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“Every success, every inch gained, has been gained with nothing more than the grit of laboring Craftsmen!”

“And what are we?” Theodore said quietly, beneath the applause. “Showpieces?”

“We will take back the land we have worked for generations. And God help those so unfortunate as to stand against us!”

Around me, people exploded in a frenzy, cheering, whistling, shouting slurs and curses and devotions simultaneously. Patrick returned his strange microphone to Scottie, pushed his sleeves up to his elbows and left the stage. He descended into a sea of back claps and vanished.

Music started, a man with a fiddle on a far wall played a quickening melody. He was joined by another, a man with a harmonica, another with a cello. A small grand piano with two wooden legs and two steel substitutes was unveiled beneath a dustsheet, and a woman took the stool before it. The song shook the starlings from the rafters, and soon, pairs stumbled and laughed along to a country dance I’d not seen since childhood.

A small smile crept across my lips. I clapped along with the other spectators.

Theo left my side momentarily and returned seconds later with a tin cup of wine. “It’s bitter,” he said. “But not so bad once you get used to it.”

I downed the entire cup before the first song ended, the piano notes still warbling among applause.

Overhead, those endless twinkling manufactured lights hung. Kenton Hill’s very own galaxy. A young woman was asked to dance by a timid young man. Little girls twirled amid a group of cheering adults. A harried contingent served spit pork and potatoes at the door, and the fiddlerplayed notes at such dizzying speed I could hardly make sense of his fingers. I had the sudden image of my old music composition class, where dozens of students hovered over the shoulder of a professor, trying to untangle the majesty of his quick play. I felt, and not for the first time since arriving, that I was in someone else’s misshapen dream.

Without preamble, Theo turned to me. He hesitated before speaking. “I was an idiot back then,” he said, clearing his throat. “I should have danced with you all night.”

He likely didn’t remember that I had begged him for reprieve. I had never wanted to dance in that room, before all those watchful eyes.

“Let me make amends.” He held out his hand. “Please, Clarke.”

It seemed too joyous a moment to say no, and I thought it might be nice to dance with him again, the man I’d loved as an adolescent. He led me out into the fray.

The next dance was a folk number, and Theo turned me until my back met his chest and held my hands out wide in the starting position. Had it really been years since we’d practiced these steps in the Artisan dance hall, laughing and falling over each other’s feet?

We followed the flow of dancers in a circle. Theo led me with expertise. Feet pounded the plywood and reverberated in my bones. My borrowed red dress arced when I spun, and I didn’t try to stem the gaiety, the freedom of it. My shawl slipped from my shoulders and puddled around my elbows. As always, the tendrils around the frame of my face sprung free, and when I finally looked back at Theo, he was smiling at me—not, it seemed, at the simple happiness of barn dancing.

And it made me sad that I no longer saw him in the same way I used to.

The song ended abruptly, with both of Theo’s hands around my waist in a way our old instructor would have deemed improper. The crowd clapped politely. Theo’s chest pounded beneath my hand. His dark eyes hooded. He bore down on me.

“No—”

“Pardon, Teddy,” came a merciful voice, and I disengaged from Theo’s embrace while I still could.

Patrick stood close by with a strange expression; his jaw fastened, eyes flashing.

Theo’s smile fell. He looked between me and Patrick, and something fraught brewed in the space between the two men.

But Patrick spoke genially enough. “I’ll need to steal her for this one.” And he held his hand out to me.

If we’d still stood in the Artisan School, where Theo’s status had counted for something, he might have laughed in Patrick’s face and spun me away. Then again, he wouldn’t have been challenged in the first place.

But this was Kenton Hill. Theo’s expression darkened. “If Nina wishes.”

I swallowed.

Patrick’s gaze softened considerably when he looked at me, but his hand waited.

I thought I saw him grin when I placed my fingers in his palm. He nodded to Theo. “Enjoy your evenin’,” he said, and turned his back.

Patrick pulled me deeper into the flock of dancers, his fingers interlocking with mine. I had a mind to look back at Theo and say something, but a new song had begun, and Patrick turned and gathered me to him automatically, as though it were second nature.

I was immediately coalesced in warmth and the heady mixture of subtle cologne, fresh linen, washed skin.

I couldn’t tell if his pulse sprinted as violently as mine. Was he a drug for all the women he touched?