27

He always came. No matter what other catastrophes or celebrations went on in the world, no matter how many times I betrayed him by shifting my focus to some shiny thing or failing to notice him, my Creator came to every rehearsal in that old materials room. No father on earth could compare.

Practices had transformed into something new. It wasn’t about the art itself, I found, but the creation of it. All those daily tasks like tiny brushstrokes that blended into the grand whole, that’s where the color and flair was. Each brushstroke was offered up in thanksgiving, every small rehearsal a sacred act of worship, no matter the outcome.

I put on the ivory shoes from Jack and lifted onto my toes, reaching toward heaven. It took effort, but I could hold myself up on the tips of my toes. Instead of the heavy feats of acrobatics we’d seen at the Theatre Royal, I danced on my toes in a slow spin, feeling the stretch across my calves, through my arms and upper back, bringing my own swan-like style into the move. My feet held the arch in these wonderful new slippers as I moved sideways in a pas de bourreé, then I spun round and round with my arms stretched heavenward and my toes barely touching earth.

Dancing was different now, or at least springing from a different place inside me and, though my toes still blistered and my muscles ached, those private moments with God were refreshing to the core. Turn after turn, dance after dance, I found myself unwinding from the constraints of this world, muffling its beat as my heart matched the rhythm of its Creator. Simple and useless as practice might be, there was something sacred in the monotony.

I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvelous works.

I had no choreography chart to follow, but I wasn’t here to prepare for a performance. I was merely here to dance, and I danced the Psalms.

The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot.

Others may look on from the audience, from around me in the greenroom, but this was for the King, an offering that overflowed from a grateful heart.

I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

There had come a new strength at the core of me, anchoring me and yet somehow giving me flight. We’d been living in limbo as a company, waiting to hear what we’d dance, if anyone would be cut, if the theater would go broke preparing for a possible royal visit, but I was more centered than I’d ever been. I’d forgotten, and God had, through Jack, reminded me.

My heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. I will sing unto the LORD, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.

“You should dance this way.” A familiar voice echoed in the room. “Always.”

I pulled myself from the dance as if forcing wakefulness to leave a dream. Lily stood framed in the doorway, gloved hands clutched before her. It had been more than a week of silence, a full eight days since our disagreement outside of my boardinghouse. This was her version of a truce, a temporary sort of cease-fire that occurred when necessary between sisters who often walked the line between rivals and close friends. I lowered myself to the ground, still feeling the weight of unusual grace, hearing the silent music that had fueled my dance.

“You remind me of your mum.” Her face was oddly tender.

“That’s the highest praise I could imagine.” I offered a genuine smile. “And she was our mum.” I removed the white shoes, gingerly touching the raw places on my feet.

“I’ve come to look in on you, make certain you’re doing well.” She eyed me. “Are you?”

I smiled. Her, checking on me? “Quite well.”

“You’ll also be pleased to know of a new development in my personal affairs.”

I sucked in my breath at those words. There was no telling what might come after them.

“I’ve met someone.”

“And?”

“He’s an adorable little clerk at James and Rowe on Bow Street, but he hopes to have a booth in the new market when it opens next year. He’s completely unattached and quite taken with a certain someone who happened to pass by his shop. He calls me a lady.”

I clasped my hands. My words, like little seeds, had taken root in her heart, watered with time.

“It isn’t official,” she hastened to add, “and I cannot promise anything—there’s no understanding between us.”

“Yet.” With a smile that grew by the second, I stood and wrapped my arms around Lily—dear, wandering Lily who was finally making her way back to the path. “I’m so happy for you, Lil. So happy.” I pushed her back to study her face, remembering what I’d done for her so long ago. Remembering Seven Dials. “You’re happy, aren’t you? Life is good for you, yes?” It would all be worth it if she was.

She merely squeezed my hand. “I’ll bring him by if you like.”

I studied her face. “Yes, I would like.”

I parted from her with a smile in my heart and a lightness I hadn’t felt in months.

My lighter steps carried me toward home, then veered in the direction of Westminster and the big brick mansion with green doors. I climbed the narrow stairs on the side, no veil over my face this time, and knocked. Jack threw open the door, his shirt unbuttoned at the top, face lined, and took me in at a glance. “I hope you aren’t expecting another lesson today. Some fiery lass decided to offer up a ballet that hasn’t yet been written.”

He looked horrid. “Have you slept?”

His fingers moved through the deep grooves already running through his mussed hair. “Well. Last week, I suppose.”

I slipped past him into the flat. “It’s fortunate I came, then. I hope you have some good, strong tea.”

He dropped his forehead onto the doorframe. “By all means, do come in.”

I stepped in and unpinned my hat, hit immediately with the warmth of the place—and the scarcity. I stood in a single-room flat with one narrow dormer overlooking the street, and the most threadbare furnishings I’d ever seen. A fire popped under a dented kettle, highlighting the room that seemed clean, but thrown together with castoffs. “You don’t keep much of anything, do you?”

“No need. It’s just me. And I don’t like things—they make it hard to move about.”

I set my hat on the crooked table and tipped my head to the side. “Now, about that tea.”

