Whispered Music (London Fairy Tales #2)(2)

In a flash, his father was behind him, locking the doors. The music crescendoed again. The finale—he could hear it; he could see it in his mind’s eye.

“Well, boy. Why don’t you go ahead and play. Play for me, play for your dead mother, and your wicked teacher. Play for us all!” His shout vibrated off Dominique’s ears like he’d been shot himself. His father thrust his hands into the air as if directing some invisible choir.

He was mad! The teacher’s body lay ever so lightly across his mother’s; he needed to step over them in order to get to the piano. In that moment, Dominique knew he would die, knew that he would never get to play with other little boys. The cold stream by his house wouldn’t get any use, for he would be dead, and dead little boys did not swim in cold streams.

With a deep breath, Dominique sat at the piano and began to play the melody.

His funeral march.

His benediction.

“Ah, such music is so pleasing. It is so sweet, Dominique, it nearly makes me ache with want, which is apparently what your witch of a mother was aching with. Don’t you agree?”

Dominique continued to play, tears blurring his vision. Perhaps a servant would hear the music and think it odd? His mind rejected the notion. It was impossible, for he was often playing music through the night. But this night was unlike any other.

As he finished the song, his father yelled, “Keep playing!”

So Dominique continued to play and shook as he did so. He repeated the same song, for there was no other melody in his head he could find. His father came up behind him, casting a shadow in the candlelight.

“For your sins, for the sins of your mother, I will punish you, once and for all! May you never play again.”

With a curse, his father snatched the candelabra from its perch on the piano and poured hot wax and fire onto Dominique’s hands. When Dominique screamed in anguish and tried to pull away, his father merely held his hands next to Dominique’s, taking the punishment with him, Dominique’s struggles nothing for the giant man. His hatred was so deep that he would rather hurt himself and his son than not give any punishment whatsoever.

With a curse, his father threw him to the ground and marched over to the fireplace, taking Dominique’s sheets of music with him.

“No! Papa, no!” Dominique wailed, for he had worked his entire existence on those songs. They were his everything. With a sneer his father threw them into the fire.

“Follow them into the fires of Perdition for all I care.”

With a scream, Dominique charged his father, his blistered hands reached into the flames, grasping at the remnants of the music. It wasn’t until his hands hit the scorching heat that he noticed his father was holding them there as well.

A scream would not come, though Dominique tried. The blackness enveloped him, and he felt once and for all, he had truly died.

****

15 years later

The carriage dipped, jolting Dominique from his nightmare. Always the same. Always that cursed song. Why was he never given respite? He looked down at his hands, covered by his gloves and never to be seen by the outside world. For their hideous scars were the stuff of legends and dark fairy tales. Surely the girl sitting across from him would expire on the spot if she saw what gruesome brutalities lay beneath his tortured gloves.

With a sigh, he leaned his head back against the leather of the seat. Had he done the right thing in taking her? Now he wasn’t so sure.

He looked across the carriage. His gaze rested on the young girl. Isabelle was her name. Or, in his mind, Belle, for the music surrounding her was true beauty, nothing he had ever seen in his lifetime.

The carriage dipped again and the young beauty opened her eyes. “Are we there yet, my lord?”

“No.” Dominique despised conversation of any type, especially with a woman. He hadn’t any experience with the lot of them unless he needed to satisfy his beastly needs and even then, he never looked at their faces, never kissed them, and never took off his gloves. Women were good for only one thing. Besides that, they could not be trusted. They were full of betrayal and lies.

The young maiden licked her rose-colored lips and pushed her lustrous brown hair away from her face. “Are we close then?”

“Why?” he asked, irritated with her questions. Was she to plague him the entire trip?

“I’m thirsty.” She looked embarrassed; her hands were shaking just slightly. Blast, the girl was probably cold too. What did she think he was about? Being her nursemaid?

“We’ll arrive soon enough.” He cut off the conversation by looking out the window, so desperate was he to get the girl to stop talking, or at least stop staring at him the way she was, with such curiosity and contempt.

“Why did you take me?”

Dominique took a deep breath then turned his gaze back to the girl. Her piercing blue eyes made him desperate for her to stop looking at him. If there was one trait he was always constant on, it was his honesty. So he told her the truth, not because he was being kind, but because it was the only positive characteristic he had. After all, his mother had lied, his father had betrayed him and his music hadn’t saved him at all. Honesty, it seemed, was his only mistress.

With a deep breath, he answered, “Because the minute I gazed upon you, the music changed.”





Chapter One


It is imperative that while writing music, you allow yourself to be lost to it, for those who listen will be the ones who find it, and in that moment a masterpiece will be created.