Cassius startled.
‘Not for blocking rehearsal,’ he said in a gruff tone.‘No singing.Just the actions, so we can all learn where the cast needs to move.Normally, the composer learns from down there.’He pointed to his precious podium.‘But I suppose today I am learning from up here.’
Freya bowed her head, and a sharp flash of pink stained her cheeks.Odette hadn’t heard the young girl sing in character before.She was good.Far, far better than her brief line in the chorus had allowed her to demonstrate last year.Recovering her composure, the young woman went through the motions again.She raised her hand, performed the exaggerated bow, then pushed aside Cassius’s hands until he twisted, turning to look up into her so very pretty face.
A jagged blade of jealousy cut through Odette, red hot and sharp.Cassius looked away, and Freya whispered in his ear.A good singer, prettier than most.How many more like her would there be once he went to Vienna?If Freya invited him to kiss her, would he turn away?
Odette bunched her skirt into her palms and strode onto the stage.
‘Miss Delaney!Perfect timing!’Ezra called.‘Next comes the lovers’ dance between Marietta and Willem, where he asks her to be his bride.But also, d’Artois is watching and plotting his own seduction.Stand here!’
Determined not to look at Cassius, Odette held her chin high as she walked to where she was directed.She already knew this song by heart and hummed the words as she sashayed across the stage.Ezra pointed to a spot further downstage with the score folded in his tight grip.‘Marietta walks by, dreaming of her love.She sings a verse, and then, he appears!’
His shadow engulfed her.His shadow and then his scent, that hint of linen and orange water that spoke of a man too busy to bother with more and too alluring for it to matter.His exhale caressed her nape and sent gooseflesh across her skin.
‘Hands on her arms,’ Ezra directed.‘Yes!Perfect!’
Cassius’s palms pressed firmly against her, their warmth radiating through her sleeves.Odette’s breath tightened as his fingers splayed.
Ezra, meanwhile, was consulting his notes.‘What’s next?’he muttered, flipping through the pages.‘Next…’
They kiss.Odette forced her lungs to expand, reminded her heart to beat.He turns her around to face him.They sing.Then they kiss.
The tips of his fingers dug into her flesh.He knew what was coming, too.She could sense it.An unsung note was trembling through the length of his body, bleeding from him, meeting her own music.And just like at the gardens, she could not help but recognise what she’d become so good at spotting in other men—he wanted her.Every nerve inside her screamed with the realisation that the one man who’d always walled himself off from her had finally lowered the barricades.
‘Here it is!’Ezra exclaimed.
Cassius ran his palms down her arms.The fingers of one hand tightened around her wrist while the other tapped her arm, as if he was anticipating the prompt to turn her towards him.They wouldn’t really kiss.Not even during the performance.But they would press cheeks, they would stand so close their bodies would be touching from chest to pelvis.He would put his hands on her waist.She might nip his earlobe, just to see what he would do.Whether he would maintain his composure, or fracture.
‘Sorry I’m late!’
As Fernandez’s understudy rushed onto the stage, Cassius jerked away like a man caught touching something that wasn’t his.Sweat shimmered across the understudy’s forehead.He bent forwards, hands on his knees, gasping, sucking in deep gulps of breath.‘There was a wagon.Overturned.Blocking the street.I had to cut across the park.Then come through Trafalgar Square…’
Somewhere behind her, Cassius huffed.‘I will be downstairs,’ he grumbled, then strode offstage without a goodbye.He did not even acknowledge Ezra’s thanks as he passed them.
The understudy looked at Odette, fear blanching his features.‘Is Mr Zadora angry?Are you angry?I am so, so sorry,’ he offered again, his voice heavy with emotion.
Those poor understudies.So close to what they wanted they could almost taste it, and yet so far that any mistake might snuff out their dreams.
She painted a smile to hide her disappointment.‘It is nothing, darling.Leave the conductor to his pit.Take a moment to find your breath.Then let us continue.’
Chapter 10
Callscamefromabove,disembodied words ringing with the cadence of farewells.Cassius stayed where he had spent most of the blocking rehearsal—on the piano bench, stroking but not playing the keys.He allowed his thumb to catch a curved edge, worn and smooth.He should have spent the afternoon on his podium, or at least in one of the upholstered front row seats so that he could study the opera and begin to match the score to the performers’ movements.
But he could not.
Tomorrow, he’d gather his composure, like he’d done a hundred times before.He’d sit and watch and make a plan to bend the music to his will.
But today?Today, he couldn’t.
How long until she found a new lover?Would she wait until the show’s run was over?Until he reached Vienna?Twice, he’d almost tripped into kissing her, and the temptation to feel her lips against his was simply too raw.If he’d forced himself to watch her onstage with another man—even a fellow performer—the old jealousy would have woken with a vengeance and consumed him.
No.Today, he would contain the beast.Force it down, like he’d learnt in the early days.Keep it contained.
Just three more weeks.
A few scuffs and steps filtered down from the stage above.He’d wait a few minutes longer, just to be sure everyone had gone.Then he could walk the narrow hallway to the backstage door without any risk of getting caught in some mundane conversation.It was probably a stagehand tidying up, or maybe that boy—what was his name?Anton?The new runner was working hard to impress Odette, most likely so she would keep giving him the chocolates and fruit that accumulated in her dressing room.Hopeful admirers always sent her gifts but never flowers, lest she ban them from the theatre for tempting bad luck.
