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“I don’t care if the duke comes or not. Please, Celeste, you will break your neck if you crane it just so,” Helene said, passing rosin over her slippers.

“If your duke doesn’t come, you’ll cry.” Celeste pushed away from the little hole from where they watched the audience. “I don’t want you to be like Ophelia when Hamlet lost interest in her—”

“I won’t turn into a sad Ophelia. Once the music plays, I’ll dance for myself, not for unfaithful eyes.” Helene declared in the best Shakespearean style, affecting playfulness when her stomach was tightened in knots. Curse that wicked duke for having such an effect on her. This was her opening night. She should be rejoicing. Instead, she was a trembling mass of aching muscles and strained nerves.

“ Merde , darling,” Celeste said, kissing her cheek and sauntered away to join the other soloists.

Helene avoided Sophie’s gaze and crossed between cardboard trees. The orchestra warmed up, not ten feet from her, their power reverberating in her slippers. Alone, she tried the tripple pirouette but fell after one and a half. What was wrong with her?

“You still keep your neck tense, chérie,” Katherina touched her shoulder.

She was carrying something pale and delicate—a captured moonbeam.

Katherina extended the bundle. “Your wings.”

Helene gasped. It was almost as fine as tulle illusion. The silver thread gave it a radiant glow, so exquisite in craftsmanship it could have belonged to a dragonfly.

“A fairy couldn’t dream up a better one.”

“Only the best for our prima ballerina,” Katherina said, her voice filled with pride as she adjusted the straps over Helene’s shoulders.

Helene sought her reflection. The person who looked back at her wore a tight-fitted, white satin bodice, and a cloud of tulle as a skirt. The little wings sparkled on her back. Pearl dust shimmered across her arms and décolletage. Helene lifted her arm and tilted her head to see if the woman in the glass would do the same. And though the image followed her, the sensation would not go away—as if Helene was not there, only La Sylphide.

The third bell sounded. “Principal dancers to the stage. Last call.”

Helene’s heart sped, and she caught Katherina’s hand. Her throat was so dry she couldn’t swallow her own saliva.

Katherina sustained her gaze, her expression serene. “Breathe, child. Come, the box Anglaise is filled to the brim. Two thousand five hundred tickets sold. Everyone is here—the Regent, Wordsworth, Coleridge… even the rabble. They all came to see you, and you will make us all proud.”

Katherina interlaced their arms, and together, they left the backstage.

With the curtains closed, the stage felt hushed, a realm apart from chaotic London. She loved everything about it—the scent, the lights, even the raked floor. It was challenging to move uphill, away from the audience, but coming down, she was a goddess.

Vestris adjusted his navy-blue coat and smoothed his plaited kilt. The perfect highlander, he would make Sir Walter Scott proud. Still, she couldn’t get used to seeing him in skirts, his knobby knees bare.

He stretched on the chair and winked. “I’ve been awake for the past two nights, and now I’m ready for you to haunt my dreams.”

Helene scrunched her nose. “You have some nerve to sleep on stage with your garters on display.”

Katherina pressed her hand affectionately. “Break a leg, Helene.”

“Better break a leg than my heart, non?”

Helene knelt by the chair, hands poised. If it were the duke sprawling before her, she would relish haunting him.

The music turned loud and louder still. The gas lamps were dimmed, plunging her into darkness. A thrill edged with nausea raced through her, and for a second, she thought she would faint.

The curtain opened. Once a mere wooden platform, the stage became a fairyland under focused lights. The orchestra swelled, each note a cue, a breath, a pulse.

Before her, the auditorium stretched out, a vast expanse dotted with flesh-colored, nameless faces. Helene sought the duke among the audience, finding only an ocean of shadows and light.

Relentless, the orchestra prodded her on, and Helene embarked on the music. The notes carried her performance, helping her lift her leg in the adagio and giving her energy through the allegro.

When it was time to travel backstage for her long diagonal of turns, her chest heaved, and her feet burned. Even before she started spinning, the darkness, the mass of nondescript faces, made her dizzy. She would do as Langley had said—a single pirouette—and pray it was enough.

A flicker of motion drew her gaze upward.

Movement in the ducal box.

Her stomach dropped, then coiled with heat. He was there.

She couldn't see him through the glare of footlights and the blur of distance—but she felt him. His presence hummed beneath her ribs, steady and electric, echoing in the same space as the music. That impossible thing between them—this heat, this yearning—it surged across the theater like a current, vaulted the orchestra pit, and struck her square in the chest.

After a short preparation, she spun.

Turning once, twice, she flapped her wings, a creature of air and art. When she completed the triple pirouette, the audience erupted.

The rest of the performance passed in a daze. After the Sylph finally died on stage, she smiled through tears of joy.

Flowers fell at her feet, and the public clapped wildly. Vestris took her hand and lifted her. Together, they bowed once, twice, thrice. Her cheeks ached from smiling, and her breaths came in bursting gasps.

Then the curtain closed.

Helene blinked as the light changed. Too soon. The curtain had closed too soon. Disoriented, she took a step forward and then another. Her friends hugged her, Langley shook her hand, and Verón kissed it. Katherina gave her a knowing look, and Sophie gave her a sullen one.

She paid attention to neither, trying to see through the slit of light between both halves of the curtain.

Celeste embraced her. “Helene, where are you floating now? Has all this fame gone to your head??”

“Hmm?”

