Song of the Spirits (40 page)

“Mr. Martyn! Could you also not sleep? How was the reception?”

Heather was wearing only a light dressing gown over a silk nightgown. Her breasts stood out underneath it. Freed from her eternal corset and boring old spinster dresses, her feminine figure was clearly recognizable. Her gaze was inviting, her lips trembled, and her eyes sparkled.

William did not have to consider long. He wrapped her in his arms.

The next morning, William hardly gave Kura time to eat breakfast. When he had returned to her bed late the previous night, satisfied from making love with Heather and drunk on whiskey, she had been sound asleep. Kura did not know jealousy. She was too self-assured for that. Though she was strongly protesting against the rushed departure, she could not get a word in edgewise.

“He doesn’t really want to listen to you. He simply wants to ogle you,” William explained to his complaining wife. “I don’t care whether he does that or not. However, they can’t start the shearing
without me. That is, they could, but I would lose respect in front of the workers. How would that look? The future master of Kiward Station hanging on the train of a would-be diva while others do the work.”

He hurt Kura deeply with his “would-be diva” comment, which at least granted him a peaceful return trip. She maintained a huffy silence, only exchanging a few words with Heather. They made good time, as William had two cobs pulling the light chaise, and the roads had improved considerably in the last few years. It had long been unnecessary to stop for a night’s rest between Christchurch and Haldon.

The travelers reached Kiward Station early that evening, and William reported almost triumphantly for the sheepshearing. The very next morning he would oversee the assignment of the sheep to their sheds. He began the evening with a few glasses of whiskey, however—and ended it in Heather Witherspoon’s bed.

Heather, deeply satisfied from making love with William, did not know how to react to Kura’s complaints about the missed audition. She didn’t want Kura to go to England—at least not with William. Kura had made it clear that she would not consider leaving Kiward Station without him. However, a great deal had changed in the interim. As Kura’s confidante, Heather knew very well that Kura had not allowed her husband into her bed since Gloria’s birth. Everything that had transpired after that—in particular, Kura’s initial attempts to return her sexual relationship with William to the harmless kissing and caressing she had once enjoyed with Tiare—had not reached her ears, but she didn’t care about the details. In Heather’s opinion, Kura’s marriage to William was virtually over. Maybe Kura would, in fact, accept the reality of that and leave her husband. The audition in Christchurch could be the first step. For that reason, she tentatively advised the girl, “You shouldn’t get your hopes up too much, of course. But listening to what an expert has to say certainly couldn’t do any harm.”

“I would have had to stay in Christchurch for that. William is so cruel!” Kura began that lament anew. Heather had already been obliged to listen to her complaints all morning. But then Heather had a stroke of genius. They should find the music for some of the pieces they had heard at the performance. Kura began to practice with determination, singing the parts of Carmen and Azucena parts over and over again.

“I would have stabbed Carmen no later than in the second act; or better yet, the first scene,” James mumbled as the “Habanera” rang out through the salon for the third time while he was attempting to unwind after dinner.

He was already out of sorts as it was. He had not figured William’s early return into his plans. Which had not been helped by the fact that the young man had appeared with a hangover that morning and still stiff from his ride the day before. In an ill humor, William had pushed the workers around and then set the sheep into confusion by suddenly changing the herd assignments, all of which had brought James to a boil. And now he had to listen Kura sing for hours on end about love and rebellious birds. The same pieces, over and over again.

“What’s this all about?” he asked. “Didn’t she say just three days ago that she desperately needed to practice her German, because she couldn’t sing Schubert’s songs in English for some reason? But now she’s singing in French, right?”

Kura had learned French from Heather Witherspoon.

“They heard that piece in Christchurch, and the singer is supposed to have been horrendous,” Gwyneira explained. She then went on to tell him about the audition. “Kura wants me to put a driver and a carriage at her disposal, so that she can meet this singer, this ‘impresario,’ again. But we can’t really spare anyone at the moment, except maybe William. He could have just stayed on with her there.”

“I wouldn’t have let her audition either, had I been in his place,” James remarked grumpily. “It’s clear what that other fellow wants.
Do you truly believe that he’s going to foist a girl on his other singers who has never seen the inside of a conservatory before?”

Gwyneira shrugged. “I don’t know, James. I don’t the first thing about all that, and to be honest I don’t care. I would just like to be rid of Carmen. And to make Kura happy.”

