Copperhead

Chapter 6 DANCING BACKWARDS

Helen tugged at the trolley doors, certain she should get back out and do something, although she did not know what. But the steel would not budge, and the conductor hurried over and said firmly, “Miss, stop, stop.”

Through the greasy trolley windows she could see that the blue had died away, leaving only a small figure, still and silent upon the ground. The overcoated men were picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, hurriedly backing away from the scene of the accident. The explosion seemed to have been contained by the whirlwind of blue fey that brought it. No one else was hurt. But oh, that poor young man …

“Please sit down, miss. The trolley is starting.”

From a distance she saw someone running. The trolley jerked under her feet, and through the tears standing in her eyes she saw a slight black-clad figure leap over a fence, running toward the man.

Him. The man she had seen twice now—at the Grimsbys’ and on the trolley.

What was he doing here?

As he reached the crumpled form of the dwarvven, he looked at the trolley, and their eyes met. She was sure of it. Just for a second, and then they were pulling away, and she could no longer see anything clearly through the trolley window.

Helen opted for a long bath instead of Painted Ladies Ahoy! She washed her hair thoroughly, trying to scrub out the imaginary scent of blood and smoke and fey. There was no return telegram from Mr. Rochart yet. And Alistair had not come back—he was probably out with Grimsby, hearing that his wife had been gallivanting around town today. She sank under the water, eyes closed, and wished she could just stay there.

But she couldn’t hold her breath forever. She climbed out and got into her mint green bathrobe and snuggled into her pink chair in front of the fireplace in her rooms. Mary had gotten it well and thoroughly going, and set out more chocolate, and some buttered toast, and a little vase with a red-leafed maple twig. Helen tossed the twig into the fireplace without a second thought.

There was a fashion magazine on the table (SKIRTS! FROM VAREE! it exclaimed) and Helen reached for it to complete her evening of sitting and drinking chocolate and forgetting about everything else (she was going to help Tam tomorrow, surely that was enough?) but instead her treacherous fingers picked up the faded leather journal, and her notepad and pencil, and then there she was, settling in for an evening of work.

“Bah,” muttered Helen. Apparently she was going to see whom she could win over next, now that she had convinced Mrs. Smith. Her mind leapt back to Jane, and, sidetracked, she thought perhaps she should investigate what Mrs. Smith had said about the dwarvven. If Copperhead was anti-dwarvven, then perhaps dwarvven were anti-Copperhead? They had infiltrated a meeting, unbeknownst to anyone. Sure, okay. And then ransacked Jane’s flat … why?

She tapped the pencil against her chin. Start over. Millicent was stuck in fey sleep and Jane was gone, but what if both things were an accident? What if someone had been trying to stop Millicent from running away, and ended up kidnapping Jane so she wouldn’t tell anyone? But no, Millicent hadn’t decided to run until Jane talked her into it. Scratch that. She rolled the pencil back and forth. What if it was an accident in a different way? Grimsby had surely not expected that showing off his toy would end in a disaster of that magnitude—surging the lights and so on. Perhaps his machine had been sabotaged. By the dwarvven? Again, why? And if whoever sabotaged the machine knew what effects it would have … well, Jane was anti-fey, but not anti-dwarvven. Jane was notoriously not aligned with Copperhead. And who knew that Jane was going to be in the garret doing a facelift that night? Only Helen, and though she was flaky and flighty, she knew she had not told.

Helen sighed and dropped the pencil into her lap. She could not make it make sense.

She went back to the notes she had made earlier, looking through the list of eighteen women Jane had tried and failed to convince. She had reread about half of them when a niggling thought in the back of her mind forced its way out. “Alberta,” she said out loud, and peered at the short list again. Yes. Alberta was on it, right at the top, and halfway down there was a Betty.

Helen flipped back to the journal, to the long list of 99 women that started the book. Down at number 73 she saw Desirée.

“Bah,” Helen said again, and pulled out Frye’s bright orange missive from that morning to check. Those were the names in her PS: Alberta, Betty, and Desirée.

Helen stood, putting down her chocolate and kicking off her slippers. “Oh, bother, here we go,” she muttered, and found herself dressing for a party and heading out the front door.

