Secrets of a Soprano (35 page)

The man had
una lingua di genio
, as she learned when he kissed and licked his way down the sensitive skin of her midriff, giving her hot shivers and making her sway her hips in desperate pleading. Longing centered on her
fica
and again the deprivation of sight enhanced the physical sensation.

Touch me there.

Yet she was shocked when his hands and then his mouth found it, for she’d never been caressed thus. He hushed her gasp and thrust his tongue into her
buco
, finding the
perla
with unerring skill, stroking and lapping and driving her near to wondrous insanity.

“We should stop this,” she whispered after a while, though her senses were soaring and it was the last thing she wanted.

“Why?” he said, with quick concern. “Are you alarmed?”

“That was not a croak. But this isn’t what I planned. I must know if having you on top will make me panic.”

“Time enough for that later. Now I wish to give you pleasure. Do I please you?”

His obvious anxiety turned her heart over. “Of course you do.”

“In that case…”

He returned to driving her mad until her mind could think of nothing but the genius of his
lingua
and then nothing at all as her body followed her into the heavens in great shudders of joy. His head lay on her stomach and she played idly with his hair as she returned to herself. “Thank you, Max.”

“It was my very great pleasure.”

She wished she could see him, for she was sure he wore his infrequent, heartbreaking smile. She almost suggested he remove the blindfold. He crawled up the bed and lay beside her, taking her loosely in his arms, and they rested there for a while, murmuring appreciative nothings and nuzzling each other with lazy kisses.

“I want you to know,” she said, feeling as though she was leaping into a dangerous void with no known end, “no matter what happens, that I love you.”

She’d sung those words in several languages a hundred times on stage and when she was in character she always meant them. This time she believed them in real life. She, Tessa, loved him, Max. Now at this minute, whatever the future held. It was a moment of such perfection that she felt she could die happy.

“Then nothing else matters. We can find our way.”

A couple of quick, shallow breaths pushed aside a momentary flare of anxiety. She embraced his optimism and thought only of pleasure ahead. Lying blind on her back, she let his presence permeate her senses: the light odor of soap and sweat, the heat of his body, the faint rhythm of his beating heart. Her skin prickled with renewed desire and her
fica
glowed and clenched.

When, without warning, he moved over her, and she felt his legs rasp hers, the heft of his lean torso against her belly and breasts, his thick
cazzone
seeking entrance, she opened to him without a hint of disquiet. They joined together with scorching heat and melting tenderness and when they had both achieved fulfillment they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

*

Max woke up
happy. Tessa loved him and he’d passed the most glorious night of his life. At some point her blindfold had come off. He gazed at her face, artless in sleep, beautiful in the dim light.
His
.

But he’d been happy that morning at the Pulteney too, so he took nothing for granted. With trepidation he stroked the golden hair from her forehead and called her name.

She stirred. He tensed. She smiled.

“
Tutto va bene
, Max,” she said. “I am fine. I am
normal
.” Her glee was infectious and they lay in bed chortling like children.

“Sit up,” he said, arranging the pillows and covers so she could lean against them comfortably. “I have something important to say.”

“Are you making me an offer for next season at the Regent?”

“Not that kind of offer.” He was absurdly nervous, like the youth who had wanted to marry Tessa Birkett eleven years earlier. He knelt before her, naked and vulnerable, both literally and because, even more now than when he’d been nineteen, she had the power to break his heart.

“Will you marry me, Tessa?”

Her mouth gaped in a perfect oval. “Holy Saint George, I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Did you think I wanted you as a mistress?”

“Why not? You are a lord. I am an opera singer. I am not a suitable match for you. Think what Lady Clarissa would say. Think what she did last time you took it into your head to marry me.”

“I am no longer nineteen years old and my mother does not run my life. I don’t want you as mistress and I do not believe you would accept me on those terms.”

She nodded. “You are right. I have this odd wish to be respectable, finally.”

“Marry me! Not only for that reason but because we love each other. We should wake up every morning together, read the newspapers at breakfast, have children if we can, and live in the country.”

“Max. I am a
singer
.”

“We don’t have to live in the country. We’ll be in London during the season, or anywhere else you wish.”

“That was not my point. You can’t marry a singer who has bedded Napoleon Bonaparte as well as half the nobility in Europe.”

“You haven’t.”

“What’s the difference? Everyone believes I have. I will never be fully accepted.”

“I don’t care. We’ll put it about that it was all an invention of the French newspapers. The English love blaming the French for anything. And I don’t care. All I want is you.” The last was true. Her other arguments had some merit but he welcomed the challenge to overcome them. There would be talk and even scandal when Lord Allerton married the notorious La Divina. There’d be the devil to pay with his mother, but after a horrendous row he’d bring her around because she cared for him.

“I have influence,” he said. “No one will dare to snub you.”

“I’m not sure I want to be accepted by people like Sir Henry Waxfield, who despises a delightful, intelligent man like Simon Lindo because of his race.”

“I’m certainly not giving up Simon’s friendship. Waxfield is a buffoon and we won’t have him in our house.”
Our
house. How immensely satisfying it would be to have Tessa here all the time. In this bed, but also in his library and dining room and entertaining guests of all kinds, chosen for their characters and abilities, not merely for social position.

“He is hardly alone in his prejudices.”

It had never occurred to Max that his place at the highest pinnacles of the English aristocracy, which he took for granted and never thought about, could be a disadvantage. What Tessa said was true—he’d thought of it himself in the past as a reason not to marry her—but he wouldn’t admit it aloud. He wasn’t going to let any obstacle, let alone the petty opinions of other people, get in his way. He had a lot of Lady Clarissa in him.