Jack leaped across the room to rescue his pot before it boiled over. “Of course, my lady.” His personality flooded the tiny space, alive and vibrant even now, and suddenly it made sense. He would be too much for a lavish flat with large, showy furniture. The combination would simply knock a person out. Here he turned a dull flat lively and made a small space rich with atmosphere.

“Where do you work?” I couldn’t help but stare around me. Two cups rested on a top shelf, a stack of books waited on the table to be read, and a plain quilt covered a bed in the corner. Even the diamond-patterned wallpaper clinging to the walls paled into the background of Jack Dorian as he swept around the room.

“Here and there.” Freshly inked pages lay on every surface to dry, in no discernable order, and he hopped over them to bring me the tea. Some pages were scrawled narration, the rest were filled with lines and x’s showing the dancers’ movements with all manner of scribbles in the margins. “Come, I’ll clear you a spot.” He swept a few dried pages to the side and pushed them off one of the chairs, as if preparing it for royalty. The place spoke of a master who was something between frenzied genius and miserly vagrant.

“Have you perfected the opening at least?”

“Why don’t you read it and tell me? It’s here. Somewhere.” He lifted a page and skimmed, then discarded it for another. “This. No, this is the night scene with the moon . . . Ah, here. Yes! Here’s the opening.” He shot about the flat like bottled energy. Hopefully he came uncorked near these pages so they might be filled with everything inside him. “Now, then. Tell me how bad it is and be on your way so I may finish before Monday.”

“Why do you assume it will be bad? And isn’t this what you wanted, for your work to see the light of the stage?”

“Yes, but . . . of course not!” He couldn’t cease pacing. He covered the floor in three squeaking strides, but I was certain he could easily have crossed the Thames already, had he set off in that direction.

“Why ever not?”

“Because then people would actually see it! And the king . . . oh, the king. Uuuuugh.” Both hands raked through his hair. It stood straight up, his face gaunt with tension at the idea of his work actually succeeding. Of fame and recognition.

My lips pursed into a smile. “Now who’s afraid of heights, Mr. Dorian?”

He glared. “Jack. In my own house at least, call me Jack.”

I removed my gloves finger by finger and looked up at him as I settled into the tiny space cleared for me. “Well then, Jack. We’ve a lot of work to do. I hope you have plenty of candles.” I steeled myself to dive headlong into my parents’ story, into the mystery of the fire that had changed everything. To the rest of the world, it was merely a fascinating mystery. To me, it was my history—and quite possibly a mirror to my future.

He grabbed a box from a top shelf and froze, the candle nubs tinking together. One golden eyebrow shot up. “What’s this we?”

“We, as in the brilliant composer and the woman who got him into this mess. We, as in the two friends who always come to one another’s rescue.” I smiled. “You didn’t think I’d leave it all to you, did you?”

His fingers sliced up the back of his scalp. “Well . . . yes, actually.”

“Come, catch me up and we’ll sort it out together.”

He stared at me with red-rimmed eyes, cocked a grin, and collapsed upon a paper-strewn chair beside me. “Aye, captain.” He threw back the remainder of his very black tea and looked at me. “How did it go with de Silva? Do you yet see him as the hero of the story? Or at least, an unwitting victim of blame?”

Stiffness crept up my shoulders. “It’s hard to think the man a hero when he hardly says two words to me.”

He frowned, then a light shone through his features. “There may be a reason for that. Here, look at this—I’ve done some digging.” He rose to point to a wall of newspaper articles, all about the fire and Delphine Bessette. “Notice the date.”

I walked over to it and looked, willing my eyes not to latch onto his name anywhere in the articles. “Here it is.”

“And when, exactly, were you born?”

I blinked at the faded date in the corner again. “Why, the fire happened before I was born. Many months before.”

He gave a solemn nod. “You see why he’d be shocked then, to have you approach him. By telling him who you were, you also revealed to him one other startling fact.”

“That my mother survived.”

Another nod.

My stomach churned. What a complicated mess—especially if he believed, as a remarried man, that she was still alive now. It wasn’t exactly good news, discovering one’s daughter under such circumstances. He must have been thinking of that. Of course, it was that. He hadn’t rejected me—not truly.

I shook off the building emotions. “Right, then. So what about your villain? Have you come any closer to a possible motivation?”

He studied the pages, jaw jutting out to the side, then looked at me with a steady gaze. “I have. I simply haven’t had time to follow up on it.”

I rose, shocked. “You mean, you found a real lead?”

“Possibly. A decently sized surprise, at least, that may explain many things. Or it may make the story far more complicated than we’d imagined.”

I clung to the chair, trembling.

“I want to untangle it, believe me I do, but it requires a trip outside of London, and I simply haven’t the time to do it until I’ve finished this.”

“Horsefeathers, as you say. Take a day, uncover the motivation, and watch it unlock the rest of this entire story.” I trembled with the desire to know, and the sheer dread of it.

He stared at me, wavering. “I cannot afford the time.”

“No, Jack. You cannot afford not to take the time, if you want to do this properly. Come, let’s go.”