Frye’s house was not at all like any of the other society houses she’d been to. And of course not; Frye was not exactly high society. Yet she was clearly educated and well-spoken, she had some money—oh, artists were hard to classify. She lived in a medium-sized brick house on a row of other brick houses. But inside, every square inch was covered with artwork and memorabilia. Helen moved down the hallway, looking at the framed sheets of music, signed by their composers; lush oils, charcoal sketches, dashed-off nudes. She thought that Jane should be the one to be here; she would appreciate it. But then, this woman knew Jane, didn’t she? Perhaps Jane had already seen this bounty of art.

The hall began to curve around a central staircase, and the wall decor turned from art to theatre memorabilia. Posters from shows, some framed, some not, some torn, some signed, all the way from cheap printings to elaborate productions with color painted onto them. Some of the newest ones had STARRING MISS EGLANTINE FRYE in bold letters on them. Interspersed were curio shelves with gloves and cups and beads and a wide variety of oddities that Helen could only assume were props, mementos. Behind it all was intricate wallpaper, the pattern of which changed every time it had the slightest excuse of a corner or chair rail.

The wood floors were covered with long runners of carpets in exotic patterns. Flowers bloomed in profusion; birds darted in between them. Helen got so caught up in trying to decide whether there was a pattern to the birds that she only belatedly realized she was still hanging around the hallway, and piano music was banging away at a distance, somewhere else in the house.

Her spirits began to rise with the prospect of dancing. It was emphatically not what she was here for. She was here to talk to Frye, to find those other three women that Frye had lured her here for, to convince them all to see the light, to come to Jane. To find out if they knew anything about Jane. She had done it this afternoon; she could do it again.

But, oh, the dance. Oh, how she missed the dance.

Helen followed the curve in the hallway and there in a burst of light was the party. It was a small room, too small for the number of laughing bodies that filled it. But it was gold and warm and glittering with strings of that yellow electric light. The heady smell of burning clove cigarettes drifted out, and from somewhere else, almonds. The music came from a battered upright piano in the back corner—a long-legged man in fitted sweater and wide slacks thumped out a riotous tune, and three young women in variously scarlet red, bright orange, and deep purple dresses sang with him. The one in bright orange was perched on top of the piano and was dark-skinned, slim, and so lovely that even Helen did a double take.

Well, she’d found one of the women, she thought dryly.

Chairs and stools were pushed back against the wall and in the middle, a messy glut of couples and singles danced the very latest dances, wild affairs with kicks and elbows and enthusiasm. A smile began to curve up Helen’s face. She had not seen these dances since the days at the tenpence music hall. Heaven knows they did not do them in Alistair’s house, or any of the other places she went.

A hand grabbed hers and suddenly she was in the dance, despite all her good intentions to stay on task. A good-looking chap with a riot of curls swung her in and out, and she dredged up old memories from seven months ago to keep pace with him, glad that seven months ago was not hopelessly out of date, that she was somewhat still au courant.

The piano thumped to a stop, and the curly-haired chap beckoned an invitation for the next, eyes sparkling, but she demurred, smiling at him, and threaded her way through the dancers to the doorway. The party spilled out into the next small room, and then to the balcony after that, where French doors stood ajar and brought in welcome relief. She was pleased to see that the time she had spent at her wardrobe attempting to figure out exactly what you wore to an actor’s aftershow party was not in vain; many of the girls were wearing the more up-to-the-minute higher waists and wide shoulders of her own seafoam silk. Some outfits were more daring, and some simply fit no scene that she knew at all, and she particularly studied those girls, watching to see where creativity had hit on something new and desirable.

She fetched up against a trio of giggling girls whose combination of baby fat and gangle marked them as probably too young to be here. She wondered if they were actors, too; she wondered if she had ever been that young. Behind them, a woman in an atrocious purple dress made of scraps of silk and what looked like faux fur looked out an open window into the night. She turned at Helen’s approach, and the perfection of her heart-shaped face made Helen instantly sure she had found a comrade.

You didn’t just ask, though.

“Breath of air?” she said to the wistful-looking girl.

“Bit stuffy, ain’t it?” the girl said. “It was hot in the theatre tonight, too.” She fanned herself with a discarded playbill and wafted over a cloud of rose perfume. It was the same expensive scent as Calendula Smith’s, which was both amusing and informational. This girl must have a benefactor.

“Are you an actor?” said Helen. She wondered if the girl had chosen the face for the same reason as Frye, to advance her career. But the girl’s dreadful accent would probably hold her back, she thought. Frye could switch in and out of beautiful diction at will, apparently, and Helen had paid attention to her own when she first started working as a governess, trying to eradicate any country from it. This girl sounded as though she had marbles in her mouth.

