24

Sometimes loving a person meant giving them up. Jack Dorian knew that well, but he’d never expected to feel it so intensely. He stared at the cemetery of St. Paul’s the following morning, recalling their walk, the way she’d crumpled before her mother’s grave. The slight weight of her head on his shoulder in the carriage. Had an entire night truly passed since then?

In the afterglow of their time together, everything felt magnified. The rainbow of colors spread out before him, the voices of people calling out, the aroma of sausages and bread. The great, aching need for her. He’d never found anything so purely beautiful through and through in his entire life.

He arrived at the tall gray building he knew almost as well as his own and forced himself to ring the front to be admitted upstairs to the second-story flat. At the top he found Philippe Rousseau, slumped in a small horsehair sofa before a solitary game of cards, elbows propped, and three—three—mugs spread over the surface, leaving rings on the wood table.

Yet the man’s face looked oddly sober. Long and morose, but most definitely sober. Jack slid into the opposite seat and took a whiff of the mugs as he passed over them—cream was the only scent his nose detected. He looked at the man’s face hanging over the fourth mug of the half-drunk concoction of buttermilk and corn flour, salt, and pepper, the famous Scottish remedy for a night in one’s cups. Never had Philippe reached this point of the circle—the clear-your-head stage—without Jack even knowing he’d begun another round. “This one was short-lived.”

“I’m doing better, Jack. Far better.” Philippe lifted his countenance still heavy with evidence of a wretched headache. “It’s been years.”

He stiffened. “Yes, but here you are again.”

“I know you won’t believe me.” He toyed with an empty mug, idly smudging drips. “I’ve grown too old for this nonsense. Hurts worse than it used to and doesn’t clear away the problems half as well as it once did. Besides, I’ve a reason to become healthy.”

“Your ‘reason’ wouldn’t happen to be a woman, would it?” His stomach turned even as he voiced the question. He knew her feelings on the matter, but what were his?

Philippe’s brooding gaze leveled on Jack’s face, eyes snapping. “What business is it of yours?”

It was worse than he’d thought—he was as far gone as she was. “I suppose she knows about all your secrets and shadows.”

He straightened on the sofa, locking gazes with Jack. “You won’t go and ruin this one for me too, will you? I’m that determined she’ll never have to know most of it. Oh, I’ll tell her about it eventually, but I’m hoping it will all be in past tense.” His eyes pleaded. “It’s been years, Jack. I had one bad day, one slipup. The pain was terrible.”

Jack tried to swallow a hard lump in his throat. He remembered the night that injury had occurred, leaving Philippe scrambling for a quick fix that landed him in his cups. It was only the right foot, but the pain had been so intense that it had to be dulled by something.

Even when it had healed, the pain came again at times, shooting up his foot as if he’d been stabbed, and no doctor could explain or fix these “phantom pains” that often left him too crippled to dance for a few days. But, no matter. The deeper damage had already been done. The road of addiction was like a spiral staircase, round and round it went, a constant circling back to all the same places.

Once Jack had made a stand to keep Philippe from being fired from the theater when he’d fallen especially hard into his cups. He’d agreed to help Philippe from then on out, with the condition that Philippe agreed to do likewise for someone else—just as Marcus de Silva had done for Jack when he’d rescued him from the transient life of the circus and the cavalry, and brought him into a more solid life in the theater. That was the agreement—one favor, granted to another undeserving soul—and Philippe had been his favor, but Philippe had yet to pass his on.

I wish to invoke my favor. It would be so easy to say. Stay away from Ella Blythe. Let me have her. Yet he didn’t. Couldn’t. Philippe was who she wanted, and Philippe, from what he saw, wanted her. Perhaps they were a good match, for she was unique enough to overlook his flaws and draw out the immense talent, the abilities Jack had always known Philippe possessed.

He almost wished, selfishly, that he’d left well enough alone and let Philippe fall however he would. He studied that whiskered face, ruggedly handsome even now. He did seem remarkably improved of late, missing work only when his phantom pains returned or his mistreated liver made him too sick. The spiral staircase had gone round and round, yet it circled up with each turnabout, Jack realized. There was progress. Still, Jack had a hard time passing Ella Blythe over to him. “What do you even like about the lady?”

“She’s nothing sensational to you, perhaps, but she’s . . . well, quite unusual. I knew it the first moment I saw her, and there was something about her—something I’d seen before. The way she dances, she reminds me of Craven’s legendary ghost dancer, and I suppose that made her all the more interesting to me at first. But after that, I saw other things about her that quite set her apart.”

Indeed.

