Preludes, page 23
She was certain he had felt it, too. Now, with the distance of a moment to contemplate that little accident, she recalled his arms tightening about her for just a second, the sudden, short intake of breath. He, too, had not wanted to let her go. Had he? When tonight was over, after the lavish meal and the presentation and the dancing afterwards, she would ask him if they could talk.
If he was really finished with her, she would have to live with it. But if there was still a chance, she had to know.
“There you are, Anne.” William slipped through the crowd, a smirk on his face. His light blue eyes went cold as ice as he looked at Fred. “And Maestro. Good evening. Getting all set up for the presentation? Can I help with anything, Anne? No? Good. Let’s find our table. I believe they’re serving the salad course before your lecture.”
He grabbed Anne’s hand again and pulled her with him, not giving her a chance even to whisper a word to Fred.
The evening, as a holiday party and fundraiser, was a great success. As befitting such a high-end venue as the hotel, the food and service were exceptional, and throughout the meal, small ensembles brought together from the orchestra’s musicians filled the air with the sort of music that aids digestion and encourages conversation. Before each new course, the background music was replaced by a more challenging piece for the guests to attend as concert goers and for the musicians to display their skills, and the rhythm of this variation was perfectly planned to keep the evening interesting and engaging.
As per the schedule, Fred stepped up to the lectern before the entrée course to present his thoughts on Anne’s new symphony, and she took her place at the grand piano at his side.
“We have the incredible fortune,” he began, “to have with us, both tonight and for the next two seasons, one of the world’s finest young composers. You have all heard her brilliant Preludes and the score for The Butterfly’s Kiss, and our first concert in January will feature the world premier of her new work, Impressions. You surely already know her, but please help me welcome Dr. Anne Elliot.”
The hall erupted into applause, and Anne rose from the piano bench and bowed. There, at one of the tables near the centre of the room, she saw Sophia and Jeremy. Her friend’s encouraging smile was enough to buoy her through these disliked necessities.
“Tonight, however, we are going to talk about her first symphony. This piece is still in progress, and one of our great projects this year is to work together towards its completion. The composer, the orchestra, and the conductor—that’s me.” He paused to let the trickle of laughter settle. “But the bones of the piece are there, and they are fine. More than fine. We are working together on minor details, the musical equivalent, perhaps, of finding the right colour cushions for the couch. But the house is built and it will be the star of the neighbourhood.”
And so he went on. He talked about the grand introduction to the symphony, the massive block of sound that dissolved, incrementally, until just one solo instrument remained to take up a plaintive melody. He described it, and then Anne touched the appropriate icons on her phone and music filled the room.
He talked about the thematic material, which Anne played on the piano, and about the use of traditional elements and counterpoint, harmonic devices and large-scale musical forms, and between the piano and her phone, Anne painted the musical pictures to demonstrate the meaning of his words.
The short lecture ended with an even wilder rush of applause, and it was several minutes before she was able to fend off the surge of fans and questions shouted from the floor and return, at last, to her table. She felt warm, but whether from the pressure of being up on stage or from exhilaration, she could not quite say. Either way, she was certain her face was red. She took her quick bow and slid back through the labyrinth of tables to her seat.
“Well done, Anne.” William leaned over and pressed a kiss on her cheek. He took her hand in his and rested it upon the table so all around could see. Several eyebrows went up. Oh, there would be chatter.
During the break between the main course and dessert, Anne was swept away by Sophia. The board members were all at different tables, the better to mingle with the other attendees and talk up the wonders that were the National Philharmonic. This was, therefore, the first time Anne had a chance to chat with her friend.
“I want you to meet a couple of people,” Sophia dropped a conspiratorial whisper in her ear, “but first, you and William? Things look like they’re heating up. I saw how he held your hand. That was positively possessive!”
Sophia was, as always, the pinnacle of style. How she managed to make a simple black sheath dress look so wonderful was beyond Anne’s reckoning. Perhaps it was the glorious shawl she wore with it, in dark tones of green and blue, shot with flecks of silver. Perhaps it was the cluster of light that shone from the jewels in her ears and on her fingers. Perhaps it was just the perfect cut of the dress. It flowed gently over her trim shape, hinting at an elegant figure, without being so snug as to be suggestive. Anne wished, not for the first time, that she had a small portion of her friend’s innate taste and fashion sense.
Anne tore her eyes from Sophia’s gown and glanced over to where William sat, talking once again with Penny Walters. “Yes. I… I wasn’t expecting that, but he has been more, er, demonstrative recently.”
Sophia batted at Anne’s arm. The graceful folds of her beautiful shawl fluttered with the motion. “Demonstrative? You sound like some heroine in a historical novel. He laid down his cloak on the ground so you could walk across a puddle? He swept you away to Greece for a luxury weekend? He tied you to the bed and—”
“Sophia!”
“Okay. No tying anyone to furniture. So…?”