Celeste laughed. “We have to celebrate. The dancers are going to the Pantheon. Vestris promised to take us in his carriage. Come.”

“You girls go, I’m tired.”

Everyone cheered, but, try as she might, Helene knew what she wanted to find would not be in the Pantheon.

***

A line of gentlemen waited in the green room, eyes fixed on Helene, arms burdened with gaudy bouquets.

The duke was not among them. What did she expect? According to him, some paths led to ruin, and she was one of them. With no one to help her change, she ignored the would-be suitors, grabbed her coat, and walked out.

Helene dragged her feet out of the theater, feeling as celebrated as an old broom. The street was frozen. The gas lamps flickered morosely, as if cold. Even the lonely hackney coaches seemed unable to move, caught in frost. She wrapped her shawl around herself and, keeping her chin low, treaded through the dimly lit streets.

If he could do it, so could she. She would freeze her heart. It would be frozen like the city, frozen like his eyes, frozen like his demeanor when he rejected her. She didn’t need a muse to perform. Apollo would be better without Terpsichore.

Helene hastened her walk, each step firm against the cold pavement.

When she arrived at her building, the only thing she had frozen was her feet. Cold to the roots of her soul, she carried herself up the stairs.

The mournful notes of her neighbor’s violin slipped through the walls, curling around her. Helene closed her eyes. A requiem? What a welcome for a ballet star.

Helene raced the last steps, wanting to outrun the sorrowful music.

At the top of the landing, she halted. Framed by the sooty light, confiscating the air of her building, more handsome than Apollo, lounged her renegade muse.

The Duke of Albemarle leaned against the wall, his black and white evening finery catching glints of light like a chiaroscuro painting. That attire had been invented for men like him—danger wrapped in civility, restraint tailored to perfection.

A single rebellious curl had slipped free, softening the severe angles of his patrician face. It was ridiculous how that one unruly strand undid her. Humanized him. Made him more devastating.

His gaze met hers. Only desire swirled in the storm of his eyes, and a breath she had been holding escaped her parted lips. And then he smiled, and she lost the rest of her air. His was the kind of smile that could turn a requiem into a tender adagio.

Helene let go of her death grip on the railing, schooling her expression into a mask of English restraint. “You came… Interesting. I thought some paths led us astray.”

His gaze found hers. “All the paths in this city lead back to you.”

The words, delivered in his smoky baritone, heated even her frozen feet.

But he had hurt her, and no one should have that much power over her, most of all a tyrant duke.

“Did you see the performance? How did you feel about the company? I certainly don’t want our poor crew of emigres to be out in the streets, or worse—”

“I didn’t pay attention to the company.”

“No?”

“I only saw you.”

Exhaling, Helene wrung her hands. “I made mistakes, and the last act was terrible. I was far from perfect.”

“You were not perfect.” He touched her cheek, a brief caress. His voice was soft, reverent. “You were sublime.”

How did he do that? Turned her from an old broom into a beautiful giantess? Look at her—so tall her head must be reaching the ceiling’s beams.

So much for willing her heart into ice.

What she felt for him, it seemed, could not be frozen at will. It heated the air between them, thickening and seething, coiling around her like smoke.

They stood like this, watching each other in the dark.

Then he tucked her hair behind her ear. “You want to go someplace with me?”

His gaze was open, boyish even.

“Where?” she asked breathlessly.

“To the moon.”

Helene smiled shyly. “Can we settle for my home?”

Helene drank in his hopeful expression, awed by the force of her wishes—she wanted him to make her feel desired in the real world as she felt beautiful on the stage. She craved the love of poets and muses, the love of Orpheus and Eurydice only grander and delicate and perfect. The moon? Yes, please.

Helene had trouble inserting her key in the lock. She had to be the most daring dancer since the Bacchantes in ancient Greece to have invited into her apartment the most handsome and influential man in Britain. Her heart beat frantically as she turned the knob.

The door opened with a creak, as if startled by her bravery.

Flickering candlelight danced over the windows and dark green walls, casting shadows across the room. Vases overflowing with lilies of the valley decorated every corner, their delicate bells lolling prettily. The intoxicating fragrance enveloped her in a white mist.

He did all this? Why would anyone do something so grand for her?

She gasped, dizzy as if she had done a diagonal of pirouettes. Covering her mouth, Helene moved further into the room, her steps hesitant, an intruder upon a fairy tale.

She reached out, her fingers brushing against the silky petals.

“They were my mother’s favorite.”

Although her memories of life in France became hazier every year, her mother’s garden was the one she kept closer to her heart.

The duke leaned over the door frame, his ankles crossed. She shouldn’t admire him so, but how could she not? A thrill raced through her to have him in her private space, a secret garden of lilies and intimacy.

“How did you know?” she whispered, her chest hollow with yearning.

“I learned to decipher your words. You are a complicated creature, Little One.”

“Complicated? Nowadays, I have only two desires.”

He pushed away from the wall, each of his steps punctuated by a thud of her heart.

When he halted before her, she had trouble breathing.

“Only two?” he asked.

“Yes… One is to dance for you,” she whispered.

Delicious heat radiated from him, and she leaned closer, drawn by an irresistible pull. If she were the moth and he the flame, shouldn’t she resist this thing between them? Yet, to be near her tantalizing Tyrant, she would gladly sacrifice her wings.

“And the other?”

Her gaze lingered on his mouth. “The other is to kiss you.”