Reserved for the Cat (15 page)

She snorted. If
that
was what he thought . . .

“Should I go out?” she wondered. “Face them now?”

She got up from the chair in which she had been sitting, reading . . . she did not read easily—it was not deemed necessary for the little ballerinas to be very proficient in ordinary school lessons—but she enjoyed it, even if it was very hard work. For some reason, Nigel had a large collection of French novels, and she was making her slow way through them when she was not practicing.

She set the book aside and smoothed down her skirt with a feeling of great satisfaction. Nigel had been more than generous in the way of clothing. Since she had none, he had arranged for the costume mistress of the theater to take her measurements and get her a good wardrobe. Ninette doubted that the woman had sewn these garments herself, but she undoubtedly had friends or relatives that were seamstresses themselves and could use the work. And the work was very fine. Not the equivalent of a boulevard atelier, much less a great fashion modiste of the sort that someone like Nina Tchereslavsky would patronize, but it was finer than anything Ninette had even seen, much less worn. Even the underthings were exquisite, with lace and ribbons and embroidery. Nor had the wardrobe mistress limited herself to Ninette’s ordinary clothing. Her practice skirts and tights were of silk tulle and knitted silk. Her pointe shoes were of the sort that the
etoiles
wore.

In short, ever since the cat had come into her life, things had taken such a turn for the better that she still woke up thinking it was all a dream. And she did not want to lose this. So if the cat said to face them, then face them she would.

She raised her chin, put on the mask of the great
prima,
and sailed out into the hallway. She followed the sound of voices to Nigel’s library. The door was ajar, which she interpreted as meaning they did not mind being disturbed. She took a deep breath, looked down at the cat at her feet, and pushed it open all the way.

Nigel, who had clearly been just about to say something, looked at her with a startled expression, his mouth hanging open for a moment. He swiftly recovered though, and stood up.

“Mademoiselle Nina, were we disturbing you?” he asked, in French.

She shook her head. “Not in the least,” she replied in the same language, and then smiled. “I ’ave been studying zee English, but it marches better when I am hearing it.” She looked around the room as if she were the one that owned this flat, and not Nigel. “You ’ave brought a friend from the theater, oui?”

“This is Jonathon Hightower, a great illusionist,” Nigel said hastily. “Hightower, this is Mademoiselle Nina Tchereslavsky.”

The stranger rose, took her hand, and bowed over it. She accepted the accolade with pleasure, but also with an air that it was only to be expected. Exactly as La Augustine would have.

“And this is the cat, Thomas,” Nigel added hastily.

Hightower, who looked altogether like a modern version of Mephistopheles from the
Faust
opera, looked down at the cat, who had sat down regally just to Ninette’s left.

“Maybe you should make
him
disappear,” Wolf put in, turning one evil yellow eye on the cat.

Really now, what have I done to deserve that suggestion?
The cat glared right back.
That’s rather rude.

“Well, you might stop looking at me as if you were deciding how many meals you were going to get out of me,” Wolf retorted.

I am a cat. I have certain instincts. If you will insist on fluttering and setting off those instincts, you have only yourself to blame.
While the parrot fluffed his feathers angrily and glared, the cat turned his attention back to the newcomer.
Greetings, Fire Master. Am I to presume you are not here by chance?

“Possibly. My friend Nigel had a business proposition he wished to discuss with me.” Hightower’s expression was as bland as could be. Or rather, he had no expression whatsoever that Ninette could make out. His faintly sinister, yet decidedly handsome face made an excellent mask for whatever it was he was thinking. Ninette had seen many opera singers with superb stage presence who used their faces in exactly that way. In fact, they were never really
off-
stage whenever they might be seen in public.

“Perhaps it ees about zis oh-so-mysterious theatrical venture he has hinted about?” she replied archly. She took a seat, remembering to do so as if she was center stage, with all eyes on her.

“Perhaps. You seem very much recovered from your tragedy, Mademoiselle.” The abrupt change of subject might have startled her if she had not already been wary of him.

She hesitated, then sighed. “You will think very badly of me, I suppose,” she said, slowly, as if the words were being drawn from her reluctantly. “And I feel very badly for poor Nikolas. But I did not know him perhaps as well as you presume I knew him. He was an admirer, yes. And he wished to be more, yes. But many gentlemen are my admirers, and many wish to be more. I have not had—” she hesitated “—I have not had a
particular
friend for many months now. I wished to go to England, where the winters are not so cold as Russia, and not France, where there are dancers in plenty, nor Italy, where the audiences prefer opera. I said as much where several of my admirers would hear me, and Nikolas had his new yacht, and I allowed him to persuade me to let him take me here. But I did not allow him to persuade me to do anything else. I wished to see if his company would be something other than tedious.” She sighed, and looked down at her hands, and stole directly from La Augustine. “I am an artist. My friends are artists. When they gather in my salon, the talk is not of stocks and bonds and commodities. I have had my fill of
particular friends
who cannot or will not understand this talk, and demand that I give up my friends and my gatherings because such talk makes them feel stupid. I did not know that poor Nikolas was such a man. I did not know that he was not one. So taking this journey in his company was to discover if he was or was not, because I would be overjoyed never to face another angry confrontation with a man who could not see the value in things he himself did not appreciate.” She made the corners of her mouth turn down. “For many of my admirers I am exactly like a painting. If it is famous, and if others will admire it, and admire the owner for having it, then it is worth collecting. But they do not think that I am not like a painting, that I have a mind, and friends, and I do not particularly wish to be collected and put on display to excite envy in others.”