“No,” the girl said wistfully. “I’m just a dresser for Ruth.” The way she said Ruth made it sound like it was someone Helen should know. “It’s a good job and I’ve met a nice man from it but it ain’t exactly like being onstage now is it?” She crossed her long legs and it seemed to Helen that the “nice man” must be the someone who had paid for her face and scent, for surely this girl with the terrible accent had no connections or money of her own.

“I’m Helen,” she said.

“Betty,” the girl said, confirming Helen’s hunch that she was one of the three she was supposed to meet. “You been in a show with Frye?” Dull envy flashed in her eyes.

“No, we just met last night,” Helen said.

“Oh,” said Betty. “Seems like you could be. I thought this would do it,” and she gestured at the perfect face, “but seems not. Do you think the producers want something else besides face and body? ’Cause I don’t know what else I got.” Her forehead furrowed prettily. “You are like me, ain’t you?”

“Yes,” said Helen. “We are alike.” Betty nodded, and Helen followed up that line of persuasion, adding, “I often feel it didn’t really change anything inside. Do you feel that?”

This philosophical statement seemed to go over Betty’s head. “Inside? I still have the same body, I suppose. I was asleep for the part where the man did it. I was so scared when he knocked me out.”

Helen seized on this admission. “I was scared, too,” she said. “And now when I go outside, because of the fey.”

That was it. Betty’s eyes grew wide and she said, “I didn’t know there was gonna be all this fey everywhere. I have to wear my iron mask every time I leave the theatre or Richard’s flat, and Richard, that’s my man you know, he says what did he do it for if I can’t be seen, but he don’t know what it’s like to know there’s blue devils waiting to get into your bones. I don’t think a man really can know, do you?”

“No,” said Helen fervently. “Look, my sister, Jane, is helping people change back. I think you should let her help you.”

Wide eyes again, looking to Helen for help. “Do you really think I should? She scared me a bit, she was so determined I should do what she said. I don’t like being afraid, it’s just the worst feeling, worse than auditioning where your throat dries up and so on.”

“I think you should change back,” Helen said gently. “I think we all should. What about Ruth? Is she nice?”

Betty nodded emphatically. “For all she’s Ruth, she’s nicer to me even than me mum.”

“Stay with Ruth and be her dresser always. You don’t want to be onstage anyway, because it’s frightening up there. If you want to move on from dressing you should try to work up to being—” and Helen seized on what she could intuit from Betty’s dress— “a costumer. You’d be an important part of the theatre without having to be afraid.”

“Do you really think so?” said Betty. It was amazing what a smile could do for even a phenomenally pretty face. “I designed this dress even, did you have any idea?”

“Not at all,” lied Helen, “and it’s stunning. Look, I have to say hello to Frye, but as soon as my sister gets back into town we’ll set you up and she’ll get you fixed back. Is it a deal?”

Betty put out her hand, then withdrew. “Does it cost? I hate to ask Richard for yet more.”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Helen.

Betty grinned, and you could suddenly see the down-home city girl inside the fey beauty. “I’ll make you a dress of your own to thank you. You and your sister.”

Helen tried not to look startled. “That’s very kind of you, Betty. Thank you.”

“I’m gonna go tell Ruth I’ll be her dresser always,” Betty said. “Excuse me.” She slipped off her stool, her slit skirt displaying her long legs as she crossed the room.

Helen turned away from the window, pleased. One down, and sneaking out for the evening was already proving worthwhile.

Through the doorway to the piano room she saw Frye, and she decided to brave the crowd again, circling around the crush of dancers, around the outskirts of the packed room. The current dance was a complicated and lively one that Helen did not know. She watched the patterns as she threaded her way through a waft of clove-drenched smoke, filing it away in the hope that someday she would get to dance it. She watched everyone’s feet so carefully that she almost got whacked three separate times by elbows.

The piano finished with a flourish, the singers laughed and bowed to applause, and someone shouted, “Too easy! Try harder!”

“The Shadow?” shouted back the pianist. “Change partners, everyone!” Shouts and cheers, and he plunged into the prelude of a familiar and intricate melody that went with a dance that was a mind-bending cross between a formal waltz and a risqué tango.

All around her men and women released hands and found new ones, and Helen got pushed inside the dance floor. She pushed down the want and tried to slither away, eluding eyebrow-raised offers, outstretched hands.

