Read Chapter 5: The Music Teacher

The ink was barely dry on Evie’s advertisement before she had pinned it to the corkboard outside the *boulangerie*, nestled between a notice for a lost cat and a hand-scrawled offer for piano lessons. It read, in her careful, looping hand: *American lady offers lessons in English. Pronunciation, conversation, grammar. Moderate fees. Inquire at 14 rue des Carmes.*

It was a long shot. Paris was full of Russians, Italians, and Poles all willing to teach their own languages for a crust of bread. But Evie had one thing they didn’t: a voice that could make a hard man weep, and a smile that had once talked a New York club owner out of a week’s back pay. What she needed now was someone who didn’t care about jazz, but about the *th* sound.

She got her answer two days later, when Madame Rousseau knocked on her door with a folded note written in precise, aristocratic French. *Mademoiselle Hart – We have seen your notice. My daughter requires tutelage in English before her aunt’s visit from London. Please call at 22 rue de Varenne at three o’clock. – Madame Duval.*

Evie read it twice, then looked at her dwindling stack of francs. Eleven francs, minus two for bread and milk. The address was in the seventh arrondissement, a street of tall, stone *hôtels particuliers* with wrought-iron balconies and liveried doormen. Her one decent dress—a deep green cotton with a dropped waist—was freshly washed and pressed flat under her mattress. She wore it now, along with a pair of scuffed T-strap heels she’d polished with a cloth and a little spit.

The Duval residence was not a house but a mansion. A butler answered, his face a stone mask that did not crack when Evie gave her name. She was led through a marble foyer, past a grand staircase, and into a sunlit salon where a woman in a dove-grey afternoon gown sat reading a magazine. She looked up as Evie entered, her eyes sweeping over the young American with the practiced, measured scrutiny of a woman who priced everything.

“Mademoiselle Hart,” she said, rising. Her accent was clipped, precise. “I am Madame Duval. You are… younger than I expected.”

“So are you,” Evie replied, with a smile she knew would charm. “I expected someone with white hair and a cane.”

A tiny almost-smile flickered at the corner of the older woman’s mouth. “Sit down, please.” She gestured to a velvet chair. “My daughter, Claire, is thirteen. Her English is passable, but appalling. She has a tendency to speak as if she is gargling. My sister, Lady Ashworth, will arrive next month, and Claire intends to make a good impression.”

“I can help with that,” Evie said, hearing the door open behind her.

“Mother, do we really need a tutor? I’d rather—Oh.”

Evie turned. The girl, Claire, was standing in the doorway, gangly and freckled, with dark hair in a severe braid. She was staring at Evie with open, undisguised fascination.

“You’re American,” Claire said, in English that was thick but comprehensible. “Do you know cowboys?”

Evie laughed, a genuine one. “I’ve met a few. They’re not nearly as romantic as the dime novels say. They smell mostly of horses and whiskey.”

Claire grinned, and Evie saw the girl’s stiffness dissolve. Madame Duval watched the exchange with a carefully neutral expression. “Well,” she said, rising, “I will leave you two to it. Thirty minutes, twice a week. We will discuss payment after a trial session.”

The trial session was, surprisingly, enjoyable. Evie had never taught anything in her life beyond a few untrained backup singers, but she found she had a knack for making Claire repeat tricky sounds, for structuring small dialogues about Parisian shopping and English tea culture. They worked at a small desk by the window, looking out over the formal gardens, and the minutes flew.

“Perhaps we should take a short break,” Evie said, hearing the strain in the girl’s voice. “Your throat must be tired. Show me the room. It’s beautiful.”

Claire, eager to impress her exotic new tutor, gave her a tour of the ground floor rooms: a dining room with a table that could seat twenty, a library lined with leather-bound volumes, and a small music room dominated by a gleaming Pleyel piano. Evie stopped at the door, her breath catching. On the wall above the piano hung a large portrait in a gilded frame.

