Secret Lament Read Online Free

face and figure. I could have
looked at her for ever, at the tiny strands of pale gold hair clustering at the back of her neck and gleaming in the sunlight, at her faint smiles and cool mischievous glances…
    And, dear God, here I was again, longing for what was out of my reach, in all respects. Her age, her social position, her wealth all come between us. She was one of the two people whom I thought
might have bought me that ticket for the organ; I avoided asking directly if she had – how could I take such a favour from a woman about whom I felt so strongly?
    And there was of course the question of how she felt about me…
    She stared out of the window into the garden at the back of the house. “Perhaps the ball ricocheted?”
    “It did not,” I said forcibly. “We dug the ball out of the door jamb.”
    She was still musing over the sunlit roses. I looked at her with some concern. She is the most practical of women, the most astute, the most down-to-earth. But here she was, staring
absent-mindedly out of the window into the enclosed garden beyond, as if I was not even in the room.
    “Does it matter?” she asked.
    “Yes,” I said sharply, then bit my lip and brought my attention back to the matter in hand. I had not told her about the ruffians and I did not intend to tell her; she would worry.
So it was difficult to explain why I thought Mazzanti might be lying. “He said later that he had offended some rich aristocrat in London by dallying with the actress the lord had in keeping.
His Lordship evidently sends his hirelings from time to time to remind Mazzanti to keep away from the lady.”
    I reconsidered Mazzanti’s hurried man-of-the-world explanations, confided with a knowing air to the men in the company. They were just about unlikely enough to be true. Yet it struck me
that there was something else, something he was hiding… That look in his eyes when Julia started telling me about the previous attempts on his life – I could have sworn he was
genuinely afraid.
    Esther glanced round at me, broke suddenly into a wry smile. “Oh, Charles, do forgive me! I am in the very worst of humours but I should not take it out on you.”
    I could forgive her anything when she used my name like that. We had fallen into this casual way of speaking, in private at least, some weeks ago; it was inappropriate and unwise but I could not
regret it.
    She took a little key from her pocket and unlocked the harpsichord; I helped her fold back the lid and prop it up, revealing a garland of dancing nymphs and shepherds. I pressed a few keys to
see if it was in tune – hot weather plays havoc with such things – but I was distracted by the way Esther lingered beside me. Her perfume was bewitching; the pale green of her wide gown
complimented her colouring perfectly. But there is more than that: an air of decision, of cool independence – these are the things that I –
    No, the word is inadmissible. A foolish self-indulgence.
    She traced the dancing nymphs with idle fingers as I adjusted the tuning. We were alone in the room; Esther’s maid, Catherine (whom we told everyone chaperoned her mistress during the
music lessons) had taken herself off to examine the linen cupboard as she usually did. This of course was disgraceful. A single man and a single woman – no matter how unequal their ages or
status – are not to be trusted in a room together for fear they will be overwhelmed by the worst of human nature. Or for fear, rather, that everyone will assume they have been.
    For that reason, when I first started teaching Mrs Jerdoun the harpsichord two months ago, we used the harpsichord at the Assembly Rooms, with Catherine sewing industriously in one corner and
the gregarious Steward of the Rooms easing in and out from time to time to enquire hopefully if we had everything we needed. A perfectly innocuous situation – nothing secret about it at all.
But not long since, we had, without discussing the matter, removed