The idea, once planted, refused to be uprooted. It grew in the dark soil of Beatrice’s mind, a wild and vibrant vine twisting around the trellises of propriety and fear.
For two days after her visit to Covent Garden, she was a ghost in her own home, her hands moving through the prescribed motions of a lady’s life—embroidery, correspondence, polite conversation—while her soul was miles away, living in the echo of Finnian Shaw’s words.
She heard his frustration in her dreams, the raw desperation of an artist shackled. “I need a composer with a soul, not a metronome for a heart!”
His plea was a key turning in a lock she hadn’t known was rusted shut within her own chest. He was searching for a ghost, a spirit to give his words flight.
And she, Lady Beatrice Marlowe, was a ghost in her own gilded cage, her music a phantom only she could hear.
On the third day, the compulsion became an unbearable, physical ache. She could no longer contain the symphony building within her.
After a tedious dinner with her brother, who spoke at length about crop yields and Lord Ashworth’s impeccable lineage, Beatrice excused herself, pleading a headache. She fled not to her bedchamber, but to the music room.
It was her only true sanctuary. The moonlight, filtered through the tall Palladian windows, silvered the keys of the pianoforte, making them look like teeth in a silent, waiting mouth.
For a moment, she was paralyzed by the sheer audacity of her plan. To compose for a common playwright? A man from the rookeries?
To send her work, her very essence, out into the world without the shield of her name? It was more than improper; it was an act of social suicide.
If she were discovered, the scandal would not just tarnish her name—it would obliterate it. Danbury would be ruined by association. Her future, the one he had so carefully constructed, would crumble to dust.
Her fingers trembled as she rested them on the keys. Fear was a cold, constricting hand around her throat.
But then, she thought of Finnian’s play. She recalled the protagonist, a man born to nothing who dared to challenge a corrupt magistrate, his spirit a burning torch against a suffocating darkness.
She thought of Finnian’s voice, rough with passion as he argued with the theatre manager, a man fighting for the integrity of his art.
They were both fighting. What was her fight? Against a loveless marriage? Against a world that saw her as a porcelain doll to be displayed and bartered?
Yes. But more than that, it was a fight against silence.
The fear receded, replaced by a white-hot surge of creative fervour. She had no libretto, no written scene to guide her.
She had only the memory of his play’s themes: the struggle against fate, the clash between the squalor of the streets and the indifferent heavens, the desperate cry for justice, and the fragile, defiant flicker of hope. She imagined the opening of his opera.
It would not begin with a gentle, melodic introduction. It would begin with a storm.
Her hands moved.
A low, rumbling chord echoed in the cavernous silence of the room, dissonant and unsettling. It was the sound of a gathering tempest, the groan of a city’s underbelly.
Then, a flurry of notes, a furious arpeggio that climbed the keyboard like a soul clawing its way out of the mire. This was the protagonist’s rage, his defiance.
Beatrice’s body swayed with the music, her eyes closed, her mind entirely consumed. She was no longer in her family’s Mayfair townhouse.
She was on a fog-slicked cobblestone street, the stench of the Thames in her nostrils, the cries of the forgotten in her ears.
A haunting, melancholic melody emerged from the chaos—a thin, reedy voice of sorrow that was quickly swallowed by the return of the storm. It was hope, fragile and fleeting.
She poured all of her own loneliness into that melody, all of her frustration, all of her yearning for a life she could not name but felt with every fibre of her being. The music was a torrent, a purge.
It was everything she had ever wanted to scream, transmuted into notes on a page.
When she finally lifted her hands from the keys, the final, questioning chord still hanging in the air, she was breathless. Sweat beaded on her brow, and her heart hammered against her ribs.
She looked down at her hands as if they belonged to someone else. Who was the woman who had just unleashed such a tempest?
With trembling resolve, she lit a single candle, took out a fresh sheet of high-quality manuscript paper, and began to write. Her quill flew across the page, the notes forming in neat, elegant lines—a stark contrast to the turbulent passion they represented.
She worked for hours, forgetting time, forgetting the risk. When she was finished, she looked at the pages, a tangible piece of her soul lying bare on the polished wood of the writing desk.
She left it unsigned. At the top, in clean, clear script, she wrote only the title she had overheard Finnian say in his argument: Overture to ‘The Echo of a Soul’.
The next morning, she summoned her lady’s maid, Agnes. The older woman, who had been with her since she was a girl, took one look at Beatrice’s pale face and the dark circles under her eyes and clucked her tongue.
“Another night with your spectres, my lady?” Agnes asked gently, laying out a morning gown.
“More than that, Agnes,” Beatrice said, her voice low and urgent. She held up the sealed packet of sheet music.
“I need you to do something for me. Something no one, especially my brother, must ever know.”
She explained her request.
Agnes’s face went from concern to outright alarm. “Covent Garden? To a man like that? My lady, have you taken leave of your senses? If the Earl were to find out…”
“He will not,” Beatrice insisted, her grip tightening on the packet.
