“Do I, now?” Sarcasm tainted my voice.
“It’s remarkable, really.”
“Isn’t it?” I forced a prim smile.
“You asked why I’d ... targeted you, as you say. It’s because you look like someone I hold in high regard, and I cannot ignore the striking similarity. It’s uncanny, really.” He stared openly in the night’s dimness.
I narrowed my eyes. “Who?”
“No one you’d know, I’m certain. Yet somehow...”
Suddenly panicked, I lurched for the door of the roominghouse. “I’m home now, you may go.” I didn’t want to hear my dear mama’s name on his lips.
Yet he only stood there in the dark street, hands jammed in his pockets, golden hair wild about his head as he blocked my way. “It’s those remarkable eyes of yours—so brilliant and vivid. I’ve never seen the like in all the world, except in one other person.” He tipped his head, gaze piercing. “Ever hear of the world-famous dancer Marcus de Silva?”
Everything stopped, curtain closed. I stood in the street as if I’d become a statue. I opened my mouth. Pressed it shut. Suddenly I looked at Jack Dorian as more than a threat to my dreams—he was even more dangerous, prying open boxes I’d locked away in my heart. “You’re claiming youknowMarcus de Silva?” It made my heart hammer to say his name, knowing who he was to me, and I could feel the curiosity inflaming against my will. “That’s as likely as your tiger story. It seems he’s something of a disappearing mystery.”
He smiled, looking me over. “I did know him, actually.”
“Prove it.” I leaned forward, hungry for his answer. I didn’t want to, yet somehow Ihadto know more about this man with eyes that looked like mine. What did the rest of him look like? What were the timbre of his voice and the expressions of his face? Was there anything else of him in me? I’d never imagined sharing any similarities with the man, this stranger, yet suddenly I was a part of him. Connected by eyes no one else had.
Jack studied me, seeming to see through my snappish words. “One day you will find him, Miss Blythe, and right under your very nose. And that’s all the proving I care to do.” Another nod and he was gone, stepping through the night.
My heart hammered with an oddly unsettled fear. I pulled the door open and hurried up the stairs, trying to clear my headof everything I’d discovered, yet I found no safety in my little flat. A breeze lifted the white curtains into my room like two arms out to greet me, and something seemed off. I couldn’t shake it. I ran to close the window and that’s when I saw it—my wardrobe, with a bit of tulle caught in the closed drawer, a door slightly ajar. I wouldn’t have left it that way, costly as those practice skirts were. I knelt and dug through my things at the bottom of the wardrobe, the piles now disturbed, but I had nothing of value. No coin hidden there.
Then it struck me with metallic awareness what was missing, just as the door opened and someone entered.
Minna frowned down at me on the floor. “There was a man here earlier tonight, asking after you. I told him I wasn’t your keeper and to check the local priory.”
I ignored the jab. “What sort of man?”
“Tall, quiet, well-dressed but rather ill-mannered. He kept to the shadows, mostly, so I didn’t see more than that. He took off his ugly green hat—honestly, who wears such a color upon his head?—and insisted on waiting for you. Until I told him you might be gone for hours yet.” She unpinned her hat and dropped it on the dressing table.
I stopped myself from asking about his eyes, and if they resembled mine. Then I felt about in the bottom of my wardrobe to be certain of what I expected—yes, they were gone. Those red satin slippers were gone.
I felt their lack intensely, for so many reasons. I had not set out to find my father, but it seemed he had located me. Thanks to Jack Dorian, most likely, for I couldn’t imagine how else he might have suddenly known to look for me. I swallowed hard. Did he even realize who I was, exactly? He felt threatened by my reappearance, it seemed, and apparently by the shoes. Butwhy take them? What clue did they hold to that wretched night so long ago?
Yet I didn’t really want to know more. Not about him, or whoever it was who had hurt Mama.
“If you’ve a mind to find a sponsor, Ella Blythe, you’d best let me help you form alliances. It’s clear you haven’t any idea what you’re doing.” Minna unleashed her long hair and shook it out before her mirror. “Unless he’s simply a hanger-on you’ve failed to dislodge. Do you plan to see him if he comes again?”
I pressed my lips together, then licked them. “I’m not certain what I should do.” I tried not to stare at the empty space in the bottom of my wardrobe, tried not to imagine where those scarlet slippers might be this minute and whose hands might be holding them.
8
In a long papered hall that ran along the west side of the auditorium, I glimpsed my father’s face for the first time. It was in a series of paintings in gilded frames that spanned the entire wall, capturing in muted tones Craven’s best dancers from years past. My mother’s showed her poised in her red slippers at a distance from the artist, lifting into an arabesque, but Marcus de Silva’s showed his entire, memorable face at close range. I knew without even looking at the embossed plates which one was him.“It’s those remarkable eyes. I’ve never seen the like in all the world, except in one other person...”
I’d never expected to feel a connection to this man—it was my mother I wanted to discover more about. Yet the further I pushed, a horrible awareness of my father swept around me like cool air, cutting through my garments and chilling my flesh. I stared at him, and the magnificence of the man utterly captured me, his features so starkly white against dark hair, his prism eyes that held such eerie familiarity blazing right into mine.
I reached up and touched those eyes, that rock-hewn face. I had lost all sense of belonging when Mum had died, but herewas the other half of me—the half that had always been missing and was still out there. Perhaps the island might find a link to land after all.
“Handsome, is he not?” The feminine voice, low and controlled, shook me loose from my thoughts.
I turned to look into the knowing face of Mama Jo, who stood several portraits away. I’d come here after a thorough search of my flat for the red slippers, willing them to appear in some cobwebbed corner, but they did not. And my confusion only grew.
She stepped forward, her boots echoing in the emptiness. “It doesn’t do any of them justice, believe me. They were never this still, this flat, in real life. Ah, what an extraordinary time that was.” Mama Jo inhaled, shoulders straight and elegant as always. “It’s too bad you did not know him then. You would have been proud—proud to be connected to him.”
I blinked, a little stunned. “You know who I am, don’t you?” It felt a bit like airing out a stuffy attic, having someone who already knew about my secret.