“Tessa, my darling,” he said, taking her hand and holding it against his chest. “Please marry me. I can’t bear to lose you again.”

Hope beat a tattoo in his heart as she examined his features. She touched his cheek, then an elegant finger traced the line of his brow, his too-prominent nose, sealed his lips as though to silence further argument. Tears gathered in her beautiful, expressive eyes. “I wish I could, Max. I wish others didn’t matter but they do. I’m too famous to ignore the world because the world will not ignore me. I don’t have the strength to face more notoriety. I cannot be Lady Allerton.”

“I’ll protect you from the scandalmongers. You told me you didn’t know where you belong, that you felt empty because you had no home. Let me be your home and belong with me. We’ll make our lives the way we want them and to hell with everyone else.”

She fended off his movement to embrace her, descending from the bed, glorious in her nakedness, and snatching up the same silk dressing gown she’d worn the day they were caught in the rain.

“I didn’t tell you earlier,” she said, “but I am leaving London tomorrow. I am traveling to Somerset to see my grandmother.”

“Good idea. I shall escort you.”

“No.” She buttoned the garment with an air of finality that matched her voice. “I must go alone and find my father’s family.”

“Don’t give me an answer yet. I’ll wait.”

“Maybe I will decide to be a proper country lady like the characters in the novels by the author of
Emma
. I shall live out my life in happy obscurity.”

Max refrained from snorting. Despite the natural charm and simplicity that lay beneath the public face of the operatic diva, Tessa hadn’t spent years in the theater without acquiring her share of dramatic foolishness.

Happy obscurity?
Pah
!

First it was ludicrous to think of a musical genius like Teresa Foscari rotting in a provincial English village. Secondly, he wouldn’t let her. If she wasn’t tired of it and back in London within two weeks, he was going to fetch her.

“It has come to our attention that a Lady of Rank will purchase the lease of the Tavistock Theatre.”

The Times

S
imon Lindo had
become accustomed to the baroque grandeur of Tamworth House. He’d visited the Piccadilly mansion many times since Lady Clarissa Hawthorne made her offer to buy the Tavistock and employ him as its manager. As he made his way up the grand staircase, his conscience pricked him. He wasn’t sure Max had taken his mother’s plans seriously; Simon had scarcely believed the willful lady would go through with the purchase and construction of a brand new theater in the middle of London. Since Max had other matters on his mind, Simon had decided not to bother him.

Which was nonsense and Simon was not in the habit of lying to himself. He’d wasted his time with Lady Clarissa Hawthorne because he couldn’t keep away. By the time she convinced him her plans weren’t castles in the air, it was too late. He couldn’t warn Max about the Tavistock Phoenix Theatre, as its owner had fancifully decided to rename it, because he might not be able to disguise the dismaying fact that he was in love with Max’s mother.

A fact that he intended to keep a secret, especially from the lady herself. Not drowning in her whims took all his resolve, without giving her any other advantage. For his inconvenient passion could come to nothing. Any connection, beyond a business one, between a Jew from the City of London and the richest and most aristocratic woman in England was too ludicrous to even consider.

His palms were damp, like that of a very young man instead of a sober middle-aged father of two grown sons. He stopped in front of a massive Chinese-style mirror at the top of the stairs to make sure his features were composed and suitably inscrutable for engaging in the final stages of a negotiation with a woman who would maul him to death if she could. Love had spared him any illusions about the character of the beloved.

Lady Clarissa was seated at the table in the splendid library, papers arrayed before her on her colossal desk, an ormolu-encrusted French masterpiece that must have cost his year’s income. Impeccably attired and coiffed as ever, she stood up and smiled at him.

“Simon! I have all the papers prepared for the final purchase of the Tavistock site, the architect’s designs, and your contract.”

“I shall read them with care,” he said, giving her a hard look. “I will not sign anything unless it’s all in order.”

“My attorney is in the house to make necessary changes. I sent him downstairs to wait so that we can talk in private.”

He wished the lawyer were present. She insisted on leaning over his shoulder as he read and her proximity made it difficult for him to think clearly.

When he finished, he put away his spectacles and told her to sit down.

“Come and sit by the window. I don’t like the hard chairs at the desk.” The hard chairs she used every day while attending to the affairs of her fortune. She moved purposely to a sofa and patted it. “Here.”

For once he allowed her to address him like a dog; she wasn’t going to like what he said next. “Before we go any further, my lady, I want to know something.”

“Yes?” She fluttered her lashes in a doomed attempt to look innocent.

“What has the new Tavistock to do with Max?”

“Why, nothing. He scarcely knows about it.”

“That is my concern. I have a nose for chicanery and something doesn’t smell right. What are you up to? Max was my patron and colleague before you, and he is also my friend. I won’t have any part in a plot to harm him.” He punctuated the statement with a stern frown.

“Max is my son. Why would I harm him?”

“Because you like to have your own way. And because you may not think of it as harm, though you are almost certainly wrong.”

Her eyes narrowed and she pouted—both affectations adorable to his infatuated gaze. “Very well, I will tell you. I had a bet with Max that he couldn’t run the Regent Opera House for two seasons without spending more of his own funds than his initial investment.”

Interesting. It explained a few times when Max had not offered money when Simon expected it. He decided not to mention the small matter of Teresa Foscari’s benefit. “And what was the stake?”

“Max’s marriage. If I win, I choose his bride. If not, I stop nagging him.”