Kura had just started the aria again from the beginning. James rolled his eyes.

“Not again,” he muttered peevishly. “Look at it this way, Gwyn: You’ve been trying to make Kura happy for sixteen years. Now it’s William’s turn. They should figure out how to get her to Christchurch, and if all goes well, he’ll stay there to hold her little hand while she sings. No doubt he’d prove grand at negotiating her contract and driving the others crazy when she sings too loud or quietly. But that’s not your concern anymore. It’s bad enough that neither of them looks after their child. Which reminds me, we need to tell Jack that he can’t bring the baby into the sheds during the shearing. The air in there won’t be good for her. Even if it means she cries all day.”

Gwyneira sighed. That again! The nanny would surely resign. Gwyneira would be overseeing one of the sheds as she always did, but if Kura sang all day, making Gloria cry all day, Mrs. Whealer would quite likely lay down her arms.

Kura sang as if possessed, and the more reliable her mastery of the lyrics and notes, the more confident she grew that she would meet Roderick Barrister’s standards. She had to get to Christchurch; she simply had to! And the week had almost passed; she only had two days left, one of which would be wasted on the trip there. Perhaps she could talk to William once more. Or more than talk. If she let him back into her bed after all this time, he would be putty in her hands. Naturally, there was a risk. But if she whipped William from one climax to another, he would promise her anything. She would simply have to take the risk. Besides, she had heard rumors among the dancers at the reception—something about a stroke of bad luck
that had befallen one of them, but it had evidently been possible to straighten it all out. So, if worse came to worst, she could ask the girl how she’d resolved the matter. Or Roderick Barrister. He couldn’t have his singers and dancers running around with protruding bellies, of course.

And so Kura did not spend her afternoon at the piano but instead devoted herself to making herself pretty for William. She did not sing again until that evening for him and Heather Witherspoon. Gwyneira and James had retired early, and Jack had barricaded himself with Gloria and his dog in his halfway-quiet room.

Kura did not pick up her opera music that evening, but instead practiced the Irish songs that had always enchanted William. And, indeed, no later than “Salley Gardens,” she saw the light of desire in his eyes. She sang “Wild Mountain Thyme,” to rekindle his lust, and promised her love in “Tara Hill.” By the time she finished her last song, she thought him sufficiently aroused. She stood up slowly, making sure he did not take his eyes off of her, and walked to the stairs, her hips swaying.

“Don’t stay up too late,” she breathed, filling her voice with enticement and promise. William’s breath seemed to have quickened. Kura climbed the stairs, certain that she would soon hear him knocking at her door.

But William did not appear. At first, Kura was not particularly unsettled. He had to finish off his whiskey and to extricate himself from Heather Witherspoon’s chatter. Heather seemed to have fallen a bit in love with him. How absurd!

Kura undressed at her leisure, perfumed herself, and wrapped herself in her loveliest nightgown. Only then did she begin to grow impatient. She wanted to get under way soon, if for no other reason than that they needed to get an early start the next day. She wanted to reach Christchurch before nightfall. Ideally, she thought, she would audition briefly for Roderick Barrister that evening, so that they could work out a time for her to take the stage the next day.

After almost an hour had passed, Kura had had enough. If William would not come of his own accord, then she would just go get him.
She pulled on a dressing gown, combed her hair once more and stepped out onto the grand staircase leading to the salon. She wanted him to see her coming, an enchanting—and lonely—beauty in her nightclothes.

Kura floated down the stairs.

But William was not in the salon. Indeed, the light had been turned out, and it looked as though everyone had gone to bed. Had William really retired to his bedroom without knocking on her door even once? After that performance? Kura decided not to hold it against him and instead to feign a little remorse. After all, she had rebuffed him so often that it was understandable if he had given up all hope. It would only make her strategy that night all the more effective.

Kura slipped with feline movements into William’s apartments. She would kiss him awake and be on top of him when he opened his eyes. But no one’s head rested on the pillows. William’s bed lay untouched. Kura frowned. The only other possibility was the nursery. Maybe William had wanted to take a look at Gloria or was comforting her while she cried. Kura had never seen him do such a thing, but she did not know where else he might be spending the night.

A moment later, she knew. Silence reigned in the nursery, and no sound was coming from Jack’s room next door. She did, however, hear laughing and moaning coming from Heather Witherspoon’s room. Kura did not hesitate. She ripped the door open.