Let it be Me (Blue Raven) (26 page)

Bridget’s mother groaned at that thought. As the soup course was brought out—a bright green pea soup—Lady Forrester’s complexion turned from pale white to a matching shade. Bridget did not know whether it was the soup or the prospect of another hour in the carriage, but Lady Forrester suddenly took a decisive stand.

“I cannot. I am sorry, my dears, but I am simply too exhausted from the journey. I cannot attend the concert tonight.”

“Mother, no!” Bridget cried. “We came all this way.”

“Does this mean we cannot go to the Schönbrunn Palace tomorrow?” Amanda pouted.

“I did not mean to imply that you cannot attend, Bridget. But Amanda will have to go in my place.”

When approached with the idea of attending a Beethoven concert, Amanda had shown no enthusiasm for this musical endeavor—and since invitations to the event were hard to come by on such short notice (and how he had managed it, Bridget had no idea—using any number of theatre connections, perhaps?), Oliver had obtained only three. Amanda was going to be perfectly content at the house for the evening with James the footman and various German housemaids for company. But now, it seemed, Lady Forrester had decided to take that comfort for herself.

“You want me to
chaperone
?” Amanda scoffed after gulping a spoonful of soup. “I’m not even allowed to wear my hair up!”

“Mr. Merrick has shown himself to be very trustworthy and honorable,” Lady Forrester said on a sigh.

“Well, if he has shown himself to be trustworthy, then why should I go at all?” Amanda countered. “I should much rather explore the library—surely there is an English book about Vienna . . .”

“Amanda!” Lady Forrester spoke sharply enough to cause her youngest to cower a bit. “You are going to the concert, and I am going to sleep. That is all there is to it.”

While Amanda sulked, grumbling that they had only one day in Vienna tomorrow and she certainly hoped that she would get to do what
she
wanted to do, Bridget and Oliver exchanged a glance, then a shrug. Regardless of their chaperonage, regardless of whether Oliver and his intentions toward Bridget truly were trustworthy, they would be going to the concert tonight, and they would be going together.

It was going to be a night to remember.

Twenty-one

B
RIDGET
and Oliver were not
in the theatre when it happened.

Nor were they standing in the hall after the concert.

Indeed, they were in the carriage, on the way back to the town house, when Bridget finally trusted herself to speak again.

“Five ovations,” she whispered.
“Five.”

“Each one earned,” Oliver whispered back, equally awestruck. He reached out and took her hand between them. Opposite them, Amanda leaned her head against the wall of the carriage, clearly exhausted. So Oliver did not hide his actions when he reached out and took Bridget’s hand, holding it close against his side. She knew it was not a sensual touch or an attempt in any way to seduce. It was a need for contact, for grounding. And Bridget offered that to him.

Just as he offered it to her.

The evening had begun as expected. A carriage ride that would have taken a half hour on a normal day had doubled as they waited in line for their turn to disembark. Bridget had been nearly jumping out of her skin, eager for the music that was to come. Even Amanda, who had not given up on her sulk—likely thinking it would help sway them to her proposed outing to the Schönbrunn Palace tomorrow—could not help but become enthused with all the nervous energy around them as they finally pulled up to the Kärntnertortheater, the Imperial and Royal Court Theater of Vienna. And the building lived up to that name.

A beautiful structure of yellow brick, it was lit on the inside by a hundred lamps, making the space glow with light. Bridget had felt in awe of La Fenice—and indeed, this space was similar in proportion and decoration. But while her one experience at La Fenice had been of a middling opera by Gustav Klein, the packed crowd at the Kärntnertortheater positively buzzed with excitement. And that excitement was not about who was attending with whom and in what box, or about what the ladies were wearing. No, that excitement was for what they were about to hear.

Oliver led them to their seats on the main floor.

“I apologize, there were no boxes available at such a late date,” Oliver said low under his breath, blushing a little.

“Oh, Oliver, don’t you realize?” Bridget shook her head. “I’m too excited to care where we sit.”

Indeed, even the main floor seats were filled with people of rank and substance, as evidenced by their clothing. Every ticket that could be had that evening had been taken. Bridget watched, waiting anxiously for the curtain to be drawn as Oliver nodded to acquaintances and introduced Bridget and Amanda to those who were within reach. There was a young Miss Unger, who was mingling with guests before she was due to sing—and was found by the Kapellmeister and pulled backstage forthwith. They greeted a Signor Barbaia, who seemed to manage the theatre and whom Oliver called Domenico, as their conversation slipped into Italian. It had not escaped Bridget’s notice that Oliver was truly in his element. Nor had it escaped Amanda’s.

