“It’s more than that—for Ella Blythe anyway. Her head isn’t turned so easily. What’s he done to you?”
“Nothing, really. It’s just a silly thing...”
He stared right through those filmy layers of ambiguity I’d attempted to erect and demanded the truth with one quick jolt of his eyebrow.
“The truth ... the truth is ... well, I’ve long admired Philippe from afar. He makes a fine dancing partner.” Which I knew from experience. I shivered against the rough wood under my back and breathed deeply of the scent of fields and rich dirt. “He’d make nearly any ballerina who danced opposite him appear charming.”
“Ah yes, a fine partner. A wonderful dancer, and brilliant in nearly any role. Then of course there are the feelings.”
“Which?”
“Yours, of course. For Philippe. Come now, you’ve the stealth of a child when it comes to him, and I mean that in the finest possible way.”
My hands flew to my burning cheeks. “What’sfineabout being called a child?”
“There’s not a bit of guile in your nature, and that’s to your favor. It’s ... well, rather unusual.”
I felt his eyes on me. Moisture cooled my neck.
“Philippe desperately needs such a woman. A sweet little confection of femininity and love who will come alongside him and make him take notice of the beauty in life. To pull him up from what his life has become. Perhaps our little nun will be just right for him.”
I still couldn’t look at him. I stared up at the sky and felt brave. “Why do I feel as though this is a trap? Do you aim to find out all my secrets and then ruin me?”
There was a pause. “Your hair is pretty this way.”
My head tipped to the side, and there was his bright-eyed smile glowing out at me, those gold flecks in his eyes alight with sincerity. Admiration. Something loosened in me, weakened at my core, and I couldn’t speak. He did that to me, and now it seemed I’d become like every other woman in Covent Garden—charmed by Jack Dorian.
The wagon jolted as it made a hard turn and entered the yard. Jack sat up and pulled me to sit beside him, leaving his warm hands on my back to steady me as we bumped over the field.
He was still studying my hair, the disarray of loose curls raining all about my shoulders and twisted with straw. “It always looks the same when you force it into that perfect little knob on the back of your head, but I prefer it down. It looks different every time you turn your head.”
I glared, steeling myself against the delightful spell he cast. “It’s a sorry mess.”
“That finally has its own way. And it appears to know what it’s doing.” He fingered the end of one curl where it lay against my arm, and I tensed. A ripple of anxiousness passed over me.He tipped his head as he looked at me in that quiet moment, as if filled with wonder at how I’d ever come to be.
The wagon bumped and jolted to a stop with a metallic clank as the brake was set, and we tumbled toward the driver’s seat. I braced and rolled, but my head thudded against something soft—Jack’s arm, extended to catch me.
He looked down at me with a most amused smile. “About time. I paid the sot to do that hours ago.”
I dissolved into giggles against his arm, glad to be free of the tension, enjoying his smile. It was addictive, that grin of his. I pushed up and scooted across the wagon bed and jumped down. A dark-haired man that Jack had pointed out as Lizzie’s older brother caught me and handed me down, but his manner was stiff. Unwelcoming.
I thanked him, searching his face for a moment to understand his reaction, until a cool breeze beside me signified Jack’s absence. I squinted to see Jack in the dark but saw nothing until the barn door slid open and the orange glow of oil lamps inside spilled over the distant forms of Jack and Lizzie framed in the doorway.
“Known each other a long time, those two.” Lizzie’s brother Paul spoke beside me in the dark, clutching the horses’ reins in giant paws.
“They seem close.”
“We always thought one day they’d be wed. And they still might.” He cleared his throat. “That is, unless someone stands between them.” His look toward me was steady, and at last I understood.
“Your trouble is with Jack and enticing him to settle down.” I wouldn’t allow for guilt over what I hadn’t done. I lived with enough as it was.
Paul turned back to the figures ahead as if he hadn’t heard me. “That boy lives as one abandoned every day of his life. Wears it about as if it’s sewn into his nature. Needs a solid woman—one he can trust.”
I looked at Jack’s face highlighted by the lights inside and all the fun of this night, of the day at the circus, solidified into a subtle kinship. Both of us, two fractured souls, always with a crack to fill. Who had abandoned him?
Paul’s voice came in the chilly night along with a puff of breath. “Nobody knows how to drop a person like a dancer, I’ve heard. Only this time if anyone hurts him”—he shifted in the grass—“this time he’s got us to right any wrongs.”
I shivered at the hint, like a knife point resting against my arm in warning, and watched Jack more closely. It was shocking, the thought of him abandoned. Of all the stories I could have pinned on him, that never fit. “I have no romantic intentions toward Jack Dorian, so you have nothing to fear from me.” I said it as if Fournier and Philippe could overhear. “Outside of the theater, we are truly nothing to one another.”
