Let It Be Me

Fourteen

OVER the next several weeks, Bridget Forrester, Oliver Merrick, and Vincenzo Carpenini settled into a routine, which very quickly began to feel normal for them. Whether Lady Forrester and Amanda found it normal was open for debate, but they chose to keep their own council and go about their holiday.

Bridget would wake up with the sun, which was getting earlier and earlier as spring took full hold of the city. She would spend the first hour of her day stretching her hands, pressing them down against the table at impossible angles. And stretching out her arms, working out the kinks that had formed overnight. As she stretched, Molly would bring in her morning chocolate and fresh water, and Bridget would perform her morning ablutions as she hummed a movement of the No. 23, point and counterpoint, backward and forward—especially the sections she would be working on that day. She was ready to greet the rest of her family usually before seven in the morning—however little they were ready to greet her.

At the hotel the Forresters had an entire floor to themselves, including a sitting room, dining room, breakfast room, and ladies’ parlor, not to mention their bedrooms. Therefore, Bridget had a whole breakfast room to herself, where she was eventually joined by her mother and her sister, who would lay out their plans for the day, what part of town they would be taking in, where Amanda was in her guidebook, and with what member of the British ton who happened to be visiting Venice they would have the pleasure of dining that evening.

And meanwhile Bridget would absolutely scarf down her food.

The work made her ravenous. She was always hungry. And it was not as if she were putting on flesh—far from it! She was, in fact, reducing—a circumstance Molly noticed when Bridget’s corset laced half an inch tighter than it had before. But the energy, the concentration required for her lessons required constant fuel.

Soon enough everyone would be ready to head out the door and begin their day. Oftentimes Lady Forrester and Amanda would wave Bridget off, as they were sitting in, or receiving guests that day—it amazed Bridget how many people her mother managed to collect, British and Venetian alike, in so short a space of time. But oftentimes they would be getting into one gondola as Bridget and Molly got into another, to be conveyed to Mr. Merrick’s house.

Once there, Molly would join Frederico down in the kitchens—Bridget secretly suspected she was berating the lazy manservant into doing more work, because the music room seemed to be dusted with far more frequency, and suddenly, one day a cheese plate was delivered at noon to the famished musicians. The cheese plate had made an appearance every day since.

Meanwhile, Bridget worked. The sheet music for No. 23 was smudged at the corners with her fingerprints. It was marked over and over again with her handwriting, with Carpenini’s handwriting, placing emphasis on phrasing, fingering order, and the word passion! written at several points and underlined for emphasis. Carpenini leaned over her shoulder, moved her hands when necessary, would demonstrate a particular run and then expect Bridget to play it perfectly immediately.

It was, without question, utterly exhausting.

And while Carpenini would rap her knuckles or move her arms to the positions they had to hold, he kept his fingers off her buttons. Because before the day’s lessons began, before Molly went down to the kitchens, the first thing they did was step behind the screen, where Oliver’s shirt was waiting for her.

It always smelled of soap and starch, which Bridget found funny. Did Oliver have poor Frederico wash the shirt every day? But it also smelled of something else, something held so deep within its fibers that no amount of washing could take it out. It was salt and wood smoke and grease paint. It smelled like Oliver.

Sometimes she caught Oliver watching her from across the room during the lesson, and caught the scent of his shirt at the same time . . . and it was like he infused her with his calming, happy presence. She would smile, and he would smile, and . . .

And usually Carpenini had to rap her hands again to get her attention back to where it should be.

Carpenini. Much to Bridget’s surprise, he had not gone back to the seductive creature who mesmerized her with his words, his promises. No, now that he was making good on those promises, he was a ruthless taskmaster. And once the lessons were done at three o’clock, he shut the doors on them and worked unapologetically on his own music. No distractions. No wine. No Antonia Galetti. It was such an astonishing turn that Oliver and Bridget had taken to mimicking him on their walks home.

“No, Signorina!” Oliver said, pitching his voice to Carpenini’s more gravelly tone. “You must play with your ring finger and pinkie! Now, go home—I must compose!”

Bridget giggled. She loved this time. The time when she was exhausted from the day’s work, when she had poured out her being onto the keys and was drained. Therefore she was freed from the nagging feeling that she wasn’t doing enough for these few moments, when the only thing she had to do was walk home and enjoy Oliver Merrick’s company.