“Just kisses. Long, lingering kisses. He’s very romantic.” She tried to sound enthusiastic. Or dreamy. Or something. The look in Sophia’s shrewd eyes told her she wasn’t quite succeeding.
“Do they make your toes curl?”
Anne rolled her eyes.
“I see I won’t get any deep confessions out of you this evening. Come and say hello to Jeremy, and then I’ll throw you in front of the Nordheimers.”
She paraded through the space, stepping around little clusters of people wherever she went. Everybody was up and moving about during this break between courses. In a few minutes, the musicians at the front would put away the Haydn and pull out something a bit splashier to demonstrate their skill. Not that Haydn was easy, Anne reminded herself, but its intricacies were more subtle, more noticeable in their absence rather than put on full display for an audience.
She followed Sophia’s gesture towards the couple that was their destination, and let her eyes quickly scan the room. Yes, there was Kevin Walters, schmoozing with someone who looked like he ate hundred-dollar bills for breakfast, there was Pierre Gaultier, and there other members of the board whom she had met on several occasions. And there was Fred, standing aloof and alone. His eyes caught hers and she tried to smile, but he turned away almost at once.
With a sigh, Anne hurried her step to catch up with Sophia and paste on her socially adept-genius smile as she was introduced to the Nordheimers.
Soon enough, it was time to return to the tables for the performance and then dessert. Kevin Walters ambled up to the table and glared around with a stern look before taking his seat, and soon the others began to assemble as well. Penny hurried in at the last minute from somewhere, looking a bit flustered, and one of the other couples at their table didn’t stop chatting until the quintet at the front of the room were well into a performance of the third movement of Brahms’ opus 34. Only William was missing.
He slid into his seat just as the applause was dying down after the short performance. “Sorry,” he whispered into Anne’s ear. “Got caught chatting and didn’t want to interrupt the show. Great piece, the Brahms, isn’t it?” He reached over to kiss her cheek, then took her hand again and brought it up onto the table top until the dessert arrived, so everyone could see.
Anne took in a deep breath. She smelled the coffee and the flowers in the centre of the table, the scent of five hundred washed and primped bodies, and something else: the scent of a woman’s perfume that sent flashes of colour through her head. She leaned a bit closer to William, and the scent grew stronger.
He turned to beam at her as if she were the most important thing on the planet, but the germs of uncertainty had started growing in Anne’s mind.
After dessert, the formal part of the gala dinner came to an end, but the night was by no means over. The musicians from the orchestra packed their instruments and left, to be replaced by a small ensemble that would play old standards and some waltzes for anyone who wished to dance. And it seemed by the number of people pressing at the edges of the dance floor that was now being prepared, there were plenty of that mind.
Anne was no dancer and refused William’s invitations to join him a couple of times.
“It’s not hard, Anne. No one is watching. It’s just a waltz. It’s slow and there are only four steps. Your fingers have learned to play all those marvellous notes on the piano. I know your feet can manage this.”
All sorts of memories of high school dances came flooding into her mind, standing there under the black throb of bad speakers, feeling the bass thump from the soles of her feet to the ends of her hair, clinging to some boy she didn’t particularly like as the reek of sweat and bad body spray assaulted her nose. Dancing had no good connotations, no matter how lovely it could be to watch.
“No, thanks, but I’ll sit out. If you want to ask someone else, I’m sure any number of women would be happy to have the opportunity.”
And it was true. He cut a fine figure, and his natural elegance promised grace and finesse on the dance floor.
“If you’re sure…?”
She assured him she was quite certain and stood for a moment as he surveyed the crowd. He walked over to where Kevin and Penny Walters were talking with somebody, exchanged a few words with them, and then led Penny on to the floor.
They danced well together, and when the waltz ended and a foxtrot began, they remained on the floor. They were both accomplished ballroom dancers, and they must have danced together before. Anne watched with a twinge of jealousy, but not, she realised, of Penny. Rather, she envied their skills on the dance floor. It must be nice to be able to move like that, to feel the music not just in her fingers but through her whole body.
Perhaps, when her current pile of commitments was over, she would look into taking lessons. It would be strange going to classes alone, however. Could she go with Sophia? Or Jasmine? No, that would be strange too. After all, who would lead?
Maybe Fred…
Her eyes fluttered closed as she pictured him before her, tall and strong, one arm extended in invitation to pull her out onto the dance floor.
“May I?” His voice was so clear in her mind, she could swear it was real.
“Annie? Are you in there? They’re playing another waltz. Come. Please.”
She opened her eyes. He was real. He was there, in front of her. She blinked, and he must have taken that as an acceptance, because before she knew what was happening, he had pulled her to her feet and led her to the floor.
“I can’t dance,” she protested, but Fred tutted.
“Put your hand here, and your other one there, and then relax. Feel the music and let me lead, and enjoy yourself.”
She didn’t have time to refuse again, because he had already started to move, and she was swept up in his wake.
