30

I perched on the edge of a flowered damask chair later that day in Balthorp House, watching the drawing room doors for her willowy form. The maid had promised Lady Gower would be down to meet me shortly, but it had already been—I glanced up at the clock—ten whole minutes? They felt like an hour each.

Perhaps I should have told Jack about Lady Gower’s invitation to tea, but he wouldn’t have let me go alone. The man felt the need to manage and protect through every minute of the day, and right now I wanted neither. She would speak differently with only me present, I was certain, and I was hungry for whatever she wished to reveal to me.

The darkness between the slightly open doors beckoned me. After fidgeting for another minute and a half, I sprang up and went to them, slipping through and peering around in the vast tiled emptiness. There was a flutter and clink of distant activity in the kitchen and footsteps echoing on wood overhead. My heart beat out of my chest as I moved step after step into the great hall and toward another corridor. At the end, a door opened to a music parlor, with a harp on a rug and a shining ebony piano. I moved through it to another door on the opposite end and walked into a gallery, two stories high with walnut railings on the second floor. A winding staircase led up to the balcony.

In awe I made a slow turn, scanning the pictures for anything familiar. Then my eyes locked on a bit of red on the wall, my chest tight. There, hanging from their knotted ribbons, were Mama’s famous scarlet ballet slippers. Hardly daring to breathe, I approached in the dimness and ran a finger over their satiny sides, touching the familiar leather soles, the darned toes. Yes, it was them.

A door slammed, echoing through the house. I spun and hurried back, heart racing my thoughts, and stopped short in the great hall. Lady Gower stood there in the deepening shadows, a column of poise in the midst of the great openness. Just past her, a man’s green hat perched on a hook in the entryway. It caught my eye and I couldn’t look away.

“Begging your pardon, Lady Gower. I was lost.”

“In a drawing room?”

I stood, bearing the weight of her glare in silence.

She took two steps closer. “You didn’t ask a single question in the garden the other day, yet you seemed intensely curious. I thought perhaps we ought to have our own conversation.”

“We told you already of my involvement.” My voice croaked. “The ballet.”

“I want to know why you are interested. Enough to go traipsing uninvited through my home. The true reason, Miss Blythe.”

I hadn’t given my name before, had I? Holding her stare, I backed into the shadows, feeling every bit out of my element. Trapped. “I knew her once. Before she died.”

Her brow rose. “You’ll have to do better than that. You hardly look older than the fire that took her life. I will ask one more time, Miss Blythe. Why?”

I kept my gaze steady on her. “What was she like? Was she as wonderful as everyone says?”

Her narrow little lips pinched further in.

“Was she a rival, perhaps?”

Her jewel-eyes flashed.

“Anyone would be jealous. She was remarkable, from what I’ve heard.”

She hesitated. “Harry did make quite a fool of himself over her, before he met me.”

“They were married then, weren’t they?”

She leveled her unblinking gaze on me for several ticks of the clock before answering. “Yes.”

Yet somehow, even though it was what I’d expected to hear, the answer seemed a deception.

“Come, sit down in the parlor. I’ll tell you everything.” We took our seats in the hushed floral room where she neatly arranged her skirt and lifted her gaze to me. “Delphine Bessette was a mystery, even before her death. Thus, she was greatly misunderstood. It’s time to set things straight, if her story is to be told.”

“Who set the fire, Lady Gower? Who disliked her so greatly?” I studied her face for signs of guilt, of knowing.

“This may surprise you.” She took a breath. “It was Napoleon’s men.”

I blinked. “Napoleon Bonaparte?”

“She was a spy against them.” She straightened. “Everyone believes dancers to be silly creatures, but Delphine was quite intelligent. She was also quite good at befriending French officers and wheedling information from them. That’s how Harry came to know her, in fact. They worked together in the underground resistance, helping to bring the great army down.”

“Why ever would she care about that?”

“Don’t you know? She had grown up in Sweden and she didn’t want her home country attacked. They were Napoleon’s next goal. Everyone loved Delphine, and she could walk into nearly any room and command any man to do her bidding. She used that to her benefit and saved many lives on the continent.”