She looked up, with a melancholy little smile. “I hope that does not make me less in your eyes.”

The illusionist was unfazed. “Well, Mademoiselle, it does puzzle me that you should come from this wreck des—”

“Destitute?” She gave a bitter little laugh. “Monsieur Illusionist, you will think me foolish perhaps, but one does not trust Russian banks if one can help it. All my life I have kept my fortune with me, in the form of jewels and gold. I take it with me wherever I go. And now it has all sunk down to the bottom of the sea.”

The cat had been drilling her in this role until there were times when she wasn’t sure which of her was the real one, Nina or Ninette. She sometimes wondered if he was putting memories into her head the way he was putting languages, because she could swear she had mental images of buildings in Russia, the Imperial Palace, Theater Street, the stage of the Imperial Ballet . . . she had never even, to her knowledge, seen a sketch or a photograph of these places, and yet they were as real to her as the Eiffel Tower and the Paris Opera.

For that matter, was he slipping Russian language into her mind too? Only today, she had mis-stepped in practice and nearly twisted her ankle, and had sworn, not
sacre bleu!
as she had thought she would, but
blin!

At any rate, with these things, these images and thoughts at the front of her mind, it was a great deal easier to “be” Nina.

The illusionist shook his head. “Tell me that you will not be doing that anymore,” he half-scolded. “It was only a matter of time before
something
or
someone
robbed you of your fortune.”

She hesitated. “It was not . . . a very big fortune,” she said after a moment, and laughed ruefully. “I am too fond of pretty gowns, jewelry, champagne, and caviar, and I am not so very famous that merchants will give these things to me in hopes that I will tell others where I got such-and-so. It is bad of me, I know but . . .”

“But there will always be another
particular friend,
who will buy you these things, hmm?” The illusionist raised an eyebrow and she flushed, but raised her chin defiantly. It was Nina and Ninette together who answered him.

“And who does that harm?” she asked rhetorically, speaking of her imagined old man in a fur coat. “I make my friends happy, they make me happy. I deceive no one and no one is deceived by me. I do not pretend to love, monsieur. Love is not for my kind, and I make sure my friends understand this.”

The illusionist unexpectedly softened his voice, and a hint of understanding, faintly shadowed with cynicism, colored his words. “Then you are wise beyond your years, mademoiselle, and I am glad to hear your honesty. I believe you. So. Have you any notion just who or what your father sought to protect you from by giving you this guardian?” He nodded at the cat.

With true bewilderment she could only shake her head. “Thomas has advised me and guided me, and seldom has his advice miscarried. It was he who urged the move to England upon me.”

There was another prima ballerina at the company,
the cat said, “speaking up” unexpectedly.
Nina attracted attention from the wrong quarters. Shall we say,
Imperial
attention? Rather than end up with more than just an artistic rivalry, I advised her to remove herself to somewhere far enough away that the lady’s hand could not scratch her.

All three men chuckled, and even Wolf snorted.

“Our own prince has generated trouble of that sort himself,” Nigel said, with a shake of his head. “But that wasn’t why your Master created you.”

“So whoever did this to him—”

Did not survive the spellcasting,
the cat said, abruptly,
so there is no immediate threat. This is not to say that there may not be one in the future, but there is not one now.

Ninette looked from Nigel to the illusionist and back again, and bit her lip to keep from saying anything. The cat, it seemed, had surprised them both. That was interesting to say the least.

“Well, in that case,” Nigel said carefully, with a glance at both the other men, “I think we are in a position to speak with you—and your advisor—about a prolonged theatrical engagement.”

Ninette closed the door to the guest room quietly, but once alone, could hardly restrain her joy. “Thomas!” she whispered, taking a few dancing steps, then whirling around in a pirouette, “I am an
etoile!
I am a prima!
Prima ballerina assoluta!
Think of it! The production to be built around
me!
My own apartment and a maid! And fifty pounds a week!”

You should have gotten double that,
Thomas grumbled.

“That is more than La Augustine—”

“You told me, but I did not believe it, not really.” She sat down on the bed, and examined the hem of her gown with deep satisfaction. Lace three inches deep, and there would be more, many more, gowns like this to come. “I did not believe it until Nigel himself said it, and there were contract papers to sign.”

This will be hard work,
the cat warned.

“And what I have done up until now has not been?” She sniffed. “The difference between then and now will be that I will not have to rehearse on an empty stomach, nor go home to a garret with no heat.”

Well, take care that no one else ever hears you say that.
Thomas the cat paced up and down her rug, restlessly.
That Fire Master is altogether too sharp. Normally Fire Mages are the impulsive sort, ruled by their emotions. I suppose he must be the exception that proves the rule.

“He
is
very sharp,” she replied, sobering. “I will be careful around him. He frightens me.”