“Out of the question.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted from the start.”
“I did.” He stared down at his page. “Until I thought it through. She knows we’re writing this ballet about Delphine’s murder. She’s done a mountain of work to keep her secret safe all these years. You think she’d just allow us to display her guilt on the stage?” He shook his head. “We cannot let her know what we’ve discovered.”
I closed my eyes, breathed out. “I think she knows.” Why had I ever opened my mouth? I could have walked out of there letting her think I’d swallowed her entire ridiculous story.
He eyed me.
“Mum deserves justice. No matter who she truly was, someone tried to kill her in a most violent way and went on to live as if nothing had occurred. The world should know what happened. Whatreallyhappened.”
He hesitated. “You’re certain this is what you want?”
I gave a single nod. “When you have the world’s ear ... the truth, Jack. Always the truth.”
31
It was June, and casting lists had been posted and choreography outlined. Philippe danced as the male lead, of course, but I did not, in fact, dance opposite him in the role Jack had envisioned for me—the part of my mother—and for that I was relieved. I should never be able to concentrate under such strain, and dancing as her might be my undoing on the stage. Instead, I slipped easily into a role Jack had written precisely for me. It was obvious even without him stating it was so, for the role seemed the very extension of who I was as a dancer.
We began learning combinations and bridges, with the notion that we’d put the whole ballet together into one show when Jack finished it. It was a most haphazard way to do it, but excitement buzzed in what had once been mundane rehearsals.
Jack Dorian reached his zenith as the ballet took shape. Pressure drove him, it seemed, for he came alive just as I’d seen him do at the wintering circus barn. “No no, arch in midair, for heaven’s sake. Throw your head back. This is meant to bedramatic.” He cleared the four steps in a single bound and exploded onto the stage with his characteristic energy, archinghis back andgrand jeté-ing before us all, and ending in a dainty pirouette. With a look of feminine affectation, he threw back his head, one hand upon his brow, and swirled into a faint with one prolonged twirl of his masculine body.
Applause sounded and chittering laughter popped across the stage while men scurried across with pieces of set design. The place was always an anthill of activity, swarming with people and props and pieces of costumes. We approached the twenty-third of June like a locomotive headed toward a cliff, and I held on for dear life.
Fournier had somehow managed to hire artist Clarkson Stanfield to paint a lusciously shadowed forest for the backdrop, and the walkers-on and stagehands had been cutting strips of tulle in various shades of green to hang from the ceiling as murky willow fronds and mist. To further the feel of romanticism and nature, we had created many forest scenes for the lovers’ trysts, and only the fire and a few small scenes occurred within a theater.
For the most dramatic scene, gas jets had been concealed in wooden boxes hooked to flies for a moonlight effect. The world of Jack’s imaginings was taking shape on the stage, and it was glorious.
Minna grumbled and stalked across the stage, ever dramatic as she rose in the ranks. She had earned herself the lead role of Delphine, the tragic dancer, and she’d never been more elated—or on edge.
I turned to Tovah with a smile. “You are stunning in your divertissement. It shows your every strength to full advantage.”
“Which is ironic, seeing as how Jack Dorian has never noticed before what those were.”
I pinched my lips and gave a shrug. Jack had received morehelp from me over the weeks since the ballet had been accepted, especially in the choreography sketches. Our imaginations had fueled each other, and the ballet had sprung forth from our combined minds. It was Jack’s story that had blossomed and taken shape, but I still felt a sliver of ownership when my mere presence sparked his ideas in rapid-fire succession. Perhaps I was becoming his muse—or we were becoming partners.
Jack, in all his sensationalism, had decided to make an unprecedented move to raise the needed funds. Our boxholders and investors would be allowed to attend an opening night preview—of all but the third act. It was meant to whet the appetite of theatergoers and press, and perhaps even King Leopold, before the official opening. If all went well, London would appear in droves the following night to discover what had happened to Craven’s famed dancer.
The night before our preview performance, the first before an audience, I forced myself to bed early, and I intended to sleep at least eight hours. Truly, I did. But once my bleary mind faded from the real world, it fell down one dark hole and into another.
I was fourteen again, running toward the little church outside of Seven Dials in the dark and without the warmth of my cloak. I pushed through the broken fence, dodged the tombstones, and approached the weathered door. I stared at that building, knowing it was a place of God, knowing the parish minister to be a good man, yet I sensed God pushing me away from it. I raised my hand to knock, but my fist wouldn’t cooperate. It merely hovered, then something overcame me. More than chillsfrom the biting wind. Cloak wadded up in my arms, I turned and ran, fleeing that churchyard with my secret.
Instead, I ran to a house. It was a small brick cottage with black shutters, three neat little steps leading up to the front door. Several candles were lit, glowing underneath the closed shutters, and that’s why I chose it. How homey and warm it seemed.
I paused around the corner after sprinting away, letting reality catch up to me, the immensity of what I’d done knocking me off balance. It was done now, though. I couldn’t go back. I stood there staring up at the house, into the neat little windows, when suddenly a man appeared at the door. A tall man with stooped shoulders and a long face. He looked down at my cloak on his stoop, then out into the dark, in my direction, stunned confusion on his face.
I ran. Ran with all my might, feet pounding the brick street as I hurtled through the shadows. I slipped into the narrowest, most unappealing of streets until I found myself staring down the blocks at the tall centerpiece sundial of Seven Dials, the heart of the slum. I caught my reflection in the panes of glass guarding an old curiosity shop, and I was quite blue—my lips, my poor hands. How I longed for that cloak now. Another chill convulsed me, then I turned a second corner and ran harder. My foot clipped a broken stoop, my head banged the door with a shuddering thud, and I fell, a miserable, shivering wretch in the piles of refuse lining the grubby street.
As I lay there, noxious odors invading my senses, God began to overwhelm me with an awareness of his presence. I was afraid in the face of it, sensing the magnitude of him immediately, but it was a surprisingly welcoming hand reaching out for me, not a punishing one. I never forgot that moment. That encounter.The very feel of God’s pursuit, his awareness of one invisible girl. A strange sensation of warmth filled my limbs again despite the winter wind, down to the tips of my fingers. It was a sacred encounter, and my gratefulness immense.
Yet what had I done to show it?
My mind lifted from the memory, rising from sleep into my darkened room at the boardinghouse, but I still felt the weight of it, the weight of all I had to prove to God. I blinked my eyes open and stared at the dressing table mirror in the dark room.
I felt it again.Not enough.
As Minna snored, I rose and dressed, stealing down the stairs in a long cape with the hood concealing my face. The night was warm and wet, with summer finally beginning to gain solid footing through London, and I didn’t fear the chill or the aloneness. I waved for a hackney and sped toward that tall brick house and banged on the green door that was three stories up. After a moment, it flew open.
