Maddalena and the Dark by Julia Fine

Author:Julia Fine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

* * *

It comes off beautifully. The eager slide of her wrist, the pressure of the strings against her fingers. The hired half orchestra behind them is surprisingly spry, and the audience holds them in a tender, breathless bubble of attention, lips slightly open, eyes wide.

They finish their final song to rapturous applause, the Celsi uncle pounding the marble floor with his walking stick, enthralled by the duet. Before they can put away the instruments, Maddalena has been swept off by the women in the Celsi party, which Luisa takes to mean she’s passed at least their first test. Luisa can’t quite place the expression on her face, the widened eyes, the flush that blooms across her neck and chest. Wouldn’t anyone be overwhelmed, on the night of her conquest? The night her life would change, after having changed, before changing again. Luisa slackens the hair on both bows, kneels to pack first the violin, then the viola da gamba, into their cases. A man’s boot approaches, and then a man is crouching down, helping her with the clasps. Maffeo Celsi.

“Oh,” says Luisa, surprised. She could have sworn he’d made off with the rest of his party, to the garden or the ballroom, or wherever the swarm has settled. A few of Andrea’s friends remain in a corner, but the other guests of honor have gone.

“The Pietà, yes?” He’s of Beneto’s build and height, likely about Beneto’s age. From the smoothness of his fingers, she knows immediately that he does not play.

“Where I’m from?” Luisa nods.

“You have a lovely clarinetist.” He carries both cases to a waiting footman, and then offers his elbow. Luisa’s gaze darts around the room—servants clearing the buffet, those drunken friends of Andrea’s in intense conversation, a little dog lapping at spilled cream. She’s fairly certain that the evening’s prize is best left alone until the Grimanis can have at him, but she has nowhere else to go and no one else to talk to, and she isn’t sure how to decline without being rude.

“You must mean Betta,” she murmurs, letting her arm rest lightly atop his jacket. “She is quite good.” Funny how it feels to claim Betta, as if the Pietà is family in the same way that Maffeo and his uncle are family. The women do call one another daughter.

“Though not as beautiful, they say, as some of the other musicians.” He leads her out onto the portico, and she tilts her head to try to parse his words. Is he flirting? With only lantern light it’s hard to tell if his cheeks color, and without knowing him she can’t read his tone. Her face must reveal her discomfort, because he immediately apologizes. “That was tactless of me, wasn’t it?” he says. “Let me make it up to you with a stroll through the garden.”

It’s not a question, though Luisa thinks he wouldn’t press her if she declined the invitation. Maffeo seems put on, compared to Nicolò. It is suddenly impossible for Luisa not to compare him to Nicolò.

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