooded cloak, wild and unfocused. Finally, they blinked their way back into the present.

“My goodness,” she breathed.

“Indeed,” he replied, bringing his hand up to caress her cheek, resting his forehead against hers.

“I . . . I didn’t think you wanted to kiss me again.”

“Are you mad?” His voice was strained with laughter. “It’s all I had been thinking of for a fortnight.”

“I, too. But then you kissed me on the
forehead
tonight—”

He could not suppress his guffaw then. And proceeded to kiss her on the forehead once again.

“You little fool. Don’t you know that if I did anything other than kiss your forehead, I would have ended up ravaging you on the floor of the hall? And if nothing else, it would have shocked the hell out of your sister.”

She laughed at that, a soft exhale against his skin.

“Well, now that’s out of the way,” he began, and she laughed again. “What would you like to do?”

“I . . . I do not know,” she replied, biting her lip again. “I’m afraid I had not actually planned that far ahead. We are outside the realm of my experience.”

He kept his hand on her cheek, secretly thrilled that he had read her correctly. But also, unaccountably, he was made more nervous by the admission. For with it, she had placed herself firmly in his hands.

Confirming that thought, the next words out of her mouth were, “What would you like to do?”

What would he
like
to do? A hell of a lot more than he could in an open gondola. The silly thing did not even have the decency to have a covered box, lending them some privacy from prying eyes. Add to that the visibly distinctive red cushions, and they were not nearly as private as one would like. That was the last time he borrowed a gondola from the flamboyant Lord Pomfrey. Especially if he could not also borrow a decent gondolier.

But the velvet cushions were comfortable, and the openness of the gondola provided them with a view of the city surrounding them and the night sky above them. And with that in mind, Oliver knew precisely what he wanted to do.

“I would like to wander with you,” he answered simply.

“Wander?”

“We have been denied a good wander through the city for the past fortnight. And I have missed it.”

Her face grew into a tremulous smile. “As have I.”

“Then let us wander—unless, of course, you are afraid you will be missed soon.”

Bridget snorted. “Amanda, if she wakes up, is firmly on my side these days. And my mother sleeps like the dead. Rousing her at this time of night would take a fife and drum corps.”

The corner of his mouth shot up. “Your mother is not only blind as a bat, but sleeps like a corpse. How terribly . . . useful.”

“I admit, I have recently found it so.”

“It’s settled then—Frederico!” he called back to the amateur gondolier. “We should like to wander.”

If Frederico had anything to say—or cough—about their ambiguous route, he kept it to himself and propelled them out from Rio di San Marina into the Grand Canal.

It felt right to put his arm around Bridget, so he did. It felt right to lean back in the seat, nestling her against his side and letting her cloak cover them both like a blanket, so he did. And it felt right to look up at the starry sky and let the peace of the night envelop them.

There were other boats on the water, of course—other couples wrapped around each other in illicit fashion, other solitary people on their way home after a long evening, but they paid no attention to them—and they, in turn, paid no attention to Oliver and Bridget. At least as far as Oliver could tell.

They wandered. Through quiet canals dotted with stars. And slowly, those things that they had not been able to say to each other, those things that had drawn them close, began to spill out of them.

“So . . .” he began.

“So . . .” she replied.

“How was your evening?” Honestly, with the way her green eyes were sparkling at him, it was the only thing he could think of.

“Enlightening,” she said, after a moment.

“Really? How so?” He tilted his head to the side. “Besides discovering how you looked in breeches, that is.”

She blushed. “Besides that. I’ve never spent any time backstage at a theatre. I know now why you love it.”

“It’s a very lively place,” he conceded.

“And you come alive there,” she replied.

“I do?”

“You do. I do not think I truly understood your love of the world of the theatre, of La Fenice, until I saw you moving through the halls and ropes and tight spaces with people who all have the same ambition—to tell a good story.” She paused for a moment. “It has such an air of movement. The entire atmosphere is charged, making the hairs on my arms stand on end—one can feel it, like one can feel the lightning before you see it strike.”