Matilda's fingers closed around the card. Beneath another woman's name was the promise of music that did not yet exist—music only she could write. And for the first time, Robert saw not merely that Matilda knew the composition better than its celebrated author: he saw that the world had already been invited to applaud a theft before the final note had even been written.
By the evening of the smaller salon, Falconhurst Hall had become a house arranged around a lie. Flowers stood in silver vases. Fresh candles burned in the music room. A dozen influential guests from Yorkshire and York had been invited to hear the Fantasia before its public performance, and Hester received them as though the music had already secured her immortality.
Matilda knew every measure of the work. She also knew that the ending remained unfinished. That did not stop Hester from accepting praise.
"The central theme came to me quite suddenly," she told Lady Penrith, smiling over the rim of her teacup. "One of those strange moments when one hears something before one understands it."
Matilda stood beside the pianoforte with the score in her hands. She had heard the theme before anyone else in that room, because she had written it before dawn during a rainstorm two years earlier.
Robert stood near the mantel, speaking to an elderly baronet while appearing only half-attentive to the conversation. Matilda knew better now: he was watching. Not constantly, not obviously, but he noticed things—that had become the most dangerous fact in Falconhurst.
Hester's salon began with wine, polite conversation, and admiration offered before a single note had sounded. Beckham moved among the guests with the smooth efficiency of a man selling both art and reputation. He mentioned the York subscription concert. He spoke of advance interest. He assured one gentleman that the printed edition would become highly desirable. No one asked Matilda anything; she was there to play, nothing more.
When the guests finally settled, Matilda took her place at the pianoforte. She wore the plain black shoes Mrs. Canning had provided; her heel remained tender, but it no longer throbbed with every movement. The relief should have made playing easier; instead, the room felt heavier than usual.
Hester sat where everyone could see her. Beckham stood near the music stand. Robert remained farther back.
Matilda placed her hands on the keys. The first movement began. Within moments, the musicians followed her: they watched her breathing; they waited for the smallest movement of her fingers. When the first violinist entered too early, Matilda corrected him with a glance. When the cellist lost the dynamic marking, she guided him back. Hester smiled graciously at the audience as though this invisible coordination were also hers.
Robert watched the musicians more than the guests; that was how he saw the truth. They obeyed Matilda without hesitation; they trusted her instinctively.
When the music stopped, the room filled with praise.
"Remarkable!"
"So original, Mrs. Dracott!"
"The second theme is extraordinary!"
Hester lowered her eyes modestly. "You are all very kind."
A woman in lavender silk asked, "How did you conceive the transition into the middle movement? It feels almost like a conversation interrupted and then resumed."
Matilda's fingers tightened around the edge of the score.
Hester did not hesitate. "It came from memory."
"Of what?"
"A moment from childhood. My mother used to play in the afternoons, and I suppose some fragment remained with me."
Matilda stared at the music. The transition had come from nothing of Hester's childhood; it had come from her own. Her father had once described music as argument without cruelty: a statement, an answer, a return. She had built the transition from that idea.