And enjoy it she did. He was a remarkably easy companion, making her laugh with his impressions. He did a remarkably good one of Frederico being taken to task by Molly.

“Frederico!” he would cry in a falsetto that was eerily similar to Molly’s true pitch. “Your laziness is a testament to your continental nature. You should be ashamed by the state of this rug!”

“Oi—enough of that,” Molly grumbled from behind them. Then added, “Although he should be ashamed.”

Sometimes they would walk toward the east, back to the hotel, but meandering in their path. On other days, Oliver would have thought of some beautiful old building, or square, or bridge that Bridget absolutely had to see—her trip to Venice could not be complete without it—so they would head in the exact opposite direction of the hotel and find themselves wandering their way back hours later.

If it was early enough in the afternoon by the time they reached the hotel, Bridget would change quickly, go out with James and Molly, and meet her mother and sister at whatever architectural marvel Amanda insisted on exploring that day. Lady Forrester had taken to complaining that Amanda was turning out much like their father, what with her newfound passion for art and architecture.

Bridget had never had this kind of freedom before. Oh, of course she never went anywhere alone—there was always Molly or James within arm’s reach. But as the middle child, she had always been braced on both ends with forced companionship, and all of a sudden, she was given permission and free rein, in the foreign city, to choose her own way.

And being by herself, or with Oliver, she got to see Venice in a different light than she would have if she had been with her mother visiting in tedious drawing rooms, or with her sister and her guidebook.

She saw workmen smoking tobacco pipes, relaxing after unloading a large cart at a shop, their white teeth showing under dark beards as they laughed at some mellifluously told joke. Or at least Bridget assumed it was a joke; her Italian had not improved nearly enough in the intervening weeks to be able to tell.

She saw the way the afternoon sun hit the stones of the city, lighting the city like the center of a candle’s flame. She saw fishermen, grizzled old men half seaborne, bringing their nets into the shore. On still days, she saw the reflection of the buildings in the canals, a mirrored world, as much above as it was below.

And all of it, to her, looked, sounded, felt like music.

Bridget told her mother that the lessons were going well—quite well—and Lady Forrester, obviously seeing the marked change in her formerly desperate, unhappy child, was well pleased and did not interfere. In fact, all talk of possibly moving on to Milan, Rome, or Naples (mostly from Amanda) was put to rest. Their holiday was now not spent exploring the Italian peninsula, but firmly entrenching themselves in the scene and society of Venice.

In the evening, they would come back to the hotel and dress for dinner. They might dine at the hotel; Signor Zinni always seemed to have an entire repast prepared for them—or, rather, prepared to impress Lady Forrester. If they were dining out at the home of one of Mother’s new friends (she had found a social circle of British visitors that expanded daily), Bridget would more often than not cry off, begging exhaustion.

“I swear, Bridget, if Carpenini is working you this hard, is it worth it?” Amanda asked one evening, pulling on her gloves—which were rather tight. It seemed than Amanda, despite their hopes, was not yet finished growing.

“Yes,” Bridget answered simply. And that was the truth.

It was worth it. Bridget had not known she could push herself this far. That she could work this hard at anything. And that it could pay such rewards. She was beginning to feel the music—feel it in ways she hadn’t before. Carpenini was teaching her theory—not only that the notes were placed in a certain order, but why. They had even had exercises testing her pitch, making her name a single note’s pitch and octave blindfolded.

Carpenini’s compliments were rare, but when given, they meant something because of their rarity. She felt like she understood music better—but that did not mean she would ever understand Carpenini.

In fact, more often than not, Oliver had to act as translator. Not for Italian, but for her instructor.

“But I do not understand what he meant by ‘throwing slop,’ when I was playing that one phrase,” Bridget had said on one afternoon walk. Shame came over her: “Did . . . did he mean I was playing like slop?”

But Oliver had simply laughed. “No—in fact, he wanted you to play like slop.”

“And now I do not understand you, either,” she replied sardonically.

Oliver went over to a nearby fishmonger and, after a quick negotiation, handed the man a coin and came back with one (thankfully empty) wooden bucket.

“There is an arc,” he said, leading her down a short set of steps to stand even with the canal, “when one throws a bucket full of water, or slop if you prefer—and Carpenini does, because he likes to perpetuate the myth that he grew up on a farm, which is laughably untrue.”

And indeed Bridget did laugh.

