She almost laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Nothing."
His face changed slightly. "Nothing?"
"Not yet."
He accepted that, too. It would have been easier if he had argued.
Matilda picked up the note and folded it once. "I need to think without someone more powerful deciding what is safest for me."
Robert's expression tightened at the truth of it. "Then I will leave."
She looked at him. "Thank you."
It was not forgiveness; they both knew it. He bowed to Mrs. Albright, then to Matilda. Before he reached the door, she said, "Your Grace."
He turned.
"I am not angry because you failed to save me." His eyes held hers. "I am angry because I did not ask to be saved."
Robert stood very still. "Understood." Then he left.
By afternoon, Hester's version of events had already begun circulating. Matilda learned this from a calling card delivered with a note written by a woman who had attended the preview. The wording was polite enough to wound efficiently: she hoped Miss Dracott was recovering from her recent "excitement"; she trusted that rest would restore "perspective"; she regretted that the concert had been disrupted by "unfortunate misunderstandings."
Matilda read the note once and placed it facedown. There it was, exactly as predicted: her resistance had become excitement; her authorship had become confusion; her humiliation had become a misunderstanding.
She opened her reticule and removed the handwritten page she had taken from the score at Falconhurst: the variation no printed proof contained. She unfolded it across the table. The music was incomplete, but the structure was there. Hester did not know it; Beckham had never seen it. The published version stopped before this page began.
Matilda stared at the measures until an idea formed: if Beckham had only the incomplete manuscript, then his own proof might become evidence. If Hester claimed the work as hers, why could she not produce the ending? If the missing variation existed only in Matilda's hand, then perhaps the silence surrounding her was not as complete as everyone believed.
Mrs. Albright entered with tea and found Matilda surrounded by paper. "You look different," she said.
Matilda glanced up. "Do I?"
"Yes." The widow set down the tray. "Less frightened."
Matilda looked at the unfinished variation. "I am still frightened."
"That is not the same thing."
Matilda thought of her father's tuning fork: A true note does not become false because a crowded room prefers another. She had spent too long waiting for the crowd to become fair; perhaps fairness would never arrive voluntarily.
By evening, she had made a decision.