No Regrets by Michèle Ann Young Page A

nearest pillar.
       Jake dashed at the piano and patted the mirrorpolished surface. "See," he crowed.
       "You'll scratch it," Fred said, with a growl. "An' next, you'll be carving your initials in it."
       Pulling the key from his waistcoat pocket, Lucas strolled to the keyboard and unlocked the lid. Jake pushed in front of him and ran his hands over the blazing white ivory.
       "There," Fred said, drawing close and peering over his tousled head. "Look at them mitts. They're filthy."
       Shoving his hands back in his pockets, Jake backed up. His hatred of soap and water was a standing joke among the boys.
       "What do you think?" Lucas asked Fred. At sixteen, the lad's ego was as sensitive as a girl's and his temper incendiary.
       His eyes hungry and his mouth sullen, Fred stared at the instrument. "It's all right I suppose . . . milud."
       Fred hated to use Lucas's title. Mr. Davis, the housemaster Lucas employed to look after the boys, would have chastised the studied insolence. Lucas let it slide. He sat down on the polished bench stool and ran his fingers over the keys. He picked out the notes of a Beethoven sonata, pleased he still remembered.
       "Strike me," Jake whispered. "You're good."
       "I was better at your age."
       "Why ain't you a musician, then?"
       The answer tasted of ashes. But to win their trust, he'd always been honest with these boys. "My father had other plans."
       "I wish mine had," Fred muttered.
       Lucas had found him in a public house bashing out tunes on an old piano for beer, having fled his home, wherever that was. He was no ordinary urchin. As much as he tried to hide his origins, somewhere along the line, he'd received an education, including music lessons. If he heard a tune once, he played it perfectly. Seeing Fred in that tavern had given Lucas the idea for the music school.
       "Try it," Lucas encouraged, getting up.
       Tossing him a lowering glance from beneath beetled brows, Fred pulled back the stool and slouched down. He hit middle C.
       For all his cynical sneer, reverence shone in the lad's eyes as the note rang out clear and true to the vaulted ceiling. He caressed a chord and listened to its sweetness die away. Then, his fingers as light and delicate as a butterfly, he drew out a few notes.
       Settling himself more comfortably, he banged out a rousing ditty popular in the stews of London with words to make a sailor blush.
       Jake, his voice as pure as an angel's, picked up the refrain, and the story of Mother O'Reilly and what her old man did with her duck filled the room. The three other boys—Red, named after his hair; Aggie, a gangly piccolo player; and Pete, blond and blue-eyed and the finest flautist Lucas had ever heard—tumbled into the room and joined the chorus.
       Fred challenged Lucas with a sly glance.
       With a grin, Lucas added his tenor to the boys' heavenly trebles and slid onto the bench. He picked up the harmony, occasionally passing across Fred's hands and his fourp'ny rabbit chest.
       "Oh, my word." Mrs. Green the cook, her mouth open, paused in the doorway with a tray of lemonade and biscuits.
       Distracted, Fred hit a sour note, and the music died away, leaving Jake, his eyes closed and head thrown back in oblivion, to finish the fornication of the poor fowl.
       "Well, really." Mrs. Green slammed the tray on the box set up to serve as a table and marched off, her nose held high.
       The boys collapsed in mirth—all except Fred, who kept a wary eye on Lucas as if he expected a beating.
       Although Lucas wasn't sure he would ever earn the tortured youth's acceptance, he remained determined to try.
       "Bravo," he said. "But we should keep an eye out for Mrs. Green next time." He winked.
       Chuckling, the boys crowded around the tray. They crammed their mouths with warm shortbread and guzzled the lemonade.
       Lucas recalled his own boyhood; he was always