Secrets of a Soprano by Miranda Neville Page B

the contract is worded imprecisely as to the manner of calculating profits. A clever accounting may ensure that there are none. You’d then be left with nothing more than your two hundred a night.”
    Mr. Butterworth’s sturdy fingers blurred before her appalled eyes. Two sets of “difficulties” that could set her back years, perhaps even reduce her to penury. Butterworth dropped his hand to the contract.
    “Whoever advised you in Paris, madam, was guilty of neglect.”
    Advice? She’d taken no advice. Domenico had never used a lawyer and foolishly she’d followed his example. This document, this creation of paper and ink that she’d signed so confidently, was the disastrous result of her own naiveté. Just as her husband had always said, she needed him to take care of her interests.
    Not her interests, but his, she reminded herself, lest she find herself regretting Domenico’s departure from her life. Domenico had dealt brilliantly on her behalf with theater managers and made them a fortune. He’d also spent one, on gaming, mistresses, and the Lord knew what else, as she discovered after his death. She looked down at the lap of her expensive Parisian walking dress, thought about the splendid carriage she’d hired for the season in London, and her lavish suite at the Pulteney hotel. Domenico had insisted that such luxuries were in fact necessities. “They come for your voice, yes,” he would say, “but half of them don’t know the difference between Monteverdi and Mozart. They adore you for your beauty and most of all because you are La Divina with your gowns and jewels, your wealth, and your rages with flying china.”
    Butterworth’s office lacked breakable objects but she didn’t need them. Far from threatening, the lawyer seemed anxious only to help. She would not be destroyed by Domenico, nor by Mortimer either. “This is outrageous!” she said, tilting her chin like a goddess and trying to sound like one. “Is there no redress? I will take Mortimer to court.”
    “I sincerely hope it won’t come to that, madam. A Chancery suit is a time-consuming business that tends to leave the antagonists bloodied and no one the richer save us lawyers. As your adviser I would have to counsel it only as a last resort.”
    At least her cousin’s husband had sent her to an honest man. She might have ended in the office of as great a rogue as Mortimer himself. She hoped she had enough money to pay Butterworth’s bill.
    “Is the contract binding?” she inquired. “Could I break it and engage myself to sing elsewhere?”
    Except that elsewhere meant the Regent and throwing herself on the mercy of the deplorable Max Hawthorne. Never. She would starve, rather. Or flee the country.
    “I think not, but if you leave the document with me I will consider the matter further and render my opinion. In the meantime I recommend you try and come to an accommodation with Mr. Mortimer. Make him see that it isn’t in his interest to be at odds with you. You are, after all, responsible for bringing in much of his audience.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Butterworth. That is doubtless sound advice. Please let me know if you have any further thoughts on the contract. Meanwhile, there is another matter.” Tessa reached into her reticule and removed a folded sheet of cheap paper.
    “My late husband took care of all my business arrangements which entailed correspondence with opera houses all over Europe. Though he was fluent in four languages he used a translator for those he never learned, among them English and Russian. He employed a scholar from the University of Bologna, near our home at Busetto, to read and write letters in those languages.”
    “I’m surprised he didn’t have you write in English. Your command of the language is perfect.”
    “Thank you.” She nodded her acceptance of the compliment. “English is my first language though I have always lived elsewhere. My father was a scholar and insisted I speak correctly.” A