Summary
A crimson dusk bleeds over Mississippi when Marcia Calhoun, voice like cathedral glass still vibrating from the last Amen, boards the north-bound train with nothing but a cardboard valise and a scale that climbs to the stratosphere. In Manhattan’s gaslit caverns Professor Didot—pocket-watch for a heart—dangles Rome before her like a gilt carrot, then ushers in Philip Bradley, whose cufflinks cost more than the Delta town she left behind. One predatory contract later she is sipping amber wine on a steamer, the Atlantic a black ledger beneath her feet, her body the ink with which Bradley writes his pleasure. Months unravel: sun-bleached Ligurian villas, a maestro’s baton that slashes the air like a rapier, arias spilling from her throat while Bradley’s ardor cools to ash and he vanishes, leaving unpaid maids and a trail of IOUs. Marcia, forged in abandonment, sings on; her Paris debut detonates like sunrise over the Marais—one high C and chandeliers tremble. That same midnight Robert Carroll, all trembling idealism, kneels amid tossed roses; she confesses the ledger of her flesh, and he recoils as though she offered him a serpent. Betrayal calcifies into obsidian resolve: she will gut the Bradley dynasty, starting with John, the solemn brother whose gaze already lingers on her mouth as if it were prophecy. In mahogany boardrooms she trades kisses for stock tips, learns the scent of ink on bearer bonds, and when the market crashes she walks away with the embers of his empire in her silk reticule. Ruined, John still crawls back, a moth to the scorched aria of her life, promising restitution in the key of marriage. Marcia stands on the opera house roof at dawn, city’s discordant hum beneath, wondering whether revenge sung fortissimo can ever become a lullaby.
Synopsis
Marcia Calhoun, a talented but penniless singer, leaves her Southern home hoping to study opera in New York. Her instructor, Professor Didot, promises her a contract on the condition that she receive formal training in Italy for one year. Didot introduces Marcia to millionaire Philip Bradley, who offers to pay for her studies if she will accompany him to Italy as his mistress. Desperate for money, she agrees, but he abandons her several months later. Marcia continues her studies, and on the night of her highly-successful debut in Paris, Robert Carroll, with whom she has fallen deeply in love, proposes. When Marcia confesses her past, however, he deserts her, whereupon she vows to ruin Philip and his family. Because Philip has died, she seeks her revenge through his brother John, who comes to love her so dearly that he reveals all of his business secrets to her. Through dealings with his rivals, Marcia ruins John, but he proposes anyway, promising to right his brother's wrong.
