18

Jack Dorian was restless. Even in the giant barn with everyone still asleep, his spirit felt caged. Nature’s calming breath washed over his moist skin from an open window, and he sprang up to answer the summons. Despite the stiffness in his back after a restless night, he moved with quick steps and slipped out into the dark-pink hues of early dawn.

He exhaled, rubbing his hair and face to wake himself. Already he felt freer, calmer, simply being outside. Yet as he strode out toward the pond, wading through tall grass and bounding crickets, that heaviness returned. Not unpleasant, but impossible to ignore.

It had started when he’d jolted awake with a sudden awareness, a conviction. The ballet in his head—he must write it. Now. Somehow, it was significant.

He’d lain awake, the curve of his back aching against the unaccommodating wood floor, but the prodding wouldn’t leave him. So he let his mind work on it, trying the new pieces this way and that. The hero and Vanessa, in love? That had never been part of the story. They’d always been at odds, forced to work together but never affectionate. His hero, it seemed, had been holding out on him.

That’s what bothered him. Of all the characters playing about in his mind, the hero was the one he knew the best. The man had several shadowed corners, and he refused to reveal what he knew about the great fire where Vanessa had met her tragic end, but this was one twist he’d never expected. Had he actually been in love with her? Or had they merely produced a child together?

He adjusted and readjusted, but no position, no amount of heavy sighs, removed that undeniable pressure, so he rolled over and got up. Something wasn’t right. And he was the one who had more pieces than anyone—the one who needed to figure it out. He’d meant to put the thing away, to leave well enough alone, but it wouldn’t leave him alone.

Now as he stepped up on the rickety pier over the pond and looked across the pink-dappled surface, he acknowledged to himself what that sudden unquenchable urge might have been—and where it had come from. He recognized it. Try as he might to ignore the God his guardian Mrs. Hatchette had drilled him to know, to pretend denying him, Jack was encountering him once again. And it was her fault.

Wherever Ella Blythe went, there existed an aura of God, like a faint aroma. Despite her insecurities, her rote verse recital, all her preoccupation with perfection, God hovered nearby. Perhaps that’s what had drawn him to her in the first place. Something deep at the core of him had immediately responded to her, that face full of character and pluck, her poise that did not demand respect but quietly inspired it.

He’d been disappointed to learn of her obsession with religion, but it had slowly begun to occur to him that it was a part of her charm and could not be divorced from her nature. It held her upright with a steadiness of character and strength that was not loud and showy like a fire, but more of the quiet brilliance of a raw gem. God had drawn near to her, and though she seemed to wrestle with how it all fit together in her life, God was part of who she was.

And now, after far too much time together, it was leaking onto him. He stared back across the field to the tall gray structure in the middle of it. He fully wished he could ignore the conviction threading through the loose places of his soul. Writing this ballet was a dream, but it would be incredibly difficult. He simply wasn’t used to giving voice to sordid things, even in writing. She would be affected, too, if he went through with this. She would see the connection immediately, and the truth about her mother that came out in the ballet would crush her. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

Ah! But it could be put off.

It wasn’t as if Ella was standing in front of him this minute. They had the entire ride home to talk. He mentally shelved the discussion, but all too soon she was moving toward him in his peripheral vision, her gown displacing the tall stalks around her. He turned and let his gaze linger as he’d done so often. What was it about her? Jack loved the rush of danger, except when it came to women. And for all her innocence and quiet steadiness, Ella Blythe did not feel safe.

She stepped near with that unmistakable poise, and he welcomed her into his presence with a silent smile, chest tightening. Then that weight settled upon him again, that inescapable conviction, displacing the peace he’d come here to find. It was time to write that ballet, and time to tell her the truth.