Beatrix lays a tentative hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“I couldn’t go to another dance lesson after that. I tried, but it wasn’t the same without her.”
“I thought you danced wonderfully at Carnevale,” she offers.
“It came back to me when I heard the music.” Oliver’s eyes shine in the dark. “I guess it’s harder to forget than I thought.”
Beatrix takes his hand and gives it a single squeeze—everything she can’t put into words—and hopes he knows she understands. It’s been more than two hundred years since she first danced with William. Her body still remembers the steps he led her through in that clearing.
The carriage rolls to a stop at the mouth of a wide alley. She’d think Oliver was playing a trick on her if it wasn’t for the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen disappearing into the shadowy passage beside them.
“It’s not much to look at, is it?” Beatrix says. She never would have guessed there was a theater here.
“Not yet,” Oliver says with a wink, and Beatrix laughs. He is absurd. He pushes open the carriage door and climbs out. “The theater is through the alley.”
Oliver turns back to her and straightens, suddenly serious. He offers Beatrix his hand, and she places hers in his. He brushes his lips across her knuckles, playing the lord to her lady. “Will you do me the honor of joining me for an evening at the ballet?”
Her heart flutters in her chest. What is it Jane used to say? “It would be my privilege.”
Beatrix had expected the Globe, but the Drury Lane theater is built for a more sophisticated crowd. Galleries still rise over the pit, but a handful of private boxes sit below them, draped in elegant green velvet, and the crowd looks like it belongs at one of the Holbrooks’ lavish dinner parties. The biggest difference—and the strangest to Beatrix—is the pit itself. There are no half-drunk groundlings jostling for a decent view, no opportunities for a thief to pick a pocket undetected. Instead, aristocrats chatter eagerly on neat rows of padded benches as they wait for the show to begin.
A cackling laugh rings across the pit, and Beatrix freezes. She knows that laugh. It echoed off Lady DeSallowe’s parlor walls every second Thursday. She scans the crowd and spots the boisterous woman sitting with her bored-looking husband. Slowly, the woman turns toward Beatrix, as if she can feel her gaze on her.
Beatrix rushes forward and slips her arm through Oliver’s, putting him between her and the lady. He glances down at her, surprised by her touch. She pulls him along. “Keep walking,” she says under her breath. Oliver matches his stride to hers.
He glances toward the pit. “Friend of yours?”
“A friend of Lady DeSallowe,” Beatrix whispers.
“Ah, I see,” Oliver says, his voice low. “Is that why you’re using me as a shield?”
“Yes,” Beatrix says sheepishly. “Sorry. I panicked.” She has no desire to be interrogated by the overbearing woman, about either Jane or the dress that obviously doesn’t belong on her. She hasn’t even lived this life for three years.
“It’s fine. I like a little covert operation with my ballet.” He smiles at her, and the tension in her chest eases.
They reach the entrance to the galleries, and Beatrix drops Oliver’s arm to wrangle her skirts. She follows him up a dimly lit staircase and almost runs into the back of him when he stops on a narrow landing. He pushes aside the dark green velvet curtain, the glint in his eyes unmistakable. “After you, m’lady.”
Beatrix steps past him. “What are you so smug—” She gasps.
Oliver appears by her side. “What do you think?”
She was wrong about the pit. This is the best seat in the house. Shesinks into one of the plush, high-backed chairs, upholstered in the same soft velvet as the curtain. “Oliver Rhodes, are you trying to impress me?”
His cheeks flush. Her heart skips.
“I travel here from hundreds of years in the future,” Oliver says, taking his seat next to hers. “Andthisis what impresses you?” He shakes his head, but a smile plays at the corners of his mouth.
“It is averycomfortable chair.” She runs her hands over the arms. “And I’ve never sat in a private box before.” Come to think of it, she’s never sat for a theater performance at all. Or watched one without robbing a patron or two.
Oliver drops his voice, even though they’re alone. “Try to keep your hands to yourself this time.”
Beatrix leans closer, two conspirators sharing a secret. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Oliver grins. “Just wait.”
She doesn’t have to wait long. A dozen musicians enter, playing strings and pipes. They take their places on the wings of the stage, and the story begins. A story of an unlikely union between the goddess of love and the god of war. A story that needs no words to convey, only movement and gesture and the most graceful dancing Beatrix has ever seen.
An ensemble dances the first number: Mars and his soldiers in a war march, impressive in its sharp precision. Then the woman dancing Venus enters. Elegant. Soft. She spins across the stage, faster and faster, her skirts flaring and swirling around her, until Beatrix swears she’s not even touching the ground. When the lovers meet, Mars leaps and bounds as if he’s capable of taking flight. Beatrix didn’t even know people could move like that. She holds her breath through the finale, until love wins, and the dancers join together in the last grand number.
