#spotlight & #excerpt A Manhattan Heiress in Paris by Amanda McCabe
#spotlight & #excerpt A Manhattan Heiress in Paris by Amanda McCabe
A Manhattan Heiress in Paris
by Amanda McCabe
Step into the roaring 1920s Parisian music scene
Leaving Manhattan…
For a secret Parisian affair…
New York darling Elizabeth Van Hoeven has everything…except freedom. But now Eliza’s traveling to study piano at the Paris Conservatoire and falling for jazz prodigy Jack Coleman in the process! A love like theirs is forbidden back home, and as they make beautiful music together under the Parisian lights, Eliza and Jack face a difficult choice: the life they’ve always known, or the possibility of a life they never could have imagined…
Purchase Links
UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Manhattan-Heiress-Paris-Mills-Historical-ebook/dp/B0BCHK5PCJ/
US – https://www.amazon.com/Manhattan-Heiress-Paris-Amanda-McCabe-ebook/dp/B0B3DYDW9D
EXCERPT
(alone on an ocean liner, Eliza and Jack share their greatest passions—their music)
Eliza turned, bemused, and saw Jack at last. He looked different than she’d seen him before, younger, in pale trousers and a knit vest, no coat despite the crisp day. He smiled widely, the corners of his eyes crinkling, a tiny, enticing dimple flashing low in his cheek. Eliza longed to place her fingertip just there, and she had to push her hands into her coat pockets quickly to hold them still.
“Jack!” she called happily, bouncing up on her toes to wave. “Over here.”
He waved, his smile dimming, turning cautious, and she suddenly realized people might be watching them. She sank down flat on her shoes, feeling chilled.
But as he reached her side, that smile, that dimple, was back, and she smiled joyfully in answer.
“I have rehearsal later, but I can get away for a couple of hours,” he said.
“Oh, good! Violet found me a piano in a little sitting room, just an old upright, but she said it seems to be in good tune,” Eliza said. She felt a tense flash of nerves at the thought of him hearing her play.
They hurried toward the staircase that led to the lower decks, moving easily together. Even though he was much taller, he measured his steps to hers, keeping stride with her. “I can’t wait to hear a Conservatoire student play.”
Eliza laughed. “I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. My music isn’t nearly as creative as yours. I’m just a—a practicer, that’s all. An imitator.”
He gave her a startled glance. “Are you kidding? They say the Conservatoire only takes three percent of their applicants. They wouldn’t take just some scale-practicing machine.”
She remembered the auditions, the large crowd of tense-faced students clutching their sheets of music at Carnegie Hall, the raw nerves and fear. The knowledge that out of that whole group, only one or two Americans would be allowed. “The judges at my audition were pretty fierce-looking. They just scowled at everyone who dared cross the stage in front of them! They probably scared away the ninety seven percent with just a frown.”
She led him into the little sitting room off C-deck, just past a staff dining saloon. Violet said a few of the stewards liked to use it after their tea-time, for gossiping and a bit of music, but it would be empty in the morning. It was a small-ish, windowless, stuffy space, but it did boast that piano, as well as a few well-upholstered chairs and hassocks, and a Victrola and stack of records. Eliza could see it would be a nice hidey-hole from demanding so-and-so’s like Mrs. Smythe.
Hopefully, she and Jack could hide there a while, too. Wrap themselves up in music, just like that time in Central Park, and let the rest of the world fly away. They might be seen as too different to ever meet out there, but in music they were the same.
She only hoped she could play well enough not to embarrass herself! Maybe even impress him, just a tiny bit. She’d never been so nervous about someone hearing her before, not even those prune-faced Conservatoire judges.
She sat down on the narrow piano bench as he settled in one of the armchairs next to the instrument, slightly behind her so she couldn’t see him and feel nervous all over again. She took a deep, slow breath, and ran her fingers over the keys. It was in good tune, the ivory giving and warm under her touch, familiar.
She played the soft first notes of one of her favorite pieces, Liszt’s Consolation Three. As she always did with music, she soon lost herself in its streams of rhythm, its emotions, and they became her own for those moments.
As the last notes drifted away, light as a fluff of lace, a bit of starlight, Eliza rested her wrists on the edge of the keyboard and closed her eyes. She heard nothing from Jack, not even a breath, and she wondered if he had left. If she had been so dull, so terrible, he gave up in musical disgust.
