Robert considered the question. "No. I distrust performance."
"That seems difficult for a man who spends much of his life in drawing rooms."
"It is exhausting."
"Then how do you decide whom to believe?"
He glanced toward the door through which Hester usually entered. "I believe people most when they forget to perform."
Matilda understood the meaning before he finished speaking. She thought of Hester's smooth answers at breakfast, Beckham's polished certainty, the moment the violinist had asked about the wrong entrance and neither of them had known what to say. She tightened her fingers around the tuning fork.
Robert's eyes dropped to it. "May I?"
The question startled her. "You wish to strike it?"
"Only if you permit me."
Matilda hesitated, then held it out. He crossed the few feet between them and accepted it carefully, as though she had given him something far more valuable than silver. He struck it once against the wooden edge of the pianoforte. The clear note rang out. He listened until it vanished.
Then he handed it back. "I believe it was right."
Matilda took it from him. "It usually is."
Their eyes met, and for the first time since his arrival at Falconhurst, she laughed without immediately wishing to take the sound back.
The moment ended when Hester entered with Godfrey Beckham behind her. Beckham carried a folio tied with blue ribbon. His gaze moved from Robert to Matilda, and then to the tuning fork in her hand.
"How industrious," he said. "Are we ready to begin?"
The musicians arrived within minutes. Hester took her chair near the front, dressed in pale plum silk and expectation. Beckham opened his folio and spread several printer's proofs across a table.
"The final variation must be completed before the York announcement is circulated," he said.
Matilda looked at him. "Why?"
Beckham's expression cooled. "Because printers prefer music to exist before they print it."
"The announcement is not the music."
"No, but public interest requires certainty."
Robert leaned against the mantel. "An admirable principle. We should introduce it to politics."