Where did Fred learn to dance like this? Was it part of conducting school lessons? Was it something he learned in Italy when he wasn’t memorising symphony scores? He certainly hadn’t been a dancer when they were together all those years ago. But here he was, leading her about the floor. Or rather, stumbling around the perimeter of the floor. Despite his calm assurance, she knew she was hardly acquitting herself well, but neither was she falling onto her backside. Perhaps this wasn’t so terrible, after all. She relaxed into his embrace just a bit more and let him guide her into another half turn.
Really, this was quite nice. She liked being held by him. She liked the feel of his arms around her, of his body so close to her own. She could almost feel his heart beat, like back then, before everything went wrong.
If she spoke, if she told him how much she had missed him, would he listen? He was the one who had abandoned their marriage eight years ago, and he was the one who had made love to her and then left back in the summer, when Dylan was hurt. She had no reason to imagine he wanted anything more now. No reason other than his continued friendship, his hurt expression whenever William’s name came up, and the heat that emanated from his body, so close to her own.
She must say something. He might reject her, but how much worse would she be than she was now? She took a deep breath, hoping it would give strength to her resolve.
“Fred?”
He looked down at her from his superior height, his dark chocolate eyes pools of question.
“What is it, Annie?”
“I… that is, we…”
She never finished her thought. A figure loomed up behind Fred and tapped him on the shoulder. William.
“May I cut in? Thanks, Maestro.”
Without waiting for either of them to respond, he pushed Fred out of the way and took his place, pulling Anne closer to him than Fred had dared. And there, in front of everybody, he pulled her into the middle of the dance floor and kissed her, long and deep, until applause broke out all around them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Fantasia
All that night, the evening’s conclusion played out in her thoughts. She had stumbled backwards the moment William released her from his grip and muttered something about being exhausted, then dashed off to find a taxi before he could object. Of Fred, she saw nothing other than his retreating back. She should have gone to him then, but her head was too much in a whirl to think straight.
What had she been thinking, allowing William to kiss her like that, and in front of so many people? At first she had been taken by surprise, almost in shock, and hadn’t had a moment to react. And then, with everybody standing around and watching, had she pulled away or stomped on his foot, it would have provoked a nasty scene.
It wouldn’t have caused her to lose her position with the orchestra, and it wouldn’t have cost her any of her current commissions, but it would have damaged her reputation. Troublemaker. Uppity. Unfriendly. Cold. Social skills were not really on the list of things an ensemble or film director might be looking for in a composer, but at the same time, being known as difficult never helped anybody’s career. And whether it was his deliberate intention or not, William had known that. Known that she wouldn’t resist.
And then realisation had hit, and she was mortified. This was something that happened to other people, that subtle but pervasive pressure to put up with sexual advances at the risk of losing a great deal. She never imagined it would happen to her. Me too.
And so Anne had suffered through the kiss.
When the self-recriminations ended, other questions started flooding her mind.
What had he been thinking? What was William’s point in kissing her so publicly like that?
Was it really something benign, like wanting to show everyone how much he cared for her? She played with the notion for half a moment before rejecting it. He had, until tonight, been the perfect gentleman, always asking her before taking the next step, moving slowly and with every consideration of her feelings. And she had happily allowed his advances before. In private. This, on the other hand, was very public and very much imposed upon her. It was quite unlike everything she had known from him before.
It seemed more likely that he was trying to make a point. Just as when he had clasped her hand and brought it up onto the table for everyone to see, he was claiming her. It wasn’t affection. It was possession. He was trying to make a point to somebody, but to whom?
Could it be jealousy? Had he noticed somebody else with an eye on her? That hardly seemed likely, for Anne had hardly spent the last eight years beating men off her doorstep. The only other man she was even a bit close to was…
Fred.
Was William jealous of Fred? Is that what all this was about? He had, after all, interrupted their dance, and swept her out of Fred’s arms and into his own. Did Fred, perhaps, care more about her than she thought? Her hand reached out for the telephone to call Sophia, but she stopped short and let out a great sigh.
No matter what his intentions, William had doomed himself in her eyes. That little germ of question that had poked up when he arrived at the table smelling of perfume now began to grow stronger. He looked the gentleman and he acted the gentleman, until he chose not to. There was something about William Barnett that was starting to bother Anne a great deal.
Morning brought no answers, only a headache and bleary eyes from too little sleep. She needed to talk to somebody.
She wouldn’t call Sophia, since Jeremy had to work with William on the board, and stories would travel. But she could call someone else. She grabbed her phone now, and called Jasmine Smith.
It was too cold to walk by the lake, and Anne did not want to bare her soul in an impersonal coffee shop. Instead, she invited Jasmine up to her flat. She had a poppy seed babka in the freezer, which she took out to thaw, and set about engaging in some culinary therapy by turning flour and butter and sugar into flaky shortbread.
“Mmm, it smells like a bakery in here!” Jasmine inhaled and smiled as she walked inside the apartment. “I brought some chocolate. It’s not fancy, but hey, it’s chocolate!” She handed Anne a bag and then shrugged off her winter coat.
