He has guarded presidents. He has never guarded a voice.

Jack Dalby spent twenty years in a tactical unit, standing other people in doorways so they could walk through them alive. Retired, and short of money for his daughter’s April wedding, he takes one private job: six months minding the Norwegian soprano Solveig Aas, starting tonight at La Scala.

Somebody is sending her pages torn from the score of Tosca, the opera in which the soprano dies at the end. Her own dates are written in the margins in a careful schoolroom hand. Tonight is one of them.

Solveig is imperious on stage and lonely off it, and she has had quite enough of men who confuse proximity with permission. Jack has one rule: he does not touch the principal. He does not know a cavatina from a carburetor. He learns.

From the back corridors of Milan to the snow on the roof of the Vienna State Opera, past a falling sandbag, a fire alarm at twenty to three and a conductor with too many reasons to want her gone, the dates keep coming. The last one is opening night.

A romantic thriller from the opera world, and the first book in the Encore series. Contains open-door love scenes.