“Just certain ones. Well, most, actually.”
His look was steady against the bumping vehicle, as if nothing could deter him from looking at me that way for three days straight, poking about the corners of my mind and unpacking all the crates I’d left there.
I forced my voice through the rich silence. “Well then, what’s yours?”
“My what?”
“Your dream. You heard mine, about flying, so what’s yours?”
He blinked. “Mydream?”
I braced myself for some unsettling comment about womenor charms that would taint this luscious night. Perhaps I should not have asked.
At last he answered. “I wish to write my own ballet.”
I had to study his face to see if he jested. He did not. Lines of longing etched themselves along the sides of his lips now firmly pressed together.
“I find it amusing to adapt the works of geniuses into ballets, but I cannot bear to be forever an echo. Reimagine, recast, rethink what other men have already created, over and over.” He rolled onto his back, hands behind his head to shield it from the jostling. “Leaves one feeling rather like he isn’t the hero of his own life.”
I looked over his fresh face so full of its own life and suddenly couldn’t imagine him doing anything less than creating. What splendor awaited the world when this man’s creativity was unleashed upon the stage. “Have you any ideas? Perhaps you could try your hand.”
“I’ve been writing the same one for ten years. Mostly in my head, mind you, but it’s become larger than life to me and the players are as real as people. I worry about them at times, when I’ve left them alone for too long.”
“Well, do you leave them in danger?”
“It’s a terrible habit of mine. I do delight in leaving them in peril so they’re begging me to return and continue working out their story. At the moment I’ve left a poor, misguided Vanessa in grave danger, near threat of death actually, and I’ve no idea who the villain is yet. You see, poor Vanessa has made herself quite a few enemies.”
“She must be quite accomplished and lovely.”
“Naturally. Yet I hardly know her. The villain, either. I feel as though I’m looking at them both through a veil of Londonfog, and I cannot see to look into their eyes. And now because of that, I’ve no notion of how to rescue her. She’s gone willingly to a secluded place with an evil man I cannot see. The hero has no idea, of course, so he cannot save her.”
I eyed him through the deluge of words. “Yet you’ve not written this story? Sounds quite written to me.”
He shrugged. “I suppose I have a few scrawled pages here and there, but nothing firm. I’ve no idea who these people are.”
“Well, the heroine, yes. But must you know the villain? Evil is evil.”
He looked at her directly. “No one is truly a villain, you know. I only have to dig further into his heart and his life to understand what has brought him to this point. And I haven’t the slightest idea what that is.”
“Why not think about people you know already?”
“Splendid.” He tipped his head my direction, leveling those bright eyes at me. “I could write you a flying part. Wouldn’t that be something? I’d do that for you, in a flash, I would.”
“As long as it doesn’t include a flying machine. Maybe something near the ground. A sort of elegant grace, like a swan treading water.” It was one thing to swing upon a trapeze in a forgotten old barn. It was quite another to attempt it before crowds of people glittering with jewels and expectations.
He offered a crooked grin. “I can do elegant, and not just in my ballet—the very next one you dance. We’ll have you floating across the stage every performance, with your own spotlight solo to boot. An entire divertissement. What do you say? Keen to try?”
“Me, with an entire song to dance in the spotlight?” My lips turned up in a smile. “They’d never agree. After that last performance, I’d say it’s an impossible challenge.”
“I accept. And if I succeed ... remember, I get my choice ofreward. I have it in mind already.” His lips curled into a playful smile.
“Don’t grow fond of the notion.”
We fell to silence as the horses rattled on, beating a rhythm on the rugged road that filled my head with music. I closed my eyes and imagined the lively ballet that would come from the heart of Jack Dorian, and I wished I could see it.
“Why Philippe?” He asked it as if the question had been gnawing at him.
My neck warmed. “He’s the principal, is he not?” The straw behind my head began to itch. I shifted against the wagon bed.