“Anyway,” he continued, “that arc, followed by the impact at the end—that is what that phrase is supposed to feel like. Being airborne, and then crashing down.” And then he demonstrated, filling the bucket of water from the canal and slinging it out, an arc of water flying through the air, splatting into the canal—narrowly missing a gondolier.

“Scusi!” he cried, while Bridget suppressed giggles.

Oliver never failed to make her laugh.

“Here,” he said, handing her the bucket. “You try.”

She had taken it, biting her lip to hide her smile. “I wager I can throw farther than you!”

Her body was beginning to respond to the work, too. Her upper arms took on a muscular definition that on most women would be unseemly—but Bridget liked it. It was proof of her hard work. Her fingers could span an entire whole step farther on the keyboard, thanks to her constant stretching. After her mother and sister left for the evening, Bridget would come back to her rooms and stretch her fingers some more while studying the sheet music for No. 23—it was always with her, carried in her little portfolio. Carpenini made her tuck it inside some less challenging music, just in case spies were following her on the way home, but to Bridget it seemed silly. If they knew she was his student, they knew this was the piece she had to learn. No reason to hide it. But she obeyed his more nervous cautions, if only to keep his ire in check.

She would fall asleep, often still in her clothes, the sheet music around her and music in her head.

When she awoke, she would be humming a tune.

But it wasn’t always No. 23.

Sometimes, another tune sneaked into her mind. One she had not heard before. Or one that she had heard a thousand times, in a thousand different ways. In a fishmonger’s wife’s shrieking call, or in the way a gondolier’s paddle moved gently through the water. She heard it in the way her footsteps resonated as they crossed a bridge over a canal. She heard it pouring out of windows and on the salty breeze that came in from the lagoon.

To Bridget Forrester, it was the sound of a foreigner awakening to Venice and falling in love with its cacophony.

It was this tune that tempted her, distracted her from what she needed to concentrate on—Beethoven’s No. 23, and her lessons.

That tune was stuck in her head for three days before she resolved to do something about it. And really, the only thing to do was to get it out.

It was the only thing that ever worked. Bridget had written down little tunes here and there in the past, nothing with any formality or structure—just the tunes that would come to her, and annoy her until she put them to paper. It would never interfere with her life overly—it would just irk those around her, her family and her sisters who had to listen to her incessant humming. Once written, it was as if her mind gave permission to let it go, and invariably she would begin humming some new tune under her breath, aggravating her sisters.

But this tune was much more persistent than any before, and the way that Carpenini was grumbling at her that day, she could easily blame it for her lack of concentration on following his instructions.

“No, Signorina!” he corrected, as she played through the run again. “You must attack this section. You must stay a bare breath ahead of when the beat falls!”

The notes themselves had long ago been perfected in the lengthy piece; now Carpenini was turning his attention to bringing out the meaning behind them. But after a long day of Bridget’s being slightly behind the beat, the Signore’s temper was shorter and shorter.

In fact, it had been three days that she had been slightly behind the beat. Three days since she had heard a hard-won compliment from Signor Carpenini. Three days, instead, of his unbearable temper.

“Yes, Signore,” she answered, and attacked the notes in a manner she hoped would please him. But, master player that he was, he saw through that immediately.

“No! You cannot play to please me, you must play because that it how it is in your heart!”

She spared a glance up and saw that Oliver was not there. Strange, he was always in the room. She frowned, a little bereft at the idea that he was not watching over her. But at that moment, he came back into the music room, carrying a box in his hands.

The rap of the door closing caused Carpenini to look up sharply. He spoke very curtly to Oliver in Italian, and Oliver answered in reply, holding up the box as evidence of his ire.

Bridget had been in Venice long enough now to be able to pick a few choice words out of the dozens that flew above her head—paper, account, and payment chief among them.

Before she could question the brothers about their squabble, the clock chimed three, and everyone in the room visibly shifted. The lesson was over, and the next part—the best part—of the day would begin.

“Signorina, for tomorrow, practice attacking the arpeggio. Think ahead in your mind when you read the music,” Carpenini said, all fight gone out of his body.

Molly came in, Oliver put the box down, and in the flurry of activity of gathering up her music, changing back out of Oliver’s shirt, and finding bonnet, gloves, and reticule, Bridget could not help but sneak a glance at the box that had broken up the lesson. Oliver and Carpenini were engaged in a low conversation in Italian on the other side of the room; there was no reason she couldn’t peek inside . . .

Imagine her confusion at finding a box of simple paper.

