“Many days she can be found staying late to rehearse, making up for lost time.”
“Where does she come from? We’ve no idea if she’s a respectable sort. Who are her parents?”
A hard intensity rippled through me. I averted my gaze out of sheer necessity as silence reverberated again through that crystal-and-gold-crusted room, whirring in my ears. I shivered. Seconds ticked on as a tea cart rattled in somewhere down the hall. Someone forced a discreet cough into his arm.
Breathe. In and out, breathe.
“This is the theater, for pity’s sake,” cried one man at last. “Not parliament.”
“Does her background matter if she can dance?” Fournier’s voice boomed behind me with the confidence of one whose questions never required a response.
Then Marcus de Silva spoke. “How old is the girl, Fournier?”It was rich and velvety, soft enough to miss if the room hadn’t been so wretchedly silent.
It was Bellini, that infernal ballet instructor, who spoke up. “She has the look of a famished waif, I know, but she is, in fact, twenty-one years of age.”
Another man spoke. “Perhaps we should have her dance for us and see what sort of training our money would afford these little street waifs.”
I attempted to swallow.
Bellini gave two jarring claps in my direction. “Come, come. Give us a show.”
“She’s not yourmonkey,Bellini.” Fournier’s heavy voice blanketed that alarming suggestion. Then to me, with an edge of gentle pity—“Thank you, Miss Blythe. You may go.”
I hurried out of the room, not caring that I hadn’t anywhere to goto.It was dark outside, and I’d no idea how to summon a hackney cab to this neighborhood without the aid of a servant.
Was a theater woman, as a guest, even allowed to address the servants?
I retraced my steps to the ghostly hall and stood in the lovely blue-black darkness, shadows of bald trees casting gray fingers over the tile through the windows. It was pleasantly eerie, and I felt much more at ease here in the cool quiet. Moonlight filtered down and I stepped toward it, drawn to the glow. This room felt most like my theater, with its two-story expanse above and exquisite trim and décor.
Footsteps on marble made my shoulders tense into my neck, but I remained fixed at the window. It felt necessary. I fisted the edge of the curtain and remained still.
“Miss Blythe?”
I turned with pounding heart to face the man who was,willingly or not, my father. He walked toward me with wonder playing across his masculine features. He’d silvered gracefully, wearing the same lean elegance that had earned him a name in the ballet world, and I couldn’t help but stare. In an instant, that quiet moment, I caught a surprising strain of aloneness beneath the mask of calm. Every dancer wore a mask, I supposed, even when not onstage.
The creak of his boots cut the eerie silence, and I remained rooted, eyes focused on the lighter streaks of gray at his temples as if it were my anchor to sanity and control. I couldn’t bear to look any longer at his eyes—those gold-flecked orbs with intensity at which the painter had only been able to hint. Up close, anger glinted off their steely depths. My breath caught.
“What is it you want from me?” His smooth voice wrapped around my being—calm, but dangerously so. “You can tell Jack Dorian that if he wishes to hire some woman off the street to play a part, to ease my conscience, he might at least have—”
“I only wished to speak with you that night. To meet you.” Although I hadn’t any idea what I would have said—what I evencouldsay. “I don’t want a thing.”
His voice was quiet. “Please. I’m an old man. Leave me in peace. Whatever compensation you’re receiving from Jack, it isn’t worth the agony you cause me.” It was confusing—all so confusing. He hadn’t stolen my red shoes—he couldn’t have. With all the shock and confusion ... whoever had stolen them knew who I was. He seemed not to believe it. Yet how desperately I wished him to.
He spun to leave and only one word sprang to mind. “Marco.” My little voice echoed in the empty chamber and stopped him cold, seeming to vibrate through his body.
“How dare you?” His low voice cut like blades. “How dare you even pretend to know her?”
I understood then why Jack was so convinced of his innocence. The man was broken, but not by shame. The quiver in his voice, the strained passion in his eyes ... I felt the first twinge of wondering as I looked at this man my mother had left behind, and I was sick with the unfairness of it all. He loved her, that much was clear. Possibly as much as she’d loved him.
Did she realize how utterly her “death” had broken him? For a fleeting moment, I longed to go to the man and put my hand on his arm. “You truly loved my mother, didn’t you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Who did you say was your mother?”
“As I told you. Delphine Bessette.”
He paced toward me again, his gaze tunneling into mine, trying to read something hidden in its depths. He was evaluating something. Evaluating me. “The woman you speak of ... she had this lovely little habit when she was nervous. I don’t suppose you recall...”
It was a test. “That little birthmark on the back of her neck, almost on her shoulder. She walked her fingers over to it and touched it while she was talking and it calmed her. Somehow.”
