Broken Harmony Read Online Free PDF

Sac. First Mrs Foxton with her urgings to accept the boy, then Mr Ord with his glee –
and Demsey likewise – and Lady Anne who took offence at my interfering with her investment. Demsey’s pleasure in the affair was nothing, merely a delight at seeing a crony of his enemy
discomfited. But the others… I was uncomfortably suspicious that Lady Anne at least, and Mr Ord too perhaps, had games afoot in which I was a mere pawn.
    I walked down the Key towards the Printing Office, wending my way between coils of rope and heaps of stone with the lady’s voice, murmuring of investment , accompanying me. I found
the term an odd one to apply to a man rather than a cargo of wood or coal. It is not uncommon for a wealthy benefactor to patronise a musician but it is generally from a love of the Divine Art
itself, or from a desire to be in the fashion.
    I glanced at two gentlemen, plainly merchants, in conversation at the side of a keel – and stopped. One of the gentlemen, the younger – was he not the fellow who had whispered to the
pretty young girl at the dinner table, in that strange vision when I had seemed to have been transported from Caroline Square?
    He saw me staring at him, gave me a chill look. I walked on. Clearly it had been nothing unusual after all. Lady Anne had been entertaining, I had glimpsed the party in a drunken stupor and
imagined the rest, the impossible alteration of the surroundings.
    And yet – who had been the middle-aged man I had seen at the head of the table? And why had not Lady Anne’s cousin been present?
    The Printing Office was at the far end of the Key; I dodged barrels and piles of shit and roaming dogs. This matter of Lady Anne and Le Sac was more to the point. The gentry were notoriously
fickle; if Lady Anne had taken against me it might rebound greatly to my disadvantage. Might the lady and Le Sac be conducting a discreet affair of love? A man of Le Sac’s stamp might enter
such an affair cynically, for mercenary reasons. And they say the French – damn it! Ord’s mistake was infectious. The French may be amorously inclined but the Swiss, for all I know, may
be as frigid as the tops of their mountains. And I would swear the lady had not an ounce of the softer passions in her.
    The Printing Office was a scurrying melee of men, running backwards and forwards with fragments of paper or staggering off with heaps of parcels. Clearly it was printing day. I made my way to
the house behind the office, standing back from the Key down a narrow alley. An ugly old house, but as solid and well-built as I have seen in a long time, with thick walls that kept sounds from
straying from one room to the next.
    The old uncle’s spirit swung the door open for me. “Master Patterson!” he said jubilantly. “Come ye in, come ye in.”
    The spirit clung to the door jamb as I entered the dark chill hall. He always calls me master, for he knew me when I was in frocks, and he knew my dead father and all my dead baby brothers and
sisters too. He himself died three years since, in this very hallway, in the breath between one step and another. I was there and caught him as he fell lifeless and laid him down gently, and he has
never forgotten that service.
    “My niece has been practising,” he said. “I’ve seen to that.”
    Elizabeth practises without being told, like many of my female pupils. She knows it will increase her chances in the marriage mart. She has always been a sensible, practical child.
    “That piece you left her last time,” the uncle said. “You wrote something like it for me, I recall, years back, before you went off to London. You never did tell me how you did
there.”
    “I held a concert,” I said.
    “Just one?”
    “Just one. At Hickford’s Rooms.”
    He oohed in appreciation. “I’ve heard of them. Where the lords and ladies go.”
    “Not many came when I played,” I said ruefully.
    “Too many fish in the sea, eh?”
    “Too many musicians in the capital,