“It’s hard to feel much affection toward the man, knowing that.”
Silence ticked by for a few seconds, except water dripping on her side as she lifted out a limb. “Is he not a widower?”
Well ... yes.Nowanyway. Likely not when he married. “I still cannot forgive him.” I shivered in my bathwater, mentally chiding myself for having told Tovah too much. I’d nearly collapsed in the corridor on the anniversary of Mum’s passing, and I’d been forced to give her the reason. She was quick to swoop in and look after me, and I was growing accustomed to it. At least I hadn’t mentioned names.
“Give the man a chance. What widower wants to be alone his whole life? It is a sorry matter that he never came looking for you, though.” She sank back into her tub. “Or perhaps he simply didn’t know where to find you. London’s a large place, you know.”
“What if he’s like Jack Dorian? Or all those married men who keep dancers in flats outside Covent Garden? He seemed very flippant about the past. His new wife didn’t seem to know my mother had ever existed ... or me.” I closed my eyes, wondering if he’d have given me a different answer about Mum if his wife hadn’t been standing beside him. I’d likely obliterated any chance of finding out.
She sighed. “It was wretched of him, not telling her about you, but he’s no Jack Dorian. Besides, Jack only runs after dancers and prostitutes from Seven Dials—the only ones who’d give him a moment of their time. Your mother was in a respectable trade, now, wasn’t she?”
My chest constricted. “She took in sewing all my life.” My skin crawled with the omission of truth, but I didn’t correct it.For you, precious Mum.I’d spent my life taking care of her, and keeping her secret was all I could offer now.
“There, you see? It’s a completely different situation. I’m certain he’s a fine gent who’ll be pleased to acknowledge his daughter, once he has a moment to think it over.”
I laid my head back on the metal rim. Two weeks. It had been two weeks, and he knew exactly where to find me. Of all the men who marched through that greenroom door, he’d never been one of them. A cold, metallic acceptance settled deep within me as I rose and toweled dry. I felt another string tying me down to this earth loosen, my heart longing once again for heaven and the comfort of the rescuing Father who’d always been there. Even when I had not.
Thwip.Fabric hit my face and I stumbled. It was a clean dress, lobbed over the wall from Tovah’s side. “You’ll want something clean, now that you are.”
I fumbled with the fabric, shaking out a lovely woolen dress of dark blue. I hadn’t even thought to bring another set.
“Philippe Rousseau has been asking after you.”
My heart climbed into my throat. “Has he?” I hadn’t allowed myself to think of him lately, especially after encountering my father. I could feel the hurt and uncertainty that had weighed Mama down settling on me as well, every time Philippe vanished again. My heart was not built for such back-and-forth.
Philippe had been present for every performance in those two weeks, and I for one had been intensely curious, but no one had said a word about his absences. There had been no walks home, for rehearsals had gone late for all of us and we had mostly dragged ourselves home together every night.
Yet he had been asking after me. “What exactly did he ask?”
“Oh, how you’d been getting on, if Jack had been bothering you, that sort of thing.” There was a click and a snap from her side. “He seems to think you’re attached to Jack. Many of them do.”
“I hope you set them straight. There are rumors, you know—a bet. Whether or not he can kiss me.”
“Jack may not let you alone so easily, then, if there’s something in it for him.”
I fastened my stays, hooked my garter, and changed the topic. “I’m beginning to believe in the healing qualities of these places after all. Every inch of me feels fresh and tingly.” I slipped into the lovely blue dress and let it fall over my cinched frame.
“It’s about time you listened to me.” She threw back the curtain and entered to help me button the thing. I tied my hair up high as she fastened my dress. Her fingers slowed. “It’s more than kindness, isn’t it? With Philippe, I mean. You’ve broken through. You’ve gotten him to open up, haven’t you?”
I opened my mouth, straightened. “We’re ... friends. I think.” I grimaced at the memory of him in the distance, watching me lean on Jack Dorian.
She turned to let me button her and lifted those laughing green eyes to mine. “If he’s told you his secrets—any of them—you’re more friends with him than any of the rest of us are.” Her eyebrows lifted. “Perhaps more than friends.”
The clang of rejection still echoed through my hollow chest. I didn’t care to feel it again from another man with a tendency to disappear. “I don’t know if I could bear to walk any deeper into the shadows around that man. I may not like what I find.”
“Or you may find yourself in the middle of the grandest love story this side of the curtain.”
Second grandest. I turned with an exhale. “Let’s not talk of it anymore. I’ve had enough of men for one day.”
She looped her arm through mine, those twin emeralds of eyes still gleaming at me. “Very well, but you mustn’t wait too long to untangle this one. Tomorrow is the cuts, and if you remain, we’ll have a new performance to prepare. And if not ... well, time may be short.”
That wordifechoed in my head, tying me in knots as we walked through town. They cut regularly, and for hardly any reason at all. Every ballet company was struggling, and Craven was no large-scale theater. How many would they cut tomorrow? Delight and heady fear rippled through me as we walked together before the shops, my change in fortune only a day before me.
I’d begun to realize that I belonged nowhere but here, to no one but these people. After working as a dancer, no one else would have me. I suddenly had the sensation of grabbing onto the pieces of my life as they fell away from me.
14
The Great Fournier’s cigar came out with a trail of smoke. “You. And you.” Two dancers, one who’d had an extended illness and another afraid of her own shadow, released their stance and left the line.