Philippe’s features softened. “She’s so true and lovely, intelligent and kind to the extreme. Like no one I ever thought I’d meet in a theater. She’s a loyal one, she is. And . . . you know how it has been with me.”

Ah, yes. Florentine Georgescu. Jack shuddered. How close she’d come to kicking out the delicate ladder of Philippe’s new life, of ruining everything he’d built up. Not that Philippe would have believed what Jack had witnessed, if he’d told him. No matter—she was gone now, and Philippe, although never quite forgiving Jack for running her off, was at least sensible enough to realize he needed Jack desperately. Their peculiar friendship had come around.

“Jack.” Philippe leaned forward, face twitching. “You have to help me with her. Help me do this right. There’s no one else I can trust.”

He stiffened against the emotional assault. “I don’t think you need my help with her.”

Philippe rose on trembling legs. “I’m ready, Jack. Ready for my new life. One with her in it. You may not think much of her, but she’s perfect. Precisely what I need.”

Jack fingered the handle of an empty mug. “No one’s perfect.”

Before nine that morning, Jack strode with purpose that burned up his frustration until he left Covent Garden. Stopping at Philippe’s had been foolish. It had accomplished nothing, aside from checking in on him, and he already had another mission he should be on. He paused to look at the little missive and remind his distracted brain of the address he was supposed to be finding. Number 57 Cheapside.

It had become a secret love offering, this ballet he was writing, and all the research that went with it. He could do little else for her, especially with Philippe so firmly entering her life, but he could offer her closure. Truth about her parents, and what had happened to them. Perhaps it would sting a little, but the conviction to pursue the truth, to write this ballet, had hovered ever near until he’d begun to relent. And in the end, he desperately wanted her to have her father, a most worthy man who could love her if ever Philippe failed her.

He’d visited several of the addresses from the letters in that box Ella had given him, but there was one more he knew he needed to call upon. The short letter he now held had been at the very bottom of the velvet-lined box, and it was the one he’d most dreaded visiting.

For her. All for her.

It was from Delphine’s sister, who seemed a less than pleasant woman. She’d written mostly to shame the famous ballerina into sending her money, claiming neglect and abandonment, which was probably true. Jack approached the rookery labeled number 57 with some loathing. Not so much for the squalor and stench as for the woman who’d let her sister wallow here. He dodged a bolting pig and a handful of dirty children, whipping gray sheets out of the way.

He knocked and asked for Etta Mae Fawley, and in a moment a gaunt, sharp-eyed woman appeared at the door, hands balled up in her apron, and spoke exactly one angry sentence. “I’ve got no business with the likes of you.”

He stood firm. “Actually, I’m here to enquire after your sister.”

She turned, fixing those rat-like eyes on him. “Which one?”

He lowered his voice self-consciously. “Delphine Bessette.”

Those beady eyes lit in her plain face at the sound of that name, and she stepped into the doorway. “Jane Fawley. That’s her real name, you know. She’s no more French than the prime minister. What about her?”

“I’m quite plagued by what happened to her, and I’ve taken a personal interest.”

“You an inspector?”

“Merely an interested party.”

“I keeps my mouth shut, I do. I won’t be talking to no interested parties. You have no business in my family’s affairs.”

She backed into the door, but Jack slapped his palm onto it. “I’m here on behalf of her daughter. Who most definitely deserves to know the truth.”

She stopped, blinking. “A babe? Jane had a child?”

“She’s grown now, and desperately missing her mum. Any help you can provide would be most welcome.”

“Well, then. If it’s for family.” She cracked the door a bit further and waited, hand on hip. “I don’t suppose you have proof.”

He held up the little box, opening it so she could see the letters. “Her daughter gave me this. It’s how I found you.”

She poked one dirty finger through the pages. “Did she, now?”

“What can you tell me about Jane? What was she like?”

Her mouth worked, chin jutting as she retracted her hand from the box. “Determined. Broken by life like the rest of us, just a mite prettier. She had her windfall, she did, and never let a one of us forget it.”

Jack probed further, and Etta told the story of Jane Fawley, an unusually pretty girl who used to take injured animals and sick children into their home even when they hardly had enough to eat. “She always wanted better, that ’un. For her, and for everyone. Wanted more than anything to leave town, go out into the country. Have a quiet life in a great big house with a garden and a few pets. Perhaps a husband, if he didn’t get in the way too much.”

“There was actually a secret marriage. I’m not sure if you’re aware. It is said that she was quietly wed to her dancing partner, Marcus de Silva.”

At this, her mouth went slack, hand to her chest. She took two steps back.

“I’m sorry you had to find out this way, but—”

“No, it isn’t that. It’s just . . . well, it seems he ain’t the only bloke she married.”