The River Rose (4 page)

Dr. Augustus Hightower looked down his long generous nose at her and sniffed. "I don't see how you can hear a flat when Mr. Hardin is singing."

"Sorry," Clint said without a sign of remorse.

"Not at all, not at all," Choirmaster Lilley said hastily. "Perhaps there was a flat, Mrs. Maxfield, but then again, Mr. Hightower, sometimes the acoustics keep us from detecting the very minor flaws, if there should be any. Er—should we try it again?"

"I think not. It is getting late, and Mr. Hardin and I really must practice our pieces," Mrs. Maxfield said. "I believe everyone else can go home."

"Yes, of course, of course," Mr. Lilley agreed. "Splendid rehearsal, everyone. Thank you."

The Calvary Choristers all began to gather their hats, topcoats, gloves, and mufflers. There were fourteen of them: six male singers, four female singers, three male violinists, and twelve-year-old prodigy Constance Raleigh, who played the flute flawlessly. She looked very sleepy and bored as she broke down her flute to place it in the velvet case. The adults were discussing the upcoming Christmas Eve program, the violinists were carefully packing up their instruments.

Clint Hardin walked up to the violinists and asked his friend Vincent Norville, "Hey, Vinnie, meet me at Mütter Krause's about ten? You too, Duffy, Mütter Krause's
Wiener schnitzel
is good for you, make you grow up big and tall."

"Aw, can it, Clint," Duffy Byrne grunted. He was a scrappy Irishman, short on height and short on temper. "I could take you, you know, with that glass jaw you got."

"Probably," Clint agreed with a grin. "You coming, though?"

"Not me," Duffy said. "Shannon's waiting for me at home. Besides, the only person that scares me more than Shannon is Mütter Krause."

"I'm in, Clint," Vinnie said heartily. "I'm not promising to wait for you, though." He was a wiry, tough man with dark curly hair and brown-black eyes. Now he glanced sidelong at Eve Maxfield and said wryly to Clint, "After all, you can't be sure Her Ladyship is going to be all finished up with you by ten."

"I'll be there, I'm as hungry as a bear right now," Clint said. "But you know we must take care to please the ladies." He went back to where Eve Maxfield stood alone.

Vinnie rolled his eyes at Duffy. "He pleases the ladies, all right. I just wish it wasn't
all
of the ladies."

Clint and Eve stood together at the side of the transept, talking quietly. He was bent over solicitously to listen to her, for he was six feet two inches tall and she was only five feet four inches. They made an unlikely pair. Clint Hardin was beefy, with broad shoulders and bulky arms and legs and a workingman's rough hands. His hair was long, growing over the collar of his shirt, a glossy blue-black, straight and thick. One lock perpetually fell over his forehead. He had dark, smoky blue eyes set in a craggy, lantern-jawed face.

Eve Poynter Maxfield was his polar opposite. She was small and slight and dainty. Her hair was a deep auburn, and she wore it in the prevailing fashion, parted down the middle with a chignon in the back and springy ringlets over each shoulder. She had a magnolia complexion, big round brown eyes, a small nose, and short pouty lips. Her dress was exquisite, a winter promenade dress of red-and-green plaid taffeta of such quality that the very whispers it made when she moved sounded rich.

Mrs. Henry Raleigh, wife of Mr. Henry Raleigh of Raleigh Ironworks and mother of the bored Constance, came stalking over to Clint and Eve. Mrs. Raleigh was a fine-looking woman, with dark hair and eyes and aristocratic features and an imperious manner. She was not quite thirty and clung to her youth with fierce determination, constantly setting herself against the young widow Eve Maxfield, an acknowledged beauty.

"Mr. Hardin, Mrs. Maxfield, I really must protest. It was not my husband that was flat," she said frigidly. Mr. Raleigh, short, rotund, with great fluffy sideburns, was one of the two baritones, and though he did have a powerful voice, unfortunately he was sometimes flat.

