The settee was long and tall-backed and looked shiny and plump. Perhaps the finest piece of furniture she’d met in person, and this belonged to a room in a boardinghouse.
“If you’d like to have a seat there, we’ll have a look at the letter together.”
She took his suggestion, and discovered the fine settee was nicely sprung. She could not resist giving a gratuitous bounce.
He sat down beside her, almost gingerly, close but a decorous distance away. So close to touching, but not yet touching.
She wondered if he was nervous.
“What have you been able to read?”
She flattened the letter in her lap and pointed to a scrawled paragraph. “I think he is inviting me to Paris to work? A role in a new opera? But I do not know what this part means.Aragosta?His handwriting is a bit unusual.”
He read the letter carefully. “Excellent. Yes, youarebeing invited to work, and I believe your role will be... you will be a...”
He turned to look at her, his expression carefully blank. “A lobster.”
She stared at him, dumbstruck.
“A... l-lobster?”
“Yes,” he said gently, as if breaking the news of a death in the family. His eyes, however, glinted. “I believe you’re being asked to play a singing lobster.”
She was speechless.
“Operas don’t have to make sense, Miss Wylde,” he reminded her, his tone entirely sober, his eyes pure, dancing wickedness.
Dazedly, she slowly raised one arm, bent at the elbow.
Then the other.
He watched her face, taut, then trembling with some suppressed emotion.
Slowly, experimentally, she turned her hands to face each other, like claws.
And then clacked them.
They both gave shouts of laughter. And then they doubled over with it.
“Oh, oh, no. Oh, dear,” she sighed happily, and wiped her eyes. “Oh, my goodness.”
“Hold.” He held up a hand importantly, catching his breath. He coughed. “Now let’s think a moment. It could be very poignant. Think about how lobsters wind up in cages... there could be an injustice done... perhaps it will be like Lobster Newgate!”
That set them both off again.
He referred back to the letter. “Before you get too excited about your role... wait one moment... let’s be sure.” He cleared his throat and scanned the page. “It’s possible I was mistaken. It’s possible he means for you to be a mermaid. He mentions asirena, and I believe that’s a mermaid...”
She dropped her jaw. Then made an indignant sound.
“But... that’s... are you sure?”
He referred to the letter again and squinted, as if he could bring the man’s scrawl into better focus. “Yes, I believe it does. The lobsters are...” he frowned “...merely... stage dressing? I believe? Or they might be minions. Ye Gods, was this man drunk when he wrote this? His handwriting is abysmal. It might be a chorus of lobster minions.Pleaselet there be lobster minions,” he muttered.
She studied his profile as he read. He still had tears in the corners of his eyes from laughing. Shestared at the glint of them. She stopped breathing from the sheer, untenable happiness.
“A mermaid is much better,” she said, distractedly.
He turned to her in all seriousness. “Is it?”
