Severine shifted a sheaf of papers onto the piano stool, freeing the piano itself for the attentions of her duster. Even though it was a part of her job, she always felt wrong when she handled her employer's compositions; she felt as though it was somehow sacrilegious. She heard him play them as she moved around the house, fulfilling her duties as his housekeeper, and their beauty was always enough to move her to tears. She considered herself blessed to hear their birth, even if the process occasionally involved a jarring discord as her employer slammed his hands down on the keys in frustration. When that happened he usually appeared in the hallway soon after, curtly informing her that he was going out for a walk, and when he came back he invariably knew exactly where he was going wrong.

She carefully placed the papers back on the piano, looking with curiosity at the notes written into the staves. She knew he was working on something new; he'd recently finished a piece he'd laboured over for the longest time. He was holding a small soiree to unveil it in a few weeks' time - just a select few people who wrote similar things, and a couple of critics. He wasn't fond of company in general, and she knew he didn't particularly care if his music was a success or not, but he'd told her that these things had a life of their own, and demanded to be heard.

Ironically, considering his disdain for success, his compositions were very popular, as much as anything written in a classical vein was these days. He'd built himself a very good reputation among the cognoscenti, and many of them waited eagerly for a letter inviting them to hear his latest work. He seemed far too wrapped up in his own little world to notice the high regard he was held in though.

Severine smiled as she recalled his surprise at the acclaim the first piece he published received; of course, he'd had to sit with a French to English dictionary to translate most of it. When he'd first come to France he barely spoke the language at all, and their communication was very disjointed for some time, since her knowledge of English was limited to the snippets she could remember from her school days and fragments from TV. Now French was second nature to him - she often heard him mumbling to himself in French as he worked. Needless to say, her English had improved too.

She moved across the room to tidy up his writing bureau, not that it required much tidying. He hardly needed a housekeeper, he barely used anything but this room and his home gym, and she often felt he overpaid her. She'd mentioned it to him once, and he'd laughed and said he was sure many employers across the world dreamed of hearing that from their staff.

Standing back, Severine noticed an envelope on the floor between his desk and the wastepaper basket. When she picked it up, she saw it was one of the invitations to his planned soiree, sealed and addressed in his meticulous cursive script. She didn't recognise the name, but she was intrigued to see the United States address; she knew nothing of his life before he came to France. She got the impression that he stayed mainly within the tiny hamlet he'd made his home in order to avoid dealing with being recognised, but he never volunteered information about it and the one time she'd asked about it, he'd politely deflected the question. He'd looked so sad in that moment that she felt horribly guilty for bringing it up, and had never mentioned it again.

She decided it must have fallen from the small pile of invitations he'd given her to post the day before, and she slipped it into the pocket of her apron. She could put it into the mail on her way home. Glancing around the room one more time to make sure she hadn't missed anything, Severine nodded her satisfaction to herself and stalked from the room, pulling the doors of her employer's study shut behind her.