I clasped my hands in my lap, thinking before I spoke. “What a resourceful woman. She must have been quite magnificent, even in everyday life.”

“No woman can ever live up to her, on or off the stage. Her charms were known through the world, her beauty unrivalled. But not even her beauty could stop those men from being rid of her. She was simply too smart, too powerful against their cause. So one night when she practiced late, all they had to do was slip unnoticed into the theater with a kerosene lamp . . .”

“It’s all so remarkable.”

“Such a woman would have to go out in a blaze of glory.” She inhaled, eyes fluttering closed. “The world would believe no less for her final curtain call.”

The room was quiet, save the echoing footsteps of distant servants and muffled voices.

“So what do you think of Delphine Bessette now, Miss Blythe?”

“It was a most brilliant story.” I grasped the chair arms and leveled my gaze at her. “Unfortunately I don’t believe a word of it.”

She leaned forward like a crouching tiger, eyes narrowing. “Who are you?”

I hardly knew how to answer. And with the sudden change in her expression, I felt an urgent desire to leave, even before the tea. I stood, brushing out my skirts. “I should return to London before dark. Thank you for the offer of tea, and I’m sorry I could not stay long enough to accept. Good day, Lady Gower.” It was the most ill-mannered exit I’d ever made, but relief washed over me as I neared the drawing room doors. I focused on the open space beyond, and the double doors that led outside, to freedom. Which I desperately felt I needed then. I paced toward those doors quickly. With intention.

A hand clamped down on my arm. I cried out and spun to face her dangerously calm expression. Her eyes were like steel, her voice low. “Where is she?”

I swallowed. “Out of reach.” I jerked away and ran into the hall, nearly colliding with a shocked-looking manservant holding an empty salver to his chest.

After a long coach ride back to London, I hurried to Jack’s flat and flew into his arms the moment he admitted me. I spoke into his chest, giving my account in rapid little sentences that probably made no sense.

He embraced me, smoothing one hand down my back while my words continued to erupt until I was breathless. “Come, sit and have something to drink.”

He settled me in a chair, but I popped up the minute he went to fetch me a warm drink, and I paced before the old newsprint clippings tacked up on his far wall. “They’re guilty. They have to be. If I ever doubted it before, I don’t anymore. She talked about the kerosene lamp, but every single article talks about a candle being knocked over.”

Jack stood before me with a steaming cup, which I did not take. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going there? You shouldn’t have gone alone.”

I rushed on, right over his admonishment. “It’s true, about the lamp—Mama told me she heard it smash just before she saw the flames, but no one knew that’s how it started except for her. And, curiously, Lady Gower. Either she was told, or she was there.”

His face glowed. He was growing excited along with me. He dropped into a chair, rocking back and resting a notebook on one bent leg. “An astute observation. Yes, that does fit with what I’ve found.” He started writing.

“It still doesn’t add up, though. Lady Gower was jealous enough to rid the world of my mother, or cover up for her murderer, yet she has displayed Mama’s scarlet ballet slippers on her wall. It makes no sense for the scarlet slippers—those slippers—to be hanging in the woman’s own house. Or for her husband to go to the trouble of stealing them from me.” I thought of that green hat hanging in the hall of their house.

“Of course it does.” He dropped his chair forward on all fours again, his face solemn. He rose and dropped his notebook, taking hold of my shoulders as if to steady me. “Because the woman you just met with is Delphine Bessette.”

My mouth opened and closed, then opened again. “How . . . how . . .” My brain spun. I stood, agitated, palms on the table. “You’re calling my mother a fraud.”

“A backup. But not the only Delphine Bessette. After what you told me, and what I found in Gretna Green, it’s the only answer that makes sense. I’ve been turning it over in my head all day. Lord Gower has only one certificate of marriage, and it’s to a Miss Jane Fawley, age twenty-eight years, dated two days after the fire. A different woman named Viola, age twenty-two, is listed as the wife of Marcus de Silva, also married in Gretna Green two years prior. It seems they are not the same woman although they oddly shared the same wedding location.”

I braced my throbbing head with my hands, trying to sort it all out. “You’re saying she’s a fraud . . . and the mysterious other woman who stole him away.”

