Page 116 of The Duke's Dream
He might dismiss her from the role, but she had a contract. He’d have to pay the fine. Still, doubt tugged at her. William would’ve known what to say, how to turn this confrontation into a negotiation. Without him, she risked discarding every tactic he'd taught her.
Without knocking, she burst into Verón’s office.
The director jolted, fingers tightening around the coins he was counting.
“Ah, Mademoiselle de Beaumont.” He smiled without warmth. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Helene flung the advertisement sheet onto his desk. Coins scattered, spinning and clinking across the wood. “According to my contract, I’m starring in La Sylphide through the end of the season.”
He showed his sharp teeth. “But chérie, how can La Sylphide be on stage if she is dead?”
“I won’t allow you to kill my character—”
He laughed, a low rasp of derision. “Me? I had no intention of killing my creation. You did. And for that, I should rescind your contract altogether.”
She stared at him, stunned. “No, I—”
“You shot her in the head the moment your affair with the duke became public. The allure of La Sylphide was her chasteness, her otherworldliness. Women came in droves to glimpse something they could never be—pure, unreachable. A perfect ideal in white, floating above earthly desires. Platonic love made flesh.”
Her passion for William had killed La Sylphide, just as it had helped create Helene. How ironic, how perfectly Shakespearean. Exhausted, she dropped into a chair. All the publicity, the clothes, the pictures… Verón had spent a fortune turning her into an angel as if she alone could cleanse the excesses of an entire city. How unfortunate for them to realize the ethereal soap had smudges of her own.
“Don’t despair. Your career shouldn’t have to end because of a weakness of the heart.” His voice turned tender as he leaned forward, clucking like a benevolent mother hen. “I came up with the perfect solution.”
“Oh, because you are always so selfless, Verón?”
“My little Helene, don’t tell me you’ve become cynical! What hope is there, if even you have lost your innocence?”
“I’ve grown tired of being the antidote for everyone else’s poison.”
He laughed. “That is exactly the spirit of this new persona we will create for you.”
Helene raised her head. Verón’s face lit with a wild energy that unsettled her.
“From now on, you are the fallen angel—La Diabla.”
The devil? Helene opened her mouth to object, but Verón silenced her with a raised hand.
“Langley will choreograph something entirely new. Your figurine will be black, not white, and you’ll seduce the hero. While you scandalize the audience, I’ll flood the town with publicity. Can you imagine? Parties, Vauxhall Gardens, masquerades… Helene de Beaumont—Queen of the Underworld. Together, we’ll make the Demimonde more fashionable than the Beau Monde. We are French, chérie. We’ll rule them. Before long, even the grand dames of aristocracy will swap their lace caps for lace lingerie.”
He was insane. The Covent Garden Theater director should be in Bedlam.
Helene drew a steadying breath. “Verón, you've reopened the warming room to patrons after promising you wouldn’t, and now you want to turn Covent Garden into a house of ill repute.” She kept her tone calm, each word deliberate, hoping reason might pierce the fog of his ambition. “William—the Duke of Albemarle—won’t allow this. When he returns next week—”
“What does he have to do with my theater and my dancers?”
“As an important investor, he will object—”
“Helene, innocent Helene,” Verón interrupted, his tone dripping with condescension. “Are you always the last to hear about things in this town? The duke won’t return.”
Her hand flew to her throat. “What do you mean, he won’t return?”
Verón didn’t know this—he must not know this.
Verón’s eyes gleamed. “He sold his interests in the theater. The solicitor just left. Albemarle has retired to his estate up north. His Grace won’t be returning to town this season.”
Williampacedthelengthof his bedchamber in Albemarle Park, the soles of his boots muted by the thick Persian rug. The silence—it made him deaf. Even the servants had tiptoed around him since his arrival last week. Coming here had been pointless. Instead of soothing him, the absence of music only deepened the pain.
If the sprite had respected his grief under his mother’s roof, she now returned with cruel insistence, haunting his sleep without mercy.
