They’d watched a great many dancers wing their way through various dances, but they all bore the rhythmic sameness he’d come to expect in ballet. He’d mentally placed them each in appropriate roles, scratching his thoughts onto the paper in his lap.
But now it was her turn. Jack could sense what was coming—what he hoped was coming. The lone violin cued up. Fournier and Bellini sat beside him, with four other investors in the rows behind. A pause, then the violin sang out. She lifted along with the music, as if the instrument’s strings moved her, and pushed the song-filled air about with her arms. Every movement lifted upward, drifting across the stage, spinning on the very tips of her toes with delicate swishes of fabric. Casting off the classical style for a wholly expressive and show-stealing solo, she absorbed all attention and the male lead would have been strangely overshadowed.
The footwork was incredible. He could barely stop watching,but it was her entire body—the whole of her—that arrested one’s attention. Innocence mingled with confidence for the first time in Jack’s entire experience with ballet. She danced through all the common variations—buten pointe, on the very tips of her toes, taking center stage rather than merely embroidering beauty onto her male counterpart. Few others had dared it. She excelled at it.
“What is she doing?” Bellini hissed.
“This is ... unexpected.” Fournier spoke with a frown as he watched her swan across the stage.
Ella whipped into an arabesque, using every inch of that stage. Rather than meekly tipping side to side, pointing her toes with little jumps and turns, she had become a full-bodied picture of music, lifting and spinning as high as she pleased. A series of movements connected with liquid grace and freshness.
He longed to cheer for her. Who had ever before dared to dance nearly an entire variation, light as thistledown, on the tips of her toes? There was something so very real about her dance, as if she was finally at home in her own body and merely sharing a piece of herself with them.
The song unfolded and so did her confidence, her impressive strength. When she lifted again to her toes and whipped through afouetté, kick after kick, he could only stare, helpless and entranced. After ten long years of being locked in his mind, the energy and color of his ballet was unfurling before him in glorious reality, shining in quiet strength and femininity.
He was not falling in love with her through this dance—oh no, he’d already tumbled hard down that slope—but this was the moment he sensed the vast difference between their worlds, and knew that he desperately wished her to reach down and pull him up into hers.
The finale came, and she bowed and rose before utter silence.
One investor shifted, another coughed, and the spell broke. “What on earth does she think she’s doing?”
Tension rolled across Jack’s shoulders. “Dancing. Remarkably so.”
“She’s ruining the art of ballet,” Bellini hissed from his right. “Ruining.”
The investor nearest the aisle shook his head. “We cannot have her performing a solo. The newspapers will go wild. She’ll shock them all.”
“Exactly.” Jack braced himself between seat backs. “She has something fresh and exciting, yet it’s a combination of everything we know—the old-world restraint and modesty of French ballet blended with the stunning modern techniques of the colorful Italian theater.”
Bellini glared at him. “She’s everything that’s wrong with our modern world, nothing like the dancers—”
“Who are hampered by classical styles and heavy dresses? The entire rest of the art world has moved on to something new, and she’s the best of both worlds—woodland sprites and nature, the romantic and the fantastical. She’ll be a sensation.”
“Sensations offer something of beauty to look at—which neither her dancing nor her person accomplishes. For all her wildness, she has not one speck of sensuality or allure. Look at the way she dances—she’s like a child, flinging herself about with abandon. No one will pay to see that.”
“I have to agree, I’m afraid,” another said, shifting their direction. “I will not support a theater that has lost sight of what our patrons desire.”
“Hangsensuality. She’s offering something far higher and better. People don’t encounter art to gawk, they come tofeelsomething, and that’s exactly what she accomplishes. She excites all the senses as well as the heart and mind.”
“Iwon’thave it.” Bellini slapped the seat back, the few wispy hairs atop his head whipping about with his anger. “She’ll be an abomination to this theater, and Irefuseto be a part of it. I want her out of this performance entirely, or I’ll be out of this theater.”
Jack leveled his face before Bellini’s red one. “You can’t fire her, even for one performance. She’s contracted by Craven and she’ll be paid one way or another, so you might as well have her on the stage.”
“I’ll never allow her near it if she dances in this wild, Bohemian manner—”
“Very well, very well.” Jack raised his hands, ready to paint a picture. “Not a lead then, if it’s too risky, but another part. A role I haven’t even written yet, but it can be done in a heartbeat. Picture this—a sylph, a little fairy who’s the voice of reason for the hero, drawing him toward something higher and better than this tarnished world can offer. She’ll be sensational.”
The second investor adjusted his spectacles. “It does sound rather like the paintings in modern galleries. All fields and trees...”
“Yes. Forget the castle backdrops and the manicured gardens. Let us paint dark, shadowy wooded glens and gauze curtains that will rise one at a time to give a sense of mist pouring over the scene. Atmospheric and mystical. It’ll be perfect.Shewill be perfect.”
Fournier looked up at her and spoke across the great expanse. “Very good, Miss Blythe, you may go.”
She swept into a bow, accepting their looks with her usual charming dignity, and moved to the side.
The investor directly behind Jack leaned forward. “You mean to say, Dorian, that you’d reimagine your entire play just to include this girl?”
“I’m saying I’d draw in the character who perfectly completes the entire story—the one who should have been there all along—her.”
