“Training?” My voice barely came out.
“It’s my weekly ritual. I come here to teach them.”
How desperately I wanted to leave. To bathe. To forget. Nowhereon earth made me more uncomfortable. “Why Seven Dials? Why teach here?”
He straightened with a long inhale. “I grew up here.”
I collected myself and gave a sidelong look. “With your mother, the silk heiress?”
“My mother is a silk heiress, but it’s my father who sealed my fate. He washerfather’s esteemed estate manager. He was thirty-two and she seventeen the year of my birth, although they called my birth a ‘summer abroad’ and promptly left me here, with her scullery maid’s elderly aunt. So yes, I grew up here.”
“You’ve never even met your mother, then.” A surge of pity warmed my heart.
“Oh, I’ve met her. I was her little plaything for a time, and she’d come visit me, then place me back up on the shelf of Seven Dials and hurry home to her townhouse in Belgravia.”
“You said Chelsea.”
“Well, now she’s in Chelsea, where she lives with her husband—a duke. Always her aim, if I remember correctly.”
Then the book of his past slammed shut and he turned to the gathering crowd, his voice lilting and full of charm. “Ladies, I promised you a special treat this week, and here she is. A true dancer, soloist at Craven Street Theatre, come to teach you. What do you say to that?”
Giddy chatter sounded and the shuffling of boots on the dusty road.
I glanced at Jack, wrestler of tigers and son of a silk heiress, who threw me the most beguiling grin I’d ever seen, and suddenly I realized every story he’d ever told me was true.
I stood before this tattered collection of London’s poorest, likely burdened by no more than two shillings between the lot of them, whom I was now expected to teach—ballet, of allthings. Which suddenly seemed utterly pointless as I looked into their gaunt faces.
One woman hovered in the shadows, back arched under the heavy load of her life. Sores trailed over her arms, which she didn’t even bother to tuck into her skirts. I watched her in my peripheral vision, wondering if she’d join us. Humanly hoping she wouldn’t, then feeling a surge of guilt. Mama would have welcomed her.
I stepped forward, moving my feet around in the shoes to keep them on, and nodded. “Ready, then?” After leading in a few awkward stretches, I swept into recovery and whispered to Jack. “Are they dancers?” They followed easily, as if the steps were familiar.
“Prostitutes, mostly. A few fortune-tellers, Irish immigrants, a handful of pickpockets.”
I swallowed, hardly daring to breathe. I’d seen the likes of these women hovering about the fringes of Covent Garden when I’d wandered too far, but now up close, all I saw was hunger. The same hunger that existed in the petits rats, and in me, as I danced alone in that materials room, torturing my feet for the sake of earning my place there.
I scanned those faces again as I instructed them to twirl in place, surprised by their abilities and steadiness. And Jack—he was a surprise too. Spending time with prostitutes, but not, it now seemed, as a client. I worked past my welling heart, as we’d been taught in every training session, and forced poise into my spine. “We’ll start with an arabesque, and I’ll show you a trick for creating the perfect line.”
I shed my cloak and lifted onto the ball of my right foot and into the familiar arch, tightening my spine and holding my arm long. “The secret is in the curve of my back. Do yousee? I’ve pulled it into a strong line, and let everything else flow from...” My words vanished as I watched slender bodies in need of food lift delicately onto one foot, backs arched, bony arms lifted to follow my every move. “Yes,” I croaked. “That’s it.”
I glanced about for the woman with sores hovering near the back, but Jack Dorian blocked my vision to the right, striding with purpose toward an old Gypsy woman seated on a crate. I watched in horror, then awe, as he bowed at the waist, extended his hand, and accepted her crusty, gnarled one in his, all his charm now shining out upon her withered self.
With imaginary music playing, he pulled the old woman up, spinning her around with a clinking of little gold coins on her headscarf, and dipping her crooked old body back. She cackled as he righted her, toothless face aglow, giving her a unique charm I never would have noticed if Jack hadn’t lit the flame in her.
She bobbed and spun along with his smooth, even strides, making quick circles in the alleyway behind the rows of others. It was both ridiculous and enchanting, this uneven pair. Jack was smiling at her with all the lively playfulness he flashed toward the well-dressed dancers at Craven. It brimmed over upon the lovely and the unlovely, the wealthy and the poor.
How sadly different he and I were.
I turned fully back to my unusual class. After directing them to lift into one last demi-pointe spin, I moved back toward Jack with a lump in my throat that refused to be swallowed. “They were quite good. I can tell you’ve worked with them.”
He shrugged. “They have time, and so do I. They have a need, I have a solution.”
“Do they not work?”
“Not during the day.”
“Oh.” A furnace of heat eclipsed my face. “Right.” How trivial it seemed to teach these women about arabesques and pointed toes. What good was ballet to a starving, desperate world?
“Well, then. I suppose you’ll want to hurry back to the theater and practice. I’ve kept you long enough.”
