"I know how you feel," Florian confided to the harp string he'd plucked. It was vibrating, much like his nerves.
"I should be used to it by now." He stilled the string's motion with a gentle hand. If only he could be calmed so easily, although Ray did try.
"It was meaningless." Florian spoke the words aloud, the music room his confessional in the pre-dawn hours. "An accidental touch in a crowded street."
He'd held himself together long enough to reach the bookstore but remembered little else until Ray arrived.
There would be new rumors, more humiliation, and nothing would change.
He'd lived most of his life under the judgmental gaze of the Parisian aristocracy and managed to survive. But this?
He clawed at the harp, the sound harsh, discordant. The nearest to a scream he could allow himself. If he voiced it, even once, he might never stop.
::end::