"I never said it was Mr. Raleigh that was flat, Letitia," Eve retorted. "In fact, I never even said it was one of the gentlemen." Mrs. Raleigh was an indifferent alto.

"Surely you're not accusing me now!" Letitia said stiffly.

With a bored look Eve said, "Why don't we ask Mr. Hardin? After all, he does stand in the center of the group, and his pitch is perfect. I'm sure he could tell who it was."

"Nah," Clint said carelessly. "I sing so blasted loud even I can't hear."

"Liar," Eve said with amusement.

"Am not," Clint said. They exchanged intimate little smiles.

Letitia Raleigh narrowed her eyes. "You know, Eve, you really should be careful about showing undue familiarity with men. You're damaging your reputation, people are talking."

"I know, and I also know exactly who is doing all the talking," Eve said.

"Yeah?" Clint said with interest. "I've always wondered who does all the talking."

"Really, such impertinence!" Letitia snapped, whirling about and hurrying away.

"You're impertinent," Eve told Clint. "Letitia said so. And she is the one who does all the talking."

"At least I've been promoted. Last week she called me a boor."

The choristers were finally filing out, and Clint and Eve waved and said their good-nights. Eve turned to him and said, "Finally, we're alone. All alone."

"Yeah, how'd that happen?" he said, grinning.

"I made sure of it," she said. "So, shall we warm up?"

"We've been singing for two hours already."

"I wasn't talking about my voice," Eve said softly. "I was talking about my hands." She removed her gloves, then put her hands on his chest and moved close to him, looking up at him alluringly.

He backed up just a tiny step so she wouldn't be pressing against him, but he did place his hands over hers. "It is cold in here, Mrs. Maxfield. With your permission—?" He lifted her hands and breathed on them, then gently rubbed them. "Better?"

"Yes, much better, Clint. And I've told you, call me Eve when there's no one around."

"That would be very impertinent of me. I'm like that, you know. People talk."

With an exasperated sigh, Eve pulled her hands free and went to sit on the stool by the grand pedal harp that loomed up behind them. Lightly stroking the strings in a humming whisper, she said, "You always make jokes, Clint. I really wish you would be serious, and speak to me as if you are sincere."

"Sincere about what?" he asked, perplexed. For eight months now, since Eve had practically single-handedly formed the Calvary Choristers, she had been flirting with him, paying marked attention to him, deferring to him in many matters that really were the province of the choirmaster. Tonight was the first time she had arranged for them to practice alone, though for many nights now she had drawn close to him to say a warm and intimate good-night. Tonight she had touched him, but he had expected that, for that was the way women like Eve played the game. He knew about ladies like Eve; they liked to dance close to fire, to tease, to tantalize. But they never, ever got burned. When a respectable gentlewoman like Eve flirted with him, Clint always figured that the last thing they wanted was for him to be either serious or sincere.

Now she looked up at him with a trace of frustration. "You could be so much more than you are. You are intelligent and you are gifted. You have a gentlemanly deportment, when you trouble to display it. But your appearance and your jocular manner don't help you."

"I can't help the way I look and talk, Eve," he rasped.

"Oh, I wasn't talking about your looks at all," she said with heavy insinuation. "Your looks are just fine. Better than fine, in fact. No, I was talking about your mode of dress, always in rough laborer's clothing. If you would wear well-tailored suits, with correct accessories, of course, you could mix in any circles you chose. And neither am I talking about your speech, which is really quite articulate. What I mean is the way that you comport yourself. You should learn to behave more like a gentleman and less like a mechanic."

"That's
machinist
. And I happen to believe that I can be both a machinist and a gentleman. I don't understand what you're getting at, anyway. What good could it possibly do me to dress up like a high-hat muffin? Then I'd just be a machinist in a three-piece suit."

She shook her head. "No, you wouldn't. Again, you could be so much more than you are right now, Clint."

"How's that? Put on some weight?"

She gave him a disdainful look, and he said, "Sorry, sorry, being serious and sincere now. I don't understand what that means, Eve."

