The Key to Marital Harmony

Number 15, Rothsfeld Square London

The Godwin carriage pulled up before her former residence, but the countess did not emerge. The footman was holding open the carriage door, and the steps were down. But Helene was unable to force her limbs to move her forward, along the walk, into the house. She hadn't even looked at the house in years. She'd gotten in the habit of glancing the other direction should she visit a friend in Rothsfeld Square. It was easy enough to let her eyes drift away, or examine the lining of the carriage as if she'd never seen it before. Because if she did peer at the house, her house, what if she glimpsed what her former neighbors saw daily?

What if she saw the woman who by all accounts was living in Helene's own bed chamber, sleeping in Helene's bed, in the room next to Helene's own husband? A bitter taste of metal rose into her mouth. What then, indeed? She could only hope that Rees had abided by her request; it would be just like him to include his doxy in the conversation she had requested this morning.

Her footman was standing perfectly still. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, as curious as the rest of the servants about her unexpected excursion to this side of town. They knew she and her husband never met. Servants always knew everything. She rose, descended the steps, and walked up the path to the house. She held her head high, as always. It is not my fault that my husband is a reprobrate, she told herself. It is not my fault. I will not accept the shame. Helene had spent a great deal of her time in the past few years refusing to accept shame. She was tired of that particular mental exercise.

The great house looked just the same, from the outside at least. One might have expected literal signs of the moral dissipation within: shutters askew or missing railings. But other than the need for a good polish on the brass, her house looked just as she had left it ten years ago. It towered above them, the highest in the square, home of the Godwins before Rees's father was born, before his grandfather became an earl, since the days when King James reportedly stopped by for a cup of the new extravagant beverage, tea, by which Rees's great grandfather had made his fortune. Even then, the Godwins were no merchants; that early Lord Godwin was an extravagant madcap courtier, who threw his entire inheritance into shares in the East India Company. His stroke of genius had turned a minor Stuart lord into the forefather of one of the most powerful families in England. Successive Godwins had augmented their fortune by shrewd marriages, and their reputations by political acumen…until the birth of Rees Holland.

Far from showing a flare for political life, Rees had occupied himself since reaching majority by attempting to shock polite society, and by writing comic operas of dubious artistic value. In both endeavors, he succeeded with flamboyant success. The very thought of it steeled Helene's back. It was no more her fault that Rees was the way he was, than it was his mother's for giving birth to him. A carriage clattered by and still no one had answered the door. Her footman banged the knocker again. She could hear it echoing away in the vast reserves of the house, but a butler did not appear. "Try the door, Bindle," she ordered.

Bindle pushed on the door and, of course, it opened. Helene marched up the steps and into the hallway and then turned: "Take the carriage around the Park, and return for me in one hour, if you please." The last thing she wanted was her carriage to be recognized.

So she entered the house alone. It was utterly silent. Rees must have forgotten their appointment. Not a servant was to be seen. Helene had to admit to a spark of satisfaction at that. A month or so after she left the house, most of the staff had decamped, informing all London of their displeasure at being witness to a troupe of Russian dancers practicing their art on the dining room table. Naked, or so they said. At the time Helene had been glad both to be vindicated in the eyes of her peers, and at the thought that Rees might be uncomfortable without adequate staff.

But naturally he wasn't. She wandered into the sitting room and it was abundantly clear that Rees was anything other than uncomfortable. True, there was some dust about. But the ornate and vastly uncomfortable sofa given them on their wedding by Helene's Aunt Margaret had disappeared altogether, likely banished to the attics. Instead the room was home to three pianos—three! Where a Hepplewhite secretary used to stand, there was a harpsichord. A grand piano blocked any view of the street. And a pianoforte stood at an awkward relation to the door, clearly plunked down wherever the movers happened to put it. Surrounding the feet of all three pianos were piles of paper: half-written scores, scribbled notes, crumpled drafts.

Helene's mouth twisted. Rees wrote music anywhere, and on anything. One couldn't discard a single sheet of paper due to his overwhelming fear that a brilliant phrase or a snatch of melody might have been scratched down and forgotten. From the looks of things, not a single sheet of foolscap had left the house since she did, and many reams had entered the door.

She sighed and glanced in the mirror over the mantelpiece. It was rather dusty and cracked in one corner but it showed her precisely what she wanted to know: all the trouble she had taken dressing was worth it. Her walking costume was made of a pale primrose fabric that made her hair look even lighter, almost white blond. Rees loved her hair. She remembered that. Her lips tightened. She remembered that, and a great deal more.

Helene walked briskly over to the nearest piano. She might as well see what frivolities Rees was concocting while she waited for her carriage to return. Unlike everything else in the room, the piano at least appeared to have been dusted. But Helene grabbed a handful of the haphazard compositions that were floating around her feet and used it to dust the stool, just in case. Then she threw the sheets back down on the ground, where they floated into a drift of foolscap. The layer of paper looked like a snowbank; her sheets floated down like fresh flakes atop an older accumulation.

The music on the piano was rather more than scrawled notes. It looked as if Rees's partner, Fen, had given him the text of an aria, a young girl's song about spring amidst the cherry blossoms. Helene snorted. Richard Fenbridgeton wrote all the librettos for Rees's operas, and he tended toward flowery exuberance. How Rees could spend his time with this twaddle, she didn't know.

Without removing her gloves Helene picked out the melody with her right hand. The melody was rather enchanting, tripping up and down until—plunk.

That had to be a mistake. It was utterly clear that he needed an ascending scale to an E-flat. He was making the girl sound like a dowager. She tried it again. Hum-di-de-lala-plunk. Luckily Rees had ink wells positioned all over the top of the piano, so she stood up, pulled off her gloves, stuck the score atop the piano, and began rewriting. After a while, she started singing as she rewrote, taking huge pleasure in jotting sarcastic comments in the margins. The idiot kept pushing the poor girl into the lower register when she had to stay high or the whole pleasure of springtime would be lost.

Rees Holland was as appreciative as the next man of a curved female derrier, particularly when the possessor was clearly trying out his aria, just as he'd requested. It was hard enough to coerce Lina into singing for him; it was a true pleasure to find her engaged in the exercise on her own. He crossed the room in a few strides and clapped an appreciative hand onto Lina's sweet little bottom. "For this I'll buy you—"

But his promise turned into a strangled exclamation. The woman who jumped and spun away from his hand was no Lina.

Copyright © 2004 by Eloisa James.