I'm so horribly embarrassed. Please disregard the previous update and, if at all possible, forget what you read. I forgot that I had copied and pasted that stuff towards the end of the chapter into this document. It really wasn't supposed to be there. This is the chapter as it is supposed to stand. I'm so sorry. This story has so much more to go before it's done and I'm kicking myself for giving away so much. I'm an idiot!

Oh ya, and I'm really a horrible author for not updating for a year. Sorry!!!

Morena sat at the vanity in her dressing room at the opera, hands in her lap, head bowed over the score she held in them. The room was warm, almost oppressively hot and airless Morena realized in the back of her mind. She found herself missing the soft rose lamp shades her predecessor had installed in the dressing room and which she had recently had replaced with these harsher, simpler shades.

Slowly, hesitating, she folded over the final page of the score and lifted up her head, ignoring the angry protestingn muscles in her neck, unintentionally meeting her own eyes in the mirror and catching the nervous concern that shone from them.

He had finished.

After years of thinking and drafting and redrafting, Rodrigo had started more or less from scratch only the day after he declared that he loved her, and in not quite four months had finished. That morning, he had come late into rehearsal with his coat unbuttoned, shirt sleeves rolled up, hair, slightly disheveled, falling over his forehead no matter how many times he tried to swat it out of the way, frazzled and excited to start handing out copies of the score. Morena doubted he had slept at all in the two days since she had seen him last.

And the opera was hardly the only new effort he had released lately. There was the symphony, three sonatas, a full mass, and two oratorios in less than four months. And all of it, every phrase, every note, was brilliant. He had achieved a period of copious brilliance the like of which even many great musicians only ever dreamt.

And, often to Morena's great discomfort and embarrassment, he credited it all to her. He called her his muse, his inspiration. She'd lost count of the number of times she had fallen asleep to the sounds of his hands squeezing melodies out of her poor tired piano well past midnight. There were few sounds she loved more.

But had she inspired this? Could someone like her, as generally soft-spoken and reserved as she was, have possibly inspired something so…dangerous? It was beautiful; its beauty took her breath away and brought tears to her eyes, but it challenged every old-fashioned convention Fraznia was so proud of even when the rest of the continent despised it for them. How could he risk producing it? And what's more, he had written most of it at her piano while she listened, making suggestions occasionally. She had known it would be risky but she never imagined this. She had expected it to make the entire company nervous, but now she was downright afraid, the concern that shone from her eyes turning into sparks of fear as she imagined herself singing those words. Fraznia wouldn't take kindly to this sort of thing.

She heard a familiar knock on her door.

"Come in," she said. Without raising her head, she watched in the mirror as Rodrigo crossed the room. Without meeting her gaze, he put his hands on her shoulders and bent down to put a gentle, yet eager, kiss that hinted at some barely repressed emotion, on her neck. Such a kiss, she knew from the experience of the past few months, signaled utter exhaustion. Usually she delighted in comforting him, stroking her hand across her forehead while she hummed away his fatigue. But tonight she had her own sources of worry. She jerked her neck away almost without realizing it, and although she regretted it when he saw the surprised, confused, and disappointed look he gave her, she still refused to look at him. He stopped and stared at her in the mirror, forcing her gaze to meet his. He must have sensed the apprehension in her eyes because he knelt down next to her and looked earnestly into the corner of her eye.

"You're angry with me."

"No, not angry."

"What is it?"

She looked away.

"Tell me."

Slowly and hesitatingly she turned to meet his gaze, "you've been keeping this from me," she said slowly and almost regretfully.

He let his head drop for a moment as he sucked in a deep breath, as if to say "on top of everything else I have to appease the one who is supposed to comfort me". He finally looked at her again.

"I didn't want to frighten you."

"I'm frightened now. One way or another I was going to be frightened."

"I know," he said, "I'm sorry. But I promise you it will be all right. My name will protect us all. The opera may be a bit unpopular for a while, but the season is almost over as it is. A few patrons may boycott for a time, but there's nothing Parisinians won't forget in six months. Don't worry."

"It's a beautiful opera Rodrigo, perhaps the most brilliant thing you've written yet" she said sincerely, "and it's a story that needs to be told. But Aloise, my character, Rodrigo I don't know if I can. It's so very…close to home. That frightens me too. Rodrigo, this is a dramatized version of our story."

"No one in the world will be able to play Aloise like you will. Think of what you can do Morena. Who but someone who has been in Alosise's very situation could make the opera worthy of producing?"

Morena looked at him in the mirror, at the sagging bags under his eyes, the hair that was still disheveled and falling across his eyes, the skin that was several shades paler than usual.

"Look at you," she said, hoping her soothing tone would relax herself as well as him, "you look exhausted and I'm burdening you with my petty, unfounded fears. When was the last time you slept?"

He laughed softly, "two nights ago. But I've fallen asleep at the piano a few times."

"That doesn't count," she said softly, running her fingers through his hair, lifting the stubborn strands off his forehead. He closed his eyes, and let his head fall onto her side,

"You should go home," she said, before bending down to kiss him gently on the forehead, "sleep."

But he opened his eyes and pulled her closer to him, and with her head cupped in his hand, whispered "man ama, nonce hare nenci lo ke armariete." "My love, I would never do anything that might hurt you" to her softly in Itolnian before kissing her again.

He had no idea.

Il Pulcrezzi pir Il BaronneRodrigo DiDivezzi

Une Opera Nuve

Cun Morena Arzecci i Andre Ricole

"Doesn't look too bad, hm?" Rodrigo said to the company which had assembled in a semi circle of folding chairs on the stage that afternoon. Morena sat in the font, chatting with Andre about one of the duets ("it's a beautiful piece of music," he had said, "but I don't know if anyone in this country will buy the love story")

"Posters already Signore?" someone asked

"We've had posters for ages. This is a project long in the making. It's gone through more rewrites than I can count."

"And he gives us the version that will damn us all." Andre finished, prompting a wave of nervous laughter from the company.

Such an announcement circulated throughout Parissinia for the next few months as rehearsal began. Nothing was known of it outside of the opera. But those inside who were involved with it could think of nothing else and just pray that the Baron's name would, in fact, protect them all. Not everyone committed himself to the project, a number of singers and musicians, stage hands and assistants offered the sabbatical offered them by the directors of the opera, at the suggestions of the Baron himself, or simply walked out of the Parissinian opera forever, insulted by the unforgivable assault on their country's time-tested customs. But many more stayed, committed to the Baron's music if not the message he so desperately wanted to tell.

No one, of course, would ever have suspected how close they were to that message.

And as the remaining company rehearsed a former violinist of the Fraznian opera met with an Itolnian nobleman whose purse, as was the talk of Parissinia, was no longer so well lined with bills as it had been some weeks before, due to a mysterious and inexplicable falling-out with a good friend who also happened to be the major source of what wealth the nobleman possessed.

The two men spoke in low voices late in the evening, only a few candles burning in the sconces. Their heads were bent over a violin. The former musician spoke earnestly, handling the violin gently and pointing now and then at certain marks on it, the result of years of use despite the most guarded care.

"And she has no idea you've switched instruments?" The nobleman asked earnestly.

"None."

"You're sure of it?"

"Of course, Signore."

"Very well then. I shall hope that I remember accurately the name of that Viscount, and deliver a message to him myself, bearing this news, and see if he cannot further illuminate this intriguing situation."