Imagine her delight at finding it was ruled with lines. Lines for the musical staff. Bridget could piece together the meaning of the overheard conversation now. Carpenini must have ordered this special paper, printed with staffs for his own compositions! And there was an entire book’s worth of paper here.

Now Bridget could have easily gotten her own paper and lined it herself. For that matter, so could Carpenini—this was an extravagance. But since this was here, surely he wouldn’t miss a sheet or two? It would even be a help to their lessons, because she could get the tune out of her head quickly and move on to more important things, like attacking her notes with proper attention.

She was just slipping two such sheets of paper into her music portfolio (or perhaps it was three) when Oliver’s voice made her jump.

“Miss Forrester? Are you ready to depart?”





“I saw that, you know.”

They were walking through the Piazza San Marco, one of Oliver’s favorite places in the city—and now, one of Bridget’s, too. Bridget brought her head down—her eyes had been fixed on the intricate facade of the Doge’s Palace. Molly hung back a few paces behind them, always mindful of propriety, but blessedly unobtrusive. Oliver had been happily conversational so far in their ramble, but his topics were terribly mild. Until now, apparently.

“Saw what?” she asked, trying for innocence. And failing.

“I saw you hastily stuff something into your portfolio—and really, it was the hasty nature of the stuffing that gave you away.” He grinned at her. “You would make a terrible spy.”

Bridget raised her eyebrows and mentally made a note to apply to her brother-in-law for training in more covert tactics. He would likely tell her to suppress the blush that was at that moment rising over her cheeks.

“Now, what could you have stolen that would have required such haste?” he chided further.

The dam burst.

“I’m so, so sorry, Oliver, I couldn’t help it, I looked in the box and there was this lovely blank music paper and I have had this tune in my head that I simply need to get down! And if I don’t, my lessons are just going to get worse, I know it, so I thought that the Signore would not mind if I took one or two sheets out of that box, and of course I didn’t need to steal it, I am perfectly capable of making my own sheet paper, but I thought, it was there, and I could use it—do you think he’ll be terribly cross at me?”

Oliver blinked, which he tended to do whenever her speech ran on. He then took the expected steadying breath, and it steadied her, too. In a city built on water, Oliver seemed to be a grounded point.

“Bridget,” he began quite properly, as he always did when he was about to be quite proper, “do you mean to tell me that this rushed speech of contrition is because you pilfered some paper?”

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Some blank paper.” He clutched his hands behind his back.

“Some blank lined paper,” she corrected and giggled.

“And is your guilt the reason for your relative silence today?”

“Yes.” She frowned. “Well, no. It’s because of the tune.”

“The tune.”

She sighed and threw up her hands. “I have a tune in my head, and I have to put it down on paper to get it out. And then maybe I’ll be able to attack the notes of Number Twenty-three properly.”

He regarded her quizzically. “Is it the tune that goes like this?”

He sang a low melody, shocking Bridget, his lovely tenor making each note warm and full.

“Yes!” she cried. “How did know?”

“You’ve been mindlessly humming that tune on our walks for three days.” Oliver smiled at her, reaching out to tuck a wind-caught curl back behind her ear. His touch was careless, as if he hadn’t noticed he was doing it.

However, Bridget noticed. And the jolt of warmth that passed from his naked fingers to the tip of her ear shocked her.

“Do . . . do you think he’ll mind?” she stuttered, bringing herself back to the present, back to the piazza. “Carpenini, I mean.”

Oliver’s hand dropped to his side. “Bridget, he’ll never notice. He’s been going through paper like a newspaper press.” He gave her a quick reassuring smile. “As far as I’m concerned, you can have every single sheet in that box. I paid for it, after all.”

That last was grumbled low, under his breath. Bridget cocked her head to the side quizzically. “What do you—”

But he just shook his head. “A mix-up in billing at the papier’s. It’s not worth the trouble it takes to think about it.” He squared his shoulders and changed the subject. “But I did not know you composed, as well as your other talents.”

“I do not.” She shook her head. “Not really. Sometimes a melody will come to me, though, and the only way to make it quiet is to put it on paper.”

“And these are just melodies? Not full compositions?”

“Well,” she hemmed, “occasionally I amuse myself by making an arrangement out of it, adding harmonies and counterpoint, but . . .”

“That sounds remarkably like composition to me,” he interjected. “And then what—these arrangements simply sit in a drawer, never to be heard?”