“You will hire a messenger boy from the street. Give him this, and a shilling for his trouble. Tell him to deliver it to Mr. Finnian Shaw at the Covent Garden Theatre and to say nothing of who sent him. Please, Agnes. This is… this is more important than you can possibly imagine.”
Seeing the desperate, unwavering fire in her lady’s eyes, a look she had not seen since Beatrice was a girl defiantly mastering a piece of music far beyond her years, Agnes let out a long, weary sigh. She took the packet.
“You are playing with fire, my lady.”
“I know,” Beatrice whispered. “I am already burned.”
***
Finnian Shaw scowled at the page of his libretto, the words mocking him with their muteness. They were good words, strong words, but they were pinned to the page like dead butterflies.
Without music, they were a body without a pulse. He was in his cramped, chaotic office at the back of the theatre, a space that smelled of ink, damp wool, and stale tobacco.
Stacks of scripts threatened to avalanche onto the floor, and a half-eaten meat pie sat cold on a plate beside him.
He had just endured an hour with Mr. Alistair Finch, a composer of some repute who produced technically perfect, utterly soulless drivel. Finch’s melodies were like neatly manicured garden paths—predictable, pleasant, and leading absolutely nowhere.
Finnian had nearly thrown him out after he’d described the opera’s tragic heroine as having a “sprightly, cheerful theme.”
He ran a hand through his already untidy dark hair, a growl of frustration rumbling in his chest. He needed fire, passion, a sound that could capture the grit and glory of his story.
He needed a miracle.
A sharp rap on the door broke his concentration. “What is it?” he barked.
A grubby-faced urchin poked his head in. “Package for a Mr. Shaw.”
Finnian tossed a penny onto the desk. “Leave it.”
The boy dropped a flat, neatly wrapped packet and scurried away. Finnian eyed it with suspicion.
It was probably another unsolicited play from some hopeful fool who thought the theatre was a path to riches. He almost swept it into the rubbish bin, but the quality of the paper gave him pause.
It was thick, creamy stock, the kind he couldn’t afford to write his laundry list on.
He broke the wax seal. Inside were several pages of sheet music.
The musical notation was exquisite, a calligrapher’s hand, precise and beautiful. At the top of the first page was the title: Overture to ‘The Echo of a Soul’.
His heart gave a strange, hard thump. His title. Who knew his title? Only him, the manager, and…
He carried the sheets to the corner of the room where a battered, out-of-tune pianoforte slumped against the wall, a graveyard for teacups and old playbills. He cleared a space and propped the music up.
He was a passable player, enough to plunk out a melody, but his fingers were clumsy, better suited for a quill or a fist.
He struck the first chord.
The sound that came from the decrepit instrument was so unexpected, so powerful, that it jolted him upright. It was wrong and right all at once, a clang of discordant thunder that vibrated through the floorboards and up his spine.
It was the sound of the world he wrote about. He stared at the notes, his breath catching. This was no Mayfair waltz.
His fingers, clumsy a moment ago, now found their purpose, flying across the keys with a desperate need to hear what came next.
A storm erupted from the pianoforte—a maelstrom of rage and desperation that was so achingly familiar it felt as if the composer had reached into his chest and pulled the music directly from his heart.
And then, it came—a melody so pure, so filled with a profound and terrible sadness, it silenced the chaos. It was the voice of his hero, the sound of a single candle flickering in a gale-force wind.
He played through the entire overture, his body thrumming with a resonant energy. When the final note faded, he was left in a ringing silence, his hands hovering over the keys.
He was stunned. Utterly, completely stunned.
This music was not just a companion to his words; it was their twin soul. It understood the anger, the yearning, the brutal injustice, and the sliver of defiant hope that formed the core of his story.
It was brilliant. It was a work of genius.
“Who?” he breathed into the dusty air. Who in God’s name had written this?
No one he knew. This wasn’t Finch’s polite tinkering or the bombastic marches of the theatre’s usual hacks.
This was something else entirely. Raw, refined, and utterly revolutionary. An aristocrat’s technical skill married to a pauper’s heart.
He looked again at the elegant script, the expensive paper. It suggested a person of means, of education.
But the music… the music knew the taste of despair.
A ghost. It was as if a ghost had heard his desperate plea and answered. A ghost who haunted the halls of Covent Garden, who knew his work, who understood his very soul.
He would not let this spirit vanish. He grabbed his coat, a new and frantic energy coursing through him. He had to find them.
He strode out of the theatre and headed directly for the offices of the London Chronicle, the seed of an idea already taking root. He would not ask. He would summon.
He scribbled the words on a scrap of paper and pushed it, along with a handful of coins, toward the weary-eyed clerk.
“I need this in the Public Notices section of every printing for the next week,” Finnian commanded, his voice ringing with an authority that made the clerk sit up straighter.
The clerk squinted at the note and read it aloud in a monotone drone:
“To the Ghost of Covent Garden. Your overture has found its home. I await the composer. A meeting is requested to bring the rest of our Echo to life.”