Reserved for the Cat

In fact, the girl led a life so cloistered that it gave Nina pause. Not the work—Nina herself did the work of a dancer, and a good one too—but the sacrifice, that was unprecedented. No little téte-a-téte dinner parties with select gentlemen. No afternoons off for a picnic. No afternoons off shopping! That was what truly astonished Nina; every other dancer she had ever known was an inveterate shopper!

It was a pity too, since shopping would have been the ideal way to take her. Become a helpful shop girl, suggest there were better things in a back room. Take her there—and become her. No one the wiser.

There would be a complication of course, because it was possible that she might just decide to stay here. That impresario in Germany . . . she could cancel the appearances . . . but then she would have to eliminate him, too, or return his money. If she didn’t he would probably sue for breach of contract.

All right. It was time to play to her strong suit. Use her own Element.

Ninette limbered herself backstage at afternoon rehearsal. She had taken the ball, hoop, and ribbon dances out, and had put in two pure ballet solos. Both, had she been asked, were blatant copies of two of Anna Pavlova’s dances—“Waterlily” was a copy of her “California Poppy,” complete with bringing the petals of her skirt up around her at the finale when the stage went dark, and “Fairy,” which was a copy of Pavlova’s “Dragonfly.” But Anna Pavlova was far away and unlikely to ever get to Blackpool, and people were actually coming to Blackpool for their holidays to see her!

Of course most of that was due to her miraculous “rescue” that spring. But still. . . .

“Those dances are rather good,” Jonathon said from behind her.

She shrugged, and bent over to touch her forehead to her knees and hold the position for a moment. “I copied them from Pavlova,” she said frankly.

“I know,” came the surprising reply. “I saw ‘California Poppy’ and ‘Dragonfly’ in Monte Carlo.”

She straightened so fast she almost hurt herself. “What? And you said nothing to Nigel?”

It was his turn to shrug. “He wouldn’t care. I know I don’t. A dance isn’t like a magic trick. I don’t think you can ever say ‘that’s mine’ once you’ve done it in public.”

“I suppose so,” she said, dubiously. She hesitated, but anything she was going to tell him was lost as the trained dog act suddenly saw Thomas, and idiotically forgot all of their tricks. Thomas headed straight for the dressing room with the pack in full cry behind him and the frantic trainer right behind them. Ninette let them all run—she knew very well that Thomas was more than a match for a hundred dogs—but Jonathon swore and raced after them all. Perhaps he was concerned for the dogs.

But that was the moment when things began to thaw between them.

12

NINETTE was keeping her muscles warm in the wings when the female half of the dog-training act dashed up to her, face white. “Have you seen Nigel?” she asked, breathlessly. Ninette stared at her, perplexed and alarmed, all at once, and pointed to stage left, where Nigel’s sleeve was just barely visible behind a piece of scenery.

The dog trainer—Ninette strained to remember her name since the act went by the name of “Harrigan’s Amazing Hounds”—rushed across the stage in a blatant violation of all the rules of performance. Thou shalt not cross the stage during someone else’s act in rehearsal—dress rehearsal, of course, not band-call.

The act she ran through was, thank heavens, that of the character-comic, who was a good-natured old fellow, even if he did partake of the bottle a bit more than he should have. He kept right on, like a trouper, even as the female trainer seized Nigel—literally!—and began an urgent speech that started off quietly but very, very rapidly ascended into the hysterical.

She spoke too rapidly for Ninette to understand her, given that for Ninette, English was still very hard to comprehend unless people spoke in a leisurely manner. She got a few words here and there—accident and broken legs.

She rushed back across the stage again, her agitation visible, her eyes seeing nothing but the way out. Ninette kept warming up. No matter what, the show went on. It always went on. Only the death of a monarch would close down a show.

But in just exactly the time it took for someone to cross from stage left to stage right through the backstage area, Nigel appeared at her elbow. “Harrigan somehow fell into a hole in the street and broke both legs,” he said grimly. “I hate to ask you to—”