Odette bit back a retort.The patron was likely delighted at having something new to moralise about.She’d be decapitating roses next, labelling them co-conspirators of vice.
Karl collapsed into the chair, his anger spent.Odette flicked a glance at Cassius, expecting to find him focused on their manager.He had a way of talking the man out of his tirades and into a more agreeable mood.
But he wasn’t.He was watchingher.An inscrutable glimmer shone in his eye, the trace of fire catching or dying—she couldn’t tell.Lifting her chin, Odette held her pose, even as her heart thumped with the same prestissimo it had thundered into at the gardens when she’d thought he was about to kiss her.
Untilhehad turned his cheek.
‘Karl…’ Cassius began, his gaze lingering on Odette, then slowly sweeping away.‘You are a man of the stage.You know how the light works.We have nothing to confess because nothing happened.They saw a quiet conversation and applied their English prudery between the branches.It was probably just an inconvenient angle.’
‘Fourinconvenient angles?’
‘One of them likely thought he saw something, then gossiped to his friends, and they raced to be the first in print,’ Odette offered, her tone as cool as Cassius’s.‘Like you say, they all dream of bigger things.Ignore it, darling.The drama will peter out when they find no more substance.Now come upstairs and leave the conductor to his pit.We have a blocking rehearsal to get to.’
‘Fernandez is sick.Cassius must join us onstage.’Karl was already brushing himself off and straightening his pocket handkerchief.
‘Where is the understudy?’she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Karl snapped.‘He has not arrived.’
‘He can’t—’
‘I must—’
‘For heaven’s sake, can the pair of you not argue with me!’Karl pressed his palms to his eyes.He heaved a sigh that almost sounded like a choked sob.‘I have enough worries.Please.Please.Just… don’t.’
Cassius left first, his silent departure cutting through the tension in the air.Odette followed close behind.Part of her wanted to reach out, to tap his elbow and share a quick word or a smile—even just raise a pointed eyebrow about Karl’s outburst—but for the first time in their friendship, he felt beyond her reach.She’d intended her small sentence, calling him a lovesick fool, as an invitation tobeone.A clumsy encouragement, perhaps, and for a purpose she could not have articulated any better in the gardens than she could now… But still, it had been her way of trying to move a little closer to the man who kept himself so aloof.He was a puzzle and a provocation that she had never been able to resolve.
But he had stepped back, moved away, thrown up a wall.And as he trudged up the stairs to the stage now, resentment almost rolled off his back at being dragged before an audience once again.He was always far happier with his back to them.
That damn ringing was filling Odette’s ears again.Underneath it, she lost his words as the sound of his voice filled the stairwell.
‘Pardon?’she called.
He turned back with a huff.‘I said, are you coming?After all, this is your show.’
‘I need five minutes,’ she said.
With another grumble, Cassius continued up the stairs.Odette opened the door to her dressing room.Checked it and, once happy it was firmly closed, pressed her fingers to her temples and waited for the buzz to stop.
The new pills—where were the Calomel pills?Odette found her bag and retrieved the rectangular bottle with the paper label.Finest mercury, cures most ails!the advertisement had proclaimed.Odette shook out two circular pink promises and swallowed them down with a gulp of cold tea.The buzzing eased, then faded.
So soon?Odette flipped the bottle over, read the print on the label again.Perhaps thiswouldwork.Perhaps these pills would be the cure that the doctor had assured her was unobtainable.
‘Pfft.Doctors.They do not know everything,’ she told her reflection.
Odette tucked the bottle back into her bag.Once she had checked herself in the mirror, she made her way upstairs.Ezra was shouting.Not with anger, but with elation.
‘And then Lisette whispers to Willem that the lascivious d’Artois is besotted with his Marietta!’
Odette paused at the edge of the curtains.Ezra was holding the score up before him and pointing animatedly from Freya to Cassius as he relayed instructions.
‘At first, Willem won’t listen…’ Ezra looked up, and Cassius harrumphed.‘He refuses,’ Ezra tried again, then held up both hands to one side of his face.‘Pretend you don’t want to hear it.They need to see the action.Most of the audience won’t follow the song if the actions aren’t clear.’
Cassius’s shoulders lifted, then sagged.He raised his hands as instructed, if slowly.Odette covered her mouth to hide a smile.He must be hating this.
‘And then Lisette pushes his hands away and makes him listen!’
Freya, the young soprano who was both cast and Odette’s understudy, gave a perfectly poised bow.She placed a hand close to her mouth and sang her line.