A young woman, barely more than a girl, sat at a harpsichord, her hands poised above the keys. She had dark, wavy hair swept up in an elaborate style, a sharp chin, and a shy, crooked smile that made Evie’s heart pause mid-beat.

“Claire,” Evie said, her voice coming out in a whisper. “Who is that?”

The girl looked up at the portrait, and her cheerful expression dimmed. “That’s my aunt. My mother’s sister. Isabelle.”

Evie took a step closer. The resemblance was uncanny. The same deep-set eyes, the same stubborn set of the jaw, the same way of holding her head. But it was the hair, the dark fall of it, that snagged her memory and wouldn’t let go. Her own mother’s locket held a miniature of Lily, her older sister who had run off to Chicago when Evie was twelve, chasing a man who promised her a stage career and never wrote home again. Lily had the same hair, the same chin. The locket itself was the only copy of that miniature Evie had—she’d carried it across the ocean for luck, a talisman against the day she might find her sister alive.

“She’s beautiful,” Evie managed, hearing the tremor in her own voice. “Is she still in Paris?”

Claire hesitated, glancing at the door. “I don’t think Mother likes to talk about her,” she said quietly.

“Why not?” Evie pressed, her tutor mask slipping for a moment.

“She went away,” Claire said, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “When I was small. She sang, you know. On the stage. She’s in the photograph on Mother’s desk—the one where she’s dressed all in white with feathers in her hair. I thought she was a princess. Mother said she was a fool.”

A bell rang in the hall, and Claire jumped. “That’s the hour. I’ll show you out.”

Evie followed her mechanically, her mind racing. It was coincidence, surely. A hundred thousand women could have that same dark hair, that same chin. But Isabelle Duval looked like her sister. Like the sister who had disappeared into the theatrical underworld of a city Evie had now fled. The sister whose last letter had been postmarked from Paris, three years ago, and had spoken of a bright future on the stage.

Madame Duval was waiting in the foyer, a small envelope in her hand. “Mademoiselle Hart. Your payment for today’s trial.” She held out the envelope, sealed with wax. “If you are acceptable to Claire, we will continue next Tuesday.”

Evie took the envelope, her fingers brushing the paper. “Madame,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “The portrait in your music room—your sister Isabelle. She looks familiar to me. I wonder—might she have ever been known by another name?”

Madame Duval’s face closed like a door slamming shut. All warmth evaporated from her eyes, replaced by a flinty, guarded look. “Isabelle was a singer, once,” she said, her voice clipped. “A childish fancy she quickly outgrew. She is now married and living in Lyon. She does not use her performances anymore.”

“A stage name,” Evie pressed. “Did she use a stage name?”

The butler appeared at Evie’s elbow, a silent summons. Madame Duval gave her a thin, frozen smile. “I am not certain what name she used. It was a long time ago, and we do not speak of it. Claire will see you next Tuesday, Mademoiselle. Good afternoon.”

She was dismissed. Evie walked out of the mansion into the pale Paris afternoon, clutching the envelope with its precious francs. She walked three blocks before she stopped, leaning against a stone wall, her heart pounding in her ears.

Isabelle. Married in Lyon. If her sister was married in Lyon, then who was the girl in the miniature Evie wore around her neck on a broken chain? Who was the woman in her mother’s final, desperate letters—the one who had written *“Find your sister, Evie. Rue Saint-Sauveur, Montmartre. Ask for Lily Hart with the voice of an angel.”*

Lily. *Lily*, not Isabelle.

But the face was so like. And the locket that held that miniature was gone now, stolen in a smoky bar, pages of her past ripped away. Whoever Isabelle Duval was, she was connected to the world Evie had come to find—the world of singers and stage names and women who disappeared into the night, leaving only portraits and lies behind them.

And Evie now held a new piece of the puzzle. A name: Isabelle. A street: none. A family that had erased her.

She looked down at the envelope in her hand. Twenty francs. Enough for tomorrow, and the next day. The Le Chat Bleu would pay her on Friday. It was not enough. But it was a start.

And somewhere in Montmartre, a woman with a voice like an angel was waiting to be found.