“Lord, does Mr. Merrick know everyone?” she had said under her breath, as they turned away from the latest in a string of introductions. “My head is spinning.” Then, a delightful thought striking her, she said, “Do you think he knows Herr Beethoven?”

“Why Amanda, I thought you had no interest in the music or the musician,” Bridget had teased.

“Well, I cannot help it, if every single person we meet—and we are meeting quite a number of them; Mother will be so terribly jealous to have missed it—mentions that Herr Beethoven is here, and in public for the first time in over a decade.”

The idea of Beethoven being in the room, after she had spent the last two months in the company of his No. 23, had Bridget’s nerves on the rise again. But she did not have to mount the stage, so the queasy energy that moved like wings in her breast was too strange to be credited. And all too soon, people were taking their seats, and the conductor—not Herr Beethoven, Oliver whispered to her—took the stage to formal applause.

From the first moment, she was enthralled. Two pieces were played before the new symphony, but Bridget had heard neither and therefore let them wash over her.
The Consecration of the House
was followed by the first three movements of Beethoven’s Mass—
Missa Solemnis
. They were transcendent beauty, the pinnacle of traditional composition and orchestral music. But Bridget—and Oliver, and yes, the entire room—was waiting with bated breath for what was to come.

As the end chords of the
Missa Solemnis
floated through the air, the applause began impatiently, everyone eager for the chorus to leave the stage and let the orchestra reset themselves for the symphony. But the chorus did not leave the stage.

“It’s a choral symphony,” Oliver breathed in realization.

The buzz began around the room before the music did. A symphonic oratorio. This was something new and interesting already.

The music began so slowly it was hard to determine where it started. A few notes, as if the violinists and cellists and flutists were simply warming up their instruments. Then a dark theme emerged, an urgency. The intensity of the
allegra ma non troppo
pushed at them from behind and told them all to hurry up and listen! The first movement transitioned with jarring nerves into the second, timpani and staccato violins waking up the room—
as if it needed to be awoken
, her mind scoffed. The darkness of the second movement mirrored the first, but it was more complex, had more wilderness to fight through. But the
scherzo
of the second movement gave it a structure, a plan of attack forming amid that wilderness.

One felt as if some darkness was chasing at one’s back, getting nearer and nearer. But the third movement was quieter, a reflection of peace through oboe and string. An
adagio
, it let light and peace and hope into Bridget’s heart; she knew instinctively, without the darkness of the first two movements, that such hope could not have been achieved.

And then . . . the melody emerged. A simple beauty, as basic in rhythm and key as a child’s tune, layer upon layer, instrument upon instrument, joy bursting forth like flames from the fingertips of the players.

Bridget felt tears begin to sting her eyes. She could not for the life of her stop her heart from pounding in time to the music, nor did she want to.

So often, she had found herself transported by music. She would get lost, lose herself to the time and fullness of the tones, the way it conjured up air around her as she listened, or as she played. But this, she thought, one did not get lost in this music.

One was delivered by it.

By the time the fourth movement came, Bridget did not know what to expect. She had completely forgotten that the chorus was still on stage until the bass soloist stood and began to sing. He sang a poem, a German poem, that Bridget could not hope to translate, but voiced a definitive, authoritative sense of goodwill. Then the contralto—Miss Unger herself!—joined in, making a round of music. Then the tenor, then the coloratura soprano, and then the chorus, all lifted their voices in this amazing melody of simplicity and harmony. It built and built on all the themes, all the feelings the first three acts had conjured up, until it was almost too large for the theatre, for the heart, for all of Vienna.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, Bridget saw someone move, breaking into her fixation on the music. A small white-haired man rose to the stage, taking hard-won steps. He began to gesticulate, to conduct, his back entirely to the audience. His furious gesticulations marked him as more passionately involved in the music than anyone else in the room.

“Who—” she whispered to Oliver.

“That is Herr Beethoven,” he answered, with a squeeze of her hand—a hand that she had not noticed he was holding. Because he was such a constant presence, to have him not holding her hand would have felt more strange. Would have made her bereft.

Bridget had watched as Herr Beethoven moved his head, his hands in time to music he could not hear. The worst-kept secret in the musical world was that the great master was nearly completely deaf. The pounding rush, the whirlwind of the melody, spun the listeners like a pirouette until they were dizzy with it—until, building into triumph, the last notes were played with hard strikes against strings.

The room had burst into applause, clamoring to their feet. Bridget was the first among them, her eyes still wet and her heart still pounding. Beside her, Oliver and Amanda were equally enthusiastic. Oliver especially; Bridget chanced a look away from the stage to glance up at his face. He was flushed, his eyes glazed with passion.

He must have known it, too—known as instinctively as she did. That the symphony—Beethoven’s Ninth—was unlike anything the musical world had heard. It was too much to process—it filled the heart and then burst it.

