Page 5 of A Most Improper Duchess
‘When were you last in Paris?’ Algernon asked.
‘A little over ten years. Not since I was 20.’
‘Any old friends you were planning on reacquainting yourself with? Any spurned lovers who might recognise you? Leave behind any bad debts?’
Arley huffed. ‘Nothing so exciting. I was with a minder the entire time. I imagine most of the men I met with would have fled the city in the revolution.’
‘So, the chances of anyone recognising you are low.’ Algernon swayed with the carriage, but as his lips curled into a devious smile, the movement almost looked as if he was swaggering. ‘A duke is expected to arrive in Paris. What say we give them one?’
Chapter Two
Viviannehadnotwantedto start the biggest day of her career running through the streets of Paris and arriving at the Palais Garnier puffed and dishevelled, but here she was, leaping over a stale puddle and dodging a stray dog as she raced down the rue Auber. Prima ballerina or not, the director Monsieur Sarcay would not tolerate tardiness.
Despite her puffing, as she skirted down the side street and slipped in through the dancers’ entrance to make her way backstage, her body thrummed.
All the work at the bar. The endless rehearsals and failed auditions. The lecherous groping and propositions from wealthy subscribers, the so-called noblemen whose tickets gave them special access to the Foyer de la Danse and to the dancers' dressing rooms. The empty liaisons agreed to hoping one of them would have the clout to recommend her for a lead role.
All of it.Fini.
One man, and a Prussian noble to boot, who was only in town a few months a year, had promised her an apartment, and an allowance, and above all, the desire of her heart: to speak to the administrators, and recommend she be the prima ballerina.
He was not an attractive man. Not especially bright. And, in their very brief session in his hotel, not skilled in theboudoir,either. For three months she had scorned the advances of other men, even though his small gifts and meagre allowance barely kept her in barley and broth, because unlike others, Archduke Baasch had the ear of the director, and recommendations from men like him saw ordinary members of the ballet corps catapulted to stardom. For Vivianne, dreams of love or marriage or even satisfaction in a partnership were out of reach. But to find a man willing to be her protector? To give her stability? That was what all the dancers sought. But to find one who could give her the chance to dance alone on the stage as Coppelia or Giselle, that was what she hungered for. And, finally, it was hers.
‘Vivianne!’ came a call from above as she clapped up the stairs.
‘Not now, Nicole, I am late!’
Vivianne pushed her way down the hallway, jostling against the flow of dancers making their way up to the stage for rehearsals. She opened the door to the private dressing room before pulling off her satchel and plucking at her bodice buttons. One snagged on a loose thread, and she cursed.
‘Vivianne!’
‘I know, I know, I am late, but only a little…’
It took a moment for Vivianne to register the voice. Not unfamiliar, but not exactly a friend. She looked up.
‘Adele? Archduke?’ There was no reason to ask what they were doing in her dressing room. Adele’s dishevelled hair, her downcast eyes, and the archduke’s smug expression explained everything. A bunch of bright pink roses wrapped in brown paper and tied with white ribbon lay on the dressing table. Emblazoned on a card beside it was the name of the young dancer. Vivianne looked to the Archduke. ‘You said you would recommend me.’
‘I was going to,’ he said as he hitched his trousers. ‘But yesterday, I met the charming Adele…’ He tilted Adele’s chin upwards and pressed his lips against hers, his body tense with lust, but Vivianne saw the slight flinch in Adele, and the tenseness in her neck. She was barely seventeen. He pulled back, his lips smacking. ‘And her talent is…’ His gaze moved down Adele’s face, caressed her neck, before pausing at the small swell of her bosom, easily twice the size of Vivianne’s almost non-existent cleavage. ‘Breathtaking.’ He snapped back to her. ‘You were fabulous, Vivianne, but the stage belongs to the young. Adele is the future.’
‘Future? What do you know about the future?’ A coil of anger, hot as iron, glowed deep in her stomach. ‘You are a relic from a dead past. A symbol of the old, not the new. You come to Paris to indulge and eat and play and fuck, like we are a carcass for your feasting.’ Grappling at the side table, she picked up a small bottle of perfume and flung it across the room. He flinched, barring his arms in defence. ‘But the people will come for you, Archduke. Like in Paris. Their feet will march.’ She flung another bottle, and another. Adele squealed and pressed herself against the window, while the archduke blustered as he tried to shield himself. Out of bottles, Vivianne grasped the tray they had been collected on and flung it across the room. It hit the wall above his head with a clang. ‘They will come for you, and they will use your bones to flick the carnage from between their teeth.’
‘Vivianne!’ Regret pooled in her stomach as Vivianne stalled, still gripping a vase she had been about to volley across the room. She spun on her heel to find the director, Monsieur Sarcay. His mouth was a drawn line, his dark bushy brows knitted, his face was impassive apart from the fury in his eyes. A small group of dancers clustered behind him, some shocked, others hiding grins behind their hands. Nicole gave her a sad smile. Vivianne swallowed the hard knot in her throat as her anger turned to cold dread.
‘Out,’ he snapped, his nostrils flaring.
‘Monsieur, please, he promised, and I…’
Sarcay only gave a slight, barely imperceptible shake of his head. He wouldn’t repeat himself. Vivianne tugged at her satchel, and head bent, made her way to the door.
During the Siege of Paris,les Jardins du Luxembourghad been filled with ambulances. They had lined the lawn outside the Luxembourg Palace, which had been converted to a hospital. And after the Siege, after the revolution failed, it was the same place where the Communards had been lined up and executed by the government. The rubble had been swept away. Verdant green leaves concealed the scars left by bullets on the walls and balustrades. The garden was grown over with lush grass, so rich that no one would guess how much blood the soil had drunk.
Vivianne perched herself on the wall that ran alongside the pool of the Grand Bassin.l’Année Terrible, the Terrible Year, had shattered their world the year she turned seventeen, only ten months after she had arrived in the capital with dreams of silk slippers and tutus. In those days, the unfinished Palais Garnier had been a hospital, too. With no music to dance to, she had run water to the sick, wound bandages and made soup. Many gave up hope that dancing would ever be possible again, but not Vivianne. Even at the end of those days, when her muscles ached, her stomach growled and her heart was fatigued with loss, she had worked on her steps, kept her posture, and made time for the bar. She had never stopped believing that one day, Garnier would be finished, and that music would return to Paris. Like the swans that lumbered around the gardens stealing bread and cakes from distracted children, she too would fly.
Now, her career was scuttled, and by her own impetuousness.
Her reflection in the water silently screamed the truth. It had been over before she threw the first bottle. Before she opened the door to the dressing room. She was not a novice dancer with slightly fuller cheeks and an innocent smile. Hers were the cheekbones of a woman, her blonde hair plaited and pinned with an experienced hand, her eyes not bright like fresh dew, but dark with knowledge and cynicism. Of necessity, and at times, calculation, her arms had held too many. Her body had grown hard and lean with work and commitment. While her childhood had been happy, she had not always been well fed, so she had never grown tall and her silhouette remained thin.
She wanted to be angry at Adele, but she couldn’t. Like Nicole, Adele had been apetit ratwho spent years scrubbing floors and cleaning the opera between rehearsals and classes. She couldn’t even bring herself to hate the Archduke. Her body was too relieved at the thought of being free of his attentions. Her anger, not fierce, just raw and aching, narrowed on herself. Why had she been so petulant, and so determined to defy her mother and leave their simple life to seek the brilliance of Paris?
