“Now then, how is our new dancer getting on?” Jack’s smile was glaringly white, his face like a gaudy paste jewel.
“Well enough.”
I watched Philippe and Annika dance, drinking in the sight of Philippe’s lithe body as if I’d never see it again. He was bending and spinning, his arms easily guiding his partner’s waist in that same careful way he’d done with me. I couldn’t look away.“One cannot help but grow close tohis dancing partner, now can he?”
Jack watched me, reading the longing and angst in my face. “Don’t concern yourself over Bellini.”Misreading, as it turned out. “He’s all bark. Besides, it’shimyou have to impress.”
He jerked his head toward a plume of cigar smoke rising from a single seat in the near-dark auditorium. I turned and blinked, the outline of a man’s face appearing behind the smog. It was a wide and aged countenance with a white beard that came to a point atop a rather mountainous body. And he was staring at me directly, eyeing Jack with displeasure and me with suspicion.
I wrinkled my nose. “Who smokes in the presence of ladies—in a theater, no less?”
“Don’t you know him?” Tovah blinked her disbelief. “How in heaven did you ever sign on here without meeting the owner? That istheGreat Fournier.”
I cocked an eyebrow at the smoking ogre-like giant staring us down. “As in ... no one could beFournier-looking than him?”
My new friend spit out a laugh, eyeing me with amusement.
Jack’s eyes sparkled in my direction. I did not like it.
“Fournier, as in the French word foroven,” he said with a smile still about his lips.
The other dancer, Tovah, eyed me, sobering. “As in, don’t get near the heat or you’ll be burned.”
So this was the Great Fournier, the bear of the theater I’d heard so much about. The man rose in a column of enormous dignity, and I stiffened. “Oven, indeed. He certainly smokes like one. Which reminds me.” I straightened with a smile. “Luncheon should be set by now.”
“Oh, come now, it’s only pickled tongue and potatoes. You could fish better food from the Thames.”
“And clotted cream on tarts,” Tovah added. “We’ll be lucky if there’s any left by the time we get there.” She backed toward the curtain and abandoned me.
Jack approached and I sensed his mysterious aura that charmed so many. I could feel my will beginning to bend as I continued to put off luncheon, as he wished. I was becoming Mama, in all her suppleness, losing my spine. Perhaps it was the theater, perhaps it was because I was her daughter, but the parallel felt entirely inescapable.
I backed away. “I never miss clotted cream.” So sweet. Just like freedom. Freedom from this quicksand. Fournier, taller than I imagined, rose from his seat and strode toward the offices with one final glance toward Jack hovering over me. I was holding onto my dreams, my remarkable future, by a very thin thread.God, please don’t let it snap.
I ran toward the curtain and brushed through it. The past, which had always seemed distant and something to be gently unraveled at will, now seemed most significant and threatening and urgent. Almost a curse I could not escape. I had a suddenneed to understand it, shine daylight on it, before it caught up and completely overtook me.
After a quick luncheon, I snuck out toward the front of the theater to see the entire place for myself. I felt an odd kinship with this theater as I moved silently through it toward the offices, a sort of déjà vu, as if it were a previous home that I knew mostly by memory and it welcomed me back. From Mama’s stories, I knew the entire layout by heart—the great entrance hall with its thick pillars and sweeping double staircase, the richly appointed auditorium just beyond, the long green corridor in back with the greenroom on one end and the materials room on the other.
I missed Mama with a wringing pain, especially here in the exquisite theater she’d described in such detail.We are so similar, you and I.It was my theater too, and my future was here. Every shadowy corridor and closed door drew my attention as if my name had been called, as if the theater was holding on to something of my past and inviting me to discover it.
And I needed to understand it. How powerless I’d felt in the face of that charmer, as weak and controlled as she had been. Only when I fully understood what had happened, shed the light of day on those old mysteries, could I truly be free of its echo in my own life. And the only way I could do that was to act completely opposite of Mama—taking control of my own future rather than waiting for someone else to do it. It was with this thought that I knocked at Fournier’s office, hoping to establish a decent working relationship between us, and perhaps find out what he knew about one long-ago dancer.
A small oil lamp flickered inside, but the room lay empty, the door ajar. Papers covered the top of a worn walnut desk and cracked red leather chair off to the side. Light filtered througha high stained-glass window, coloring the room with a prism of dusty sunshine. I stared at the dim space until my gaze rested on a large book opened and facing me on the desk. It was names and addresses—a logbook. And it was simply sitting there, open and waiting.
Curiosity curled inside me. I wanted to know—deservedto know, didn’t I? Mum had been so secretive, but this theater held countless details she’d refused to reveal. With shaking fingers, I flipped toward the beginning of what turned out to be a pay log, scanning for her name—Delphine Bessette. I found it and followed the line across to her real name:Jane Fawley, Number 11 Tavistock Place.
I read the name again, absorbing it fully: Jane Fawley. That was Mum, in her mysterious other life, and oh, how that name fit her better than the ornamental one they’d given her, and everything she’d used since. I memorized the address and flipped back to the page my finger had been holding. I slipped out before I was noticed, equal parts elated and grieving anew, with a small pinch of guilt for snooping.
But if I found something important, it would be worthwhile.
“I’m trying to trace Jane Fawley. Were you acquainted with her?”
The tall liveried servant who opened the door at Number 11 Tavistock Place peered out at me through the narrow opening he’d allowed. It was nearly tea hour in most London homes, and I was certain to be an unwelcome intrusion.
“Only that she’s dead, miss. Many years now.”
“But she lived here once?” How different it was than our little home, this brick-and-stone-pillared place with perfectly manicured shrubs around an iron gate.
He nodded his head. “She occupied the largest flat on the first floor.”