No wonder it had taken until the carriage ride home for Bridget to speak. It had taken Oliver that long, too. One did not feel moved by it—one felt changed.

“When he kept conducting,” Bridget shook her head, her eyes still wet, still filled with wonder, searching for something to focus on inside the carriage. For Beethoven had kept conducting, long after the piece ended. His eyes closed, the music played on infinitely in his head.

“I know,” Oliver replied hoarsely. “And then Miss Unger stepped forward, and turned him to the crowd . . .”

“That look on his face . . . it was so humbling,” she breathed.

“It was joy,” Oliver finished for her.

“It was.”

Her eyes turned to his then, sought them out in the darkness of the carriage. Her feelings—the music, the night, being with him—overwhelmed her . . . Much the way that his hand on top of hers grounded her. But then, keeping his eyes on hers the whole time, Oliver gently reached over and unbuttoned her glove at the wrist. Then, with painful delicacy, he pulled the soft material off her fingers one by one.

She could hear music in her head. The music that had filled her that evening and left her bared.

He removed her glove as the carriage rolled on into the night. Then he lifted the naked hand to his lips, pressed them against her wrist. She gasped with the sensation. It was as if all the power and passion of the music from that night could be transferred by that simple touch, skin to skin.

Bridget wanted to pull him closer, so she did. She wanted to take her hand and let it revel in the short curls at the base of his neck, so she did.

She wanted his lips on hers, wanted to share in the power of the night and the darkness of the carriage . . .

“What’s going on?” Amanda sat up suddenly, a rut in the road jolting her into bleary consciousness.

“Nothing!” Bridget cried, she and Oliver pulling away from each other so quickly that they practically slammed into opposite sides of the carriage. Luckily it was dark in the interior of the carriage, but Amanda was mere feet away.

Thankfully, it seemed she was also half-asleep.

“Oh,” her little sister sighed, leaning back against the cushions again, her eyes closing as her body relaxed back into sleep. “That’s good.”

“We will be home soon, Miss Amanda,” Oliver said, trying for blank civility, as his hand sneaked across the gulf between them and took Bridget’s. “We just crossed into the Widmerviertel area of town. The roads will be clearer—it should not be long now.”

“Oh,” Amanda mumbled, through a yawn. “That’s good.”

Indeed, they rumbled to a stop in mere minutes. Which was all for the best, because if Bridget had to endure any more of the sweet torture of having Oliver’s hand play with hers, hidden in the folds of her cloak in the darkness of the carriage, and not be able to do what she wanted—to do
more
 . . .

The footman handed her down, followed by a deeply sleepy Amanda. Oliver took Amanda’s arm, as it seemed likely she might fall asleep where she stood.

“I don’t know if it was the music or the travel that took all the verve out of her,” Bridget mused as they made their way into the house.

“I think it was the travel, finally taking its toll. After all, she was applauding as loudly as the rest of us,” Oliver whispered back to her as they entered the house and moved toward the stairs. The entryway was lit, and the housekeeper waiting up to attend them.

“Send the household to bed, Frau Reinhaltz, and yourself as well,” Oliver said in soft tones. “Just send one of the girls up for Miss Amanda—she’s too tired to undress herself.”

“Very good, Mr. Merrick,” the housekeeper replied, in a thick Germanic accent. “I hope you enjoy ze concert.”

Bridget maneuvered around to the other side of Amanda so she could help Oliver with her up the stairs, but his tall strength was quite capable of taking on the weight of a dead-tired practically sleepwalking sixteen-year-old young lady—leaving Bridget to fall behind and do what she could to not admire his form.

Indeed, her nerves were in a strange state of utmost awareness. As if every creak of the steps were something to take notice of, every footfall on plush carpet. Everything, especially, having to do with Mr. Oliver Merrick.

So she tried to distract herself on that endless walk up the stairs and down the corridor to Amanda’s room. Tried not to think of the way Oliver’s trousers cut across his thighs. Tried not to think about the way his lips had felt—soft and strong at once—against the delicate spot of her wrist. Tried not to remember the way his body had felt wrapped around hers in the gondola during a starlit sojourn . . .

Really, how long was this staircase?

Soon enough, however, they were depositing Amanda at her door, where they were met by the same German-speaking maid who had attended Bridget earlier in the evening.

“
Danke
, Greta,” Oliver said, handing Amanda over to her. “And good night, Miss Amanda.”

“Goodniiii—” Amanda yawned, and allowed herself to be ushered into her room.

Once the door clicked closed behind them, Bridget found herself unable to move, and unable to turn her gaze away from Oliver.

They were alone. For the first time all evening. For the first time in days.

“So,” she breathed, her voice coming out in a loud squeak.