"You see, I've been thinking about you a lot," she said in a warm, intimate tone. "I believe that I could help you tremendously. You could be on the stage, Clint. With some training you could be the star of any opera you chose, you could command solo performances. And the first step of working toward that goal is for you to become my voice tutor."

He grinned devilishly. "Well, yeah! And you could be my nanny!"

"You see? You cannot be serious for even one full minute!"

"Because that whole folderol you've got in your pretty head there is funny. Oh, yes, I can just see your father, Judge Eugene Poynter, welcoming me into your drawing room for your la-di-da musicales! And a voice tutor? Just because I can sing doesn't mean I know the first thing about tutoring."

"But you could, you know," she said mildly. "You understand everything about the physical part of it, and your pitch is so perfect you can't tolerate the most minuscule flat or sharp. I've seen you making faces at Henry Raleigh."

"I don't make faces—never mind that. It's ludicrous, Eve. I can see where you're going with this. You dress me up like a pet monkey and parade me around and I simper and fawn to get sponsors, and I spend all day having the vapors because I'm a tortured artist, and I just hate to take filthy lucre to support my gift, but I'm driven, because I'm an artist, and I'm tortured."

"Something like that," she said, smiling. "It would work, too. I know because I'm certain that if I could present you to my father in respectable clothing, and if you would regulate your conduct, he would pay you to be my voice tutor. And when he hears you singing serious music, he would gladly agree to sponsor you. That's what people like us do."

Clint nodded. "People like you may. But people like me don't. So, are we going to practice or not?"

"Yes, we are. But first I would like to ask you two things."

"At your service, ma'am," Clint said instantly. He truly was a gentleman.

"The first is, would you kindly walk me home tonight? I felt bad for Sowerby, so I sent him home."

"You, walking? And on a night like tonight? I'll bet the temperature is somewhere around freezing about now."

"It's only four blocks." She smiled up at him seductively. "And I already know that you can keep me very, very warm."

"That I can do," he agreed. "And the other favor?"

"Just think about what I've told you, Clint. That's all, just tell me that you'll at least consider it."

"All right, Eve, I will at least consider it."

"Good. Now, are you ready?" She placed her fingers on the harp strings and began.

MÜTTER KRAUSE
'
S KITCHEN WAS a respectable restaurant during the day, when women and their children, or even a lady alone, might dine on the scrumptious German food without a worry that they would be accosted or troubled in any way. There were two things that Gudrun Krause despised: mundane food and troublesome men. So her food was always freshly bought and freshly cooked, and her male patrons were always on their best behavior. Wild river rats, slick gamblers, fighting drunks, smooth pickpockets, and professional thieves found that they were not welcome at Mütter Krause's, not even after six o'clock, when the laborers and craftsmen and dockmen got off work and the restaurant transformed into a tavern/eatery.

Clint came in the front door and saw Vince Norville sitting at the long polished cherrywood bar. Unlike a saloon, Mütter Krause's had tall stools lined along the bar, for men didn't just stand and drink, they sat down and ate, almost always. Gudrun Krause didn't care if the men didn't order food. As long as they behaved, they were welcome to stay and drink as long as they liked. But the delicious smells of spicy sausage, piquant sauerkraut, and tangy hot potato salad generally overcame a man at some point during the night. Right now, at ten o'clock, Clint's stomach rumbled as he settled on a barstool next to Vince.

"Got your beer here," Vince said. "Next one's on you."

"You got it," Clint said, drinking the dark, warm beer appreciatively. "But I've got to have some food, quick. Mmm, what do you think that smell is?"

"I dunno," Vince sighed. "But I'm sure Gretchen will be glad to tell you."

Gretchen Krause was a plump, bosomy, hearty young woman with golden curls and sparkling blue eyes. She threw her arms around Clint, enveloping him in a smothering hug, and smacked him loudly on the cheek. "Clinton! Where have you been? It's been so long, I've missed you!"

Clint returned with a hug that was much more brotherly than Gretchen really wanted. "Hi, Gretchen. I was here just last Wednesday, don't you remember?"