“I don’t believe Marcus de Silva was ever in love with the real Delphine. That’s why he spoke of her with such disdain.”

I shuddered as I recalled the look on his face when I’d told him I was Delphine Bessette’s daughter. He believed I belonged to this woman, Lady Gower—and had no connection to him.

“So that means the fire merely gave her an opportunity to fake Delphine’s death. Then she lit out of town and married one of her many admirers and lived out her life rather comfortably in seclusion.”

“She loved being Delphine, though. The way she spoke of her today . . . Why would she have allowed all of that to come to an end?” The minute I asked, though, I knew the answer.

“Forced retirement. She must have been nearing the end of her prime, and this allowed her to fade away into memories.”

“But why the elaborate hiding? What was she trying to escape?”

He sighed and shrugged. “There’s a good chance your mother, since she also claimed to be Delphine, was a stand-in for the real one. A sort of last-minute back-up for emergencies. The good news is that the love letters, the sister, the many admirers, the terrible temper . . . those all belonged to Jane Fawley, the true Delphine—not your mother.”

“A small consolation.” She was a fraud. I was a fraud, and I felt again my utter smallness.

His hands stayed steady on my shoulders. “I didn’t want to tell you all of this, but I felt I must warn you. I’ve no idea what Jane Fawley—Lady Gower—intends if she feels threatened by you. By us. There’s a good chance she herself set the fire, and she believes she’s guilty of murder. I’m writing a different ending to the ballet so she doesn’t know we’re onto her.”

I sank back into the chair, keeping my eyes on him. “This cannot be true.” All this time I’d known that Jack Dorian was many things, but I’d never considered him a liar.

Yet he must be. Because if he wasn’t, it meant Mum was. The notion left me feeling lost, and quite adrift. I’d always been Delphine Bessette’s daughter, even if I was the only one who knew it. I may be poor and less talented and less amusing than the others, but I had that secret in my pocket, like an anchor for my identity. I’d wanted to be more, to prove myself—to God and others—but I was truly nothing. No one. Just some poor wretch brought here on charity.

He urged me toward the table. “Come now, have a cup. I’ll let you pick the ending we use.” His voice was gentle. Almost apologetic.

I couldn’t do anything but perch on the edge of a chair opposite him and blink back tears over my untouched cup of tea. There was a sordid ring of truth to his conclusion. I recalled Lady Gower’s stiffness—almost a limp—the day she’d first greeted us in her garden. I recognized that gait. It came from extreme overuse.

Of course she was a dancer.

“It is the great paradox of art, ma petite. Ballet is all delicacy and grace, yet it brings out the barbaric side of every woman who dances it.”

“Please. Trust me, will you?” His hand slid over mine. “There’s more to the story. I’m certain of it. I just have to find out what it is.”

I wasn’t certain I wanted him to. After a moment I straightened my spine, spun toward the table, and began to pile completed pages. “Right, then. Where were we?”

He sighed. “An alternate conclusion to the mystery, I suppose. What about this? She’s rehearsing. It’s the night of the fire. Someone sneaks in. Maybe . . . several someones.”

I frowned.

“That’s the big secret. It wasn’t just one dancer. It was several, who all joined forces to rid the theater of her and then provide each other alibis. That’s how they managed to get away with it all this time. It works, yes?” He looked haggard.

I blew the hair off my face and tapped my teacup. “No. We need to do the real ending.”

“Out of the question.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted from the start.”

“I did.” He stared down at his page. “Until I thought it through. She knows we’re writing this ballet about Delphine’s murder. She’s done a mountain of work to keep her secret safe all these years. You think she’d just allow us to display her guilt on the stage?” He shook his head. “We cannot let her know what we’ve discovered.”

I closed my eyes, breathed out. “I think she knows.” Why had I ever opened my mouth? I could have walked out of there letting her think I’d swallowed her entire ridiculous story.

He eyed me.

“Mum deserves justice. No matter who she truly was, someone tried to kill her in a most violent way and went on to live as if nothing had occurred. The world should know what happened. What really happened.”

He hesitated. “You’re certain this is what you want?”

I gave a single nod. “When you have the world’s ear . . . the truth, Jack. Always the truth.”