She peeked over her shoulder, and saw he did still sit there. His face was very still, stunned. He ran his hand over his face, and she saw it shook a bit.
“That was beautiful,” he said simply, hoarsely, and those words were the loveliest she had ever heard.
She bit her lip and stared down at the keys, that familiar formation of black and white she’d long seen as her best friends. Her refuge. Her outlet for everything she couldn’t say. “My mother thinks Liszt makes me too sad after I finish.”
“It would, wouldn’t it? It’s so dreamy and gentle, so tender.”
“Oh, yes, exactly! A true consolation when things are sad. I can’t do what you do with music—play with it, change it, make it my very own. I can only find my own feelings in what’s already there.”
“But that’s what music is! That’s its deepest meaning, its purpose,” he said passionately. “It connects us to people who are long gone, as well as people who hear us. It helps us find out what we’re feeling, helps us show that to others. Right? Then we can know we’re not really alone, no matter how empty or lonely it feels right then.” As if overcome with his thoughts, he reached out and covered her hand with his, his touch connecting them as firmly as music did.
Eliza twined her fingers with his and held on tightly, so tightly she hoped he could feel the rush of her emotion, that he would never really leave her. “Yes, yes! That’s it exactly. In my family, I never could find words to show them who I am, not really. And I doubt they would care anyway.”
“Me, too. The war, what happened to me there—and what it was like when I found Paris. I can’t put those things onto my family. Here, I’ll show you.”
He slid onto the bench beside her, so close his warmth seemed to wrap all around her, holding her safe in that moment. He did smell wonderful, of that lemony cologne he wore, of the salty sea air, of Jack. She leaned lightly against his shoulder, wanting to be closer and closer.
His long, elegant fingers drifted over the keys, coaxing out a bright, dancing sound, like sunshine on water.
“You play the piano, too?” Eliza said in delight.
“Not much. Not Conservatoire-like. But Lil taught me some.”
Eliza bit her lip to hold back a twinge of jealousy. “Lil?”
“She plays piano with the Hot Seven sometimes. And I worked once in a while at Heinrich’s Music Store, demonstrating new sheet music. I can pick out a bit of a tune.” He played a few bars of the Liszt.
Eliza had to laugh. She’d practiced hours a day, for years and years, and he demonstrated some sheet music in a store and could do that! It was infuriating—and marvelous. She wished she could see music as he could, the sound of it transforming into notes in his head and then back into music, but changed and made personal, made only his.
“You caught so much wistfulness, such loneliness in this part—I thought I’d surely start bawling and embarrass myself,” Jack said, playing a bit of the Andantino. “I’ve never heard anything so achingly beautiful before, bird girl. I can’t do that. I play something sad, something melancholy, and I can’t stand it inside for very long. I have to jump out of it.”
“So what would you do with Mr. Liszt here?” she asked.
He frowned in thought for a moment, those beautiful hands drifting over the piano like butterflies’ wings. Light and airy and heavenly. “Maybe—this?” He played the opening, repeating, low D flats, but they sounded lighter than usual, like a souffle rising. “Or you could go like this. Jumping up onto a cloud, see?” His fingers skipped over the keys, coaxing out a sunny, happy sound.
Eliza laughed. It did sound like jumping onto a fluffy, candy-floss-pink cloud, buoyant and weightless and sun-dappled.
She ran her own fingertips over the keys, winding a new, almost singing line around his sunshine, the tune chasing higher and higher. Jack let out a whoop of delight, and they played and played, perfectly in sync with each other. Birds singing in the summer sunshine.
They crashed down on the crescendo, the music floating away. Eliza fell against his shoulder, both of them gasping with laughter. She’d never felt so wild with joy before, her music set free into the wind. She’d never felt so very with another person.
She glanced up at him. He watched her intently, and his bright smile slowly faded, leaving the air around them tense and crackling.
Author Bio –
Amanda wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen–a vast historical epic starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class (and her parents wondered why math was not her strongest subject…)
She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA Award, the Romantic Times BOOKReviews Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers Choice Award, and the Holt Medallion. She lives in Santa Fe with a Poodle, a cat, a wonderful husband, and a very and far too many books and royal memorabilia collections.
When not writing or reading, she loves taking dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs, and watching the Food Network–even though she doesn’t cook.
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