“No one wants to hear what I’ve written, Oliver,” she laughed.

“I do,” he responded, quite vehemently. “In fact, I want to hear this tune that you’ve been humming for three days—because it is as much in my head now as it is in yours. I want to see what it can be built into.”

Play. One of her own compositions? For other people’s ears? The thought practically had Bridget jumping out of her skin.

“I . . . cannot,” she protested. “The very idea . . . fills me with more dread than playing naked in front of a thousand people!”

“Actually, that gives me an idea about how to combat your lingering stage fright—but I digress.” He grinned wolfishly at her. “You will not be playing naked, or in front of a thousand people. And I would very much like to hear it.”

She could say no, and she could do it so forcefully, Oliver would regret pursuing the issue. But along with the dread that felt a close cousin to when her nerves would fail her, there was a spark of something new. Of . . . hope? No. Ambition. A glimmer of that energy that drove her to want to be a great pianist. She wanted to get this tune onto paper. This tune, so much stronger in her head than the others, springing almost fully formed! It was worth being shared. It was worth being shared with Oliver.

Out of everyone, he was the one she felt safe hearing the contents of her mind.

“All . . . all right,” she said finally. “You can hear my music.”





The next morning, Bridget arrived early at Oliver’s home.

Shockingly early.

“Signorina Forrester,” Frederico said, meeting them at the gondola. “Signors Merrick and Carpenini are not yet down from breakfast!”

In fact they were not even down to breakfast. Carpenini was fast asleep. Oliver had been abandoned in the middle of his morning shave so Frederico could go meet the gondola. He quickly wiped away the soap that lathered his face—which had not yet been touched by a blade, so even though he came down to greet Bridget scruffily, it was at least even.

“I’m so sorry!” she cried upon greeting him at the base of the stairs. “But I could not sleep any longer! I’m not permitted to play at the hotel, and I have to know how this will sound on the keys!”

She held up her sheet music—where yesterday it was blank lines, today it was marked heavily with staccato rhythms, time and key signatures, and a bold clear melody.

“Well, let’s hear it, then,” he said, stifling a yawn, and gestured for Bridget to lead the way.

She practically vibrated with energy, he thought, watching her—it was debatable whether she had slept last night, such was her anticipation. There was a slight waver of nervousness in her voice when she finally spoke.

“Now please bear in mind, I haven’t been able to play this yet—I’ve only heard it in my head.” He watched passively, unobtrusively as she seated herself at the piano and smoothed the pages out before her.

“I understand,” he replied with a smile. “Although you may wish to remove your gloves before playing.”

“Oh,” she said, surprised to find her gloves still on her hands. Not to mention her bonnet still on her head and her lightweight spencer still on her back.

She quickly removed the gloves, although the bonnet and spencer would have to wait. And then, with one last preparatory breath, she began to play.

And Oliver let her music wash over him.

It was by no means a full, refined piece. There was too much repetition in the second half, as if she hadn’t yet figured out what to do as a counterpoint resolution to her melody. Oh, but that melody. It started quietly, peacefully, like the morning sun just touching the waters to the east of the city. Then it built with the bustle of a day spent being met by new things, surprises, happy exclamations. Then the falling into night, a quieting down again, a delighted exhaustion. It had a romantic sensibility but a classical soul. And Oliver knew as soon as her fingers left the keys where she had found her inspiration.

“That was Venice. Wasn’t it? An ode to Venice.”

She looked up at him, her eyes shining with happiness. “Yes! I hoped you would be able to tell.”

“How could I not? It sounded just like it to me.”

“Really? Strange, it sounded to me like a student who has not been practicing the Number Twenty-three.”

Both Bridget and Oliver whipped their eyes to the door of the music room, where Carpenini stood. Or, more accurately, leaned. He was hastily dressed in trousers and a shirt, much like Oliver. But whereas Oliver had been awake for at least a little while, Carpenini blinked into the light like a disgruntled bear waking from his cave.

“Is this”—his hand waved vaguely to the music on the piano—“what has been distracting you the past few days?” Oliver thought he caught Vincenzo sliding a glance toward him, but he could not be sure—what with Vincenzo’s half-closed eyes.

“Er . . . Signore, I apologize,” she began, but cut herself off. “Yes. But it won’t be a problem anymore.”

“Good,” he grunted with a nod. “Since you are here, Signorina, then we will get to work.”