Nightingale by Juliet Waldron Read Free Book Online

rescue a few days later, he discovered Klara ensconced in a modest few rooms in a respectable building which her banker owned. She'd appealed to him, and with her saved money and Liese's help, she had set up housekeeping. Saying nothing to anyone about what had gone on, she held her head high and had kept up her performing schedule.
    After all was said and done, Klara was reimbursed for the clothes and jewels which the Countess had spitefully removed. Something, however, was lost which could not be replaced, her reputation. Overnight the eyes of men grew bold. The aristocratic rakes who hung around the opera house were the first to step forward.
    "Drop the old man! The blind fool didn't even think far enough ahead to protect you from his Countess!"
    "To go with you? You who are at the feet of a new lady as soon as the last one's belly shows?" By this time Klara knew their ways all too well.
    And it was not only the rakes young and old, but musicians, other singers and orchestra members who now looked at her differently. Here, she soon understood, was where the real danger lay. Mutual admiration among comrades in a shared discipline, comrades who also worshipped the Divinity of Music, could be a powerful aphrodisiac.
    Klara stayed in her modest apartment, among furnishings and a few servants, the kind suited to a bourgeois existence even after the Count's return. After a little argument, he’d acquiesced to her desire to be, at least apparently, independent of him.
    Still, Maximilian suspected what must happen as soon as he allowed his caged bird a little more freedom. During his next prolonged absence, Klara fell in love for the first time. Her idol was a young Italian, a talented tenor, whose glorious voice had sent him in one leap from chorus to hero. That winter Klara and Giovanni sang the parts of lovers, ridden the always thrilling skyrocket of success together. It wasn't long before Klara believed she was in love with him.
    Overflowing with self-confidence, black-eyed and darkly handsome, Giovanni Lugiati filled her heart and mind for the better part of a whirlwind three months. She prepared herself to tell her patron that she and Giovanni were to be wed, had happily been thinking ahead to a glorious future of shared music and love, when one day she woke up to discover that during the night her lover had precipitously left for Milan.
     
    ***
     
    "I thought Giovanni and I would marry and leave Vienna," Klara whispered against Akos’ cheek, "but then, Max came back."
    One morning, when she'd gone joyously to see Giovanni, his landlady met her at the door, saying he'd decamped in the middle of the night, leaving no forwarding address. An hour later, while she was lying prostrate upon her bed in a pool of tears, Max had come marching in.
    "All this over a florin a dozen Italian tenor!” He sat down beside her and roughly turned her over, pushing the ruddy dark hair from her face.
    Of course, that had been provocation sufficient to rouse. Maximilian let her slap him once, then he'd simply engulfed her little hand in his big one.
    " Basta ! Enough! And I really don't deserve it!"
    "Oh yes you do! You have driven my darling Giovanni away!"
    "Yes. Aside from the fact that you are mine, a small fact which you seem to have forgotten, that arrogant brown cockerel was a disaster, not half good enough for my Maria Klara!"
    "I don't love you. I know that now. You are the vilest kind of aristocrat! One who has used his power to force himself upon a helpless dependent! You've done your worst , now let me go! I'm not your slave! I shall follow Giovanni."
    "You and I, Maria Klara, will be done with each other when I say so and not a moment sooner." The Count was entirely calm, as if his words were sweet reason. "As for your Italian cockerel, well, some day you will thank me for running him off. What do you know of men, little bird? Jealous of your freedom, your voice, that prancing fool would have filled you with baby after baby, out