Secrets of a Soprano Read Online Free PDF Page B

married and enjoyed a dazzling career, Max Hawthorne still had the ability to make her pulse race. And she bitterly resented the fact.
    He wasn’t smiling now. Sitting in the middle of the second row, he frowned intently at the empty stage, as though anticipating something frightful. Was he expecting her? Did he know that Tessa Birkett, the young girl he’d insulted and abandoned so many years ago, was about to reappear in his life in the guise of Teresa Foscari?
    If not she had the advantage. Thank God she’d seen him before her entrance on stage. Had she spotted him in the audience then, all her experience might not have prevented her faltering. As it was, she had time to take several deep breaths and prepare her mind to think of nothing but the task in hand. She took a sip of water and turned her thoughts to music. But before thrusting Max Hawthorne firmly from her consciousness she permitted a fleeting—and doubtless vain—wish that he would be as agitated by her appearance as she.
    *
    La Foscari knew what she was doing. There was little point challenging a fashionable audience with anything obscure. She sang several well-known Italian songs, staples of polite after-dinner entertainment, but delivered with a skill and intensity that no amateur could match.
    Max hardly noticed. The moment she emerged from the screen his deepest hopes and most profound dread had been fulfilled. It was, without doubt, Tessa Birkett. Yet what did the reserved, innocent young girl he’d fallen in love with have to do with this haughty beauty in red velvet and diamonds? But of course the reserve—and quite probably the innocence—had been a pose. The girl he’d adored had never existed. The avaricious opera singer, mistress to emperors, had always been there behind the sweet façade. Unfortunately it was his duty to use his millions to tempt her once again. His lips curled derisively.
    “Disappointed, Max?” Somerville murmured beneath the roar of applause that greeted the end of Caro mio ben .
    “Not at all, Somerville. She’s exactly what I expected.”
    *
    Refusing a third encore, Tessa braced herself to greet the horde waiting to engulf her. The praise and fond embrace of her cousin might have eased the familiar tension engendered by crowds of strangers, but the presence of the one person she was determined to avoid roiled her stomach with dread.
    “Do you need any refreshment?” Jacobin asked.
    “A glass of champagne would be agreeable, cousin, but nothing to eat. I always sup late.”
    “Call me Jacobin,” Lady Storrington replied. “May I call you Tessa?”
    “Please do. No one does any more. It reminds me of my childhood.”
    And of Max. Max had always called her Tessa.
    “And I hope I can tempt you to taste a little pastry,” Jacobin went on. “I make them myself.”
    “How unusual. I wasn’t aware that peeresses were in the habit of preparing food for their guests.”
    Jacobin laughed. “They’re not. But I was a pastry cook before I became a countess and I like to keep my hand in. I’m very good, you know. I can assure you I won’t poison you.”
    Tessa smiled, warming to her cousin and hostess. She was beginning to feel guilty about her fee. Sofie, displaying an unexpected flair for extortion, had demanded a princely sum for the evening, expecting to come down in price. Lady Storrington had agreed without a murmur.
    “Just one, then,” she said, “but only one. It wouldn’t do for La Divina to become La Rotunda.”
    “You can afford at least two,” the countess replied. “Your figure is much better than Catalani’s.”
    “Angelica,” said Tessa gravely, “doesn’t watch her diet as carefully as she should.”
    “Is there anyone in particular you’d like to meet?”
    Tessa tossed down her glass of champagne in a single gulp to give her courage. While she was here she might as well take care of some business.
    “Pray present me to Lord Allerton,” she requested. Anything to avoid Max