The dance proper started and the music all came back to her now, filled her from head to toe like a plucked violin string and she hummed along, remembering a night she had danced it with Alistair in the tenpence ballroom. Why did he not dance these dances in high society? He knew them. She kept going, avoiding the glides of the couples as they spun around for the back-to-front portion of the dance, where you did not look at your partner but let him guide you. If your partner was good, it was tremendous. Alistair had never been good.

She was nearly out of the crowd when a hand slid behind her at a precise turn in the music, memory made flesh. One hand at her waist, one at the hand, its fingers firmly wrapping around her palm, and then her feet were moving through the familiar steps before she was fully aware of it. It had happened so like a dream that she had given in to that ache without realizing; she was dancing in reality before she knew it.

She laughed with a moment of pure joy at the audacity of the young man who held her. “Who is this?” she said.

“We have never been formally introduced,” he said, his breath warm on her ear, “yet I have seen you more than once.”

If that was true then it was a puzzle; for Helen could not think who of her set might have overlap with Frye’s acquaintance. They turned and turned, and her feet moved with the joy of the music as she pondered. His hands were neither rough nor soft—lean and callused, hands that did things. A hint of something musky, like sandalwood, lingered in the air as they turned. Someone artsy, someone bohemian, someone not stuffy. That ruled out nearly everyone, she thought cynically.

But be fair, Helen. Not everyone was bland and insipid, just because Alistair was so obsessed with status. She could figure this man out. She could tell from the way he held her that he was not tall—perhaps just her height. That ought to narrow it down and yet she still could not think who it might be. He held her waist lightly; she could turn at any time, and yet she did not. It amused her to play his guessing game.

“Lionel Winterstock,” Helen said, naming a wealthy young man who wrote a lot of bad poetry and might think it exciting to know a bohemian slacks-wearing actress. “No—Georgie Pennyfeather.” True, Pennyweather’s rebellion had only extended so far as once upon a time thinking about running away to the Faraway East, but then deciding better of it—but he was short.

“Nothing so grand. Close your eyes.”

She did, and he spun her out, and in, somehow avoiding the other spinning couples that clustered the floor. Helen was a good dancer, but he, perhaps, was better. Or perhaps just exceptionally good at partnering. The subtle cues from his fingertips directed her safely away from him and back, even with her eyes closed.

“There. We’re safe now. Continue your guessing game.”

“Let’s see,” said Helen. She watched the eyes of the other couples as they danced for a clue. How did they look at her, at her partner? Smiles, grins, perhaps a touch of envy from a young woman or two. No surprise at seeing him, though, so he was part of this set, and known. “Are you an actor? No, wait. How did you meet Frye?” That would cover more information.

“Not onstage,” he said, “though she did a remarkable Vera Velda on the Feathertoad stage last season. I may have been in the audience, just passing through. I may even have rushed up to her afterwards with an armful of roses gathered from every twopenny flowergirl in the street, laid them at her feet like some demented thing.” His touch was so delicate, so fine, she fancied she could feel the amused, rueful twinge slide along his bones. “She let me down easy.”

“Kind of her,” said Helen.

“My turn,” he said. “What kind of game are you playing?”

It was said lightly, yet she tensed under his fingers.

“Easy, easy,” he said. “A simple question.”

“I have no game,” she said tightly.

“A woman of mystery, then,” he said. “Who turns up in surprising places. I expect next I’ll see you in the dwarvven slums, dancing around the statue of Queen Maud.”

Dwarvven, not dwarf. Not a member of Copperhead, though that was unlikely from the mere fact that he was here. His hands were on hers and he was silent. She said brightly back, “All right then, why do you come? Clearly not to show off your limited dancing prowess.” A weak jab for such a clever dancer, but damned if she was going to let him sail by on that charm alone.

“And I thought I was making such headway, too,” he complained. “Eyes.”

“This is the last time,” she warned, but she obeyed and felt him guide her through the spin. “And you haven’t answered my question.”

“Professional curiosity,” he said lightly. “Final pattern. Want to try it?”

Laughing, she extended her arm for the last bit. If he thought he could do it backwards she wouldn’t be the one to fail. They spun in, out, feet tripped the fast bit at the end, and finished in the lift. Except there he finally did stumble against another couple, and they landed with a thud. Helen was grinning as she straightened up. “Now I know it’s Lionel,” she said. “No one else would dare.”

“It is not,” he said, laughter in his voice.

Helen wheeled to find herself in the arms of the young man she had seen three times before—at the Grimsbys’, on the trolley, and near the fey attack.