Midnight in Everwood(3)
Chapter Two
Though the hour had yet to descend into evening, the late November afternoon was ink-dark and thick with gloom. Streetlamps shone through the rain, a line of beacons that the horses followed, whisking Marietta to her ballet class in the Stelle family carriage. Thunder rolled through distant skies and cafés blazed with light and the promise of warmth as passers-by rushed inside.
Beside Marietta, Miss Worthers pursed her lips. ‘Such terrible weather in which to be gallivanting about the city. Still, we might as well use our time wisely. Shall we go over the approved talking points for your next conversation with Lord Compton? Your mother has already drawn up a list.’
Marietta turned her attention to the carriage window. ‘I would rather not.’ They were passing through Old Market Square, which was bustling with preparations for the annual Christmas market, large crates unboxed to reveal glimpses of gingerbread and glass baubles. Marietta hoped the rain would freeze into snow in time for its grand opening. She heard Miss Worther’s disproving sniff and awaited the inevitable diatribe. Her former governess turned paid companion was under the employ of her father and she had no doubt the beady-eyed woman was reporting back a log of her activities until she was safely married off. In the meantime, Marietta was forced to endure her suffocating presence like a second corset.
‘I implore you to consider the consequences of your actions,’ Miss Worthers chided. ‘It is most unbecoming at your age to demonstrate such disagreeability.’
‘I am beginning to suspect that the term unbecoming is used whenever one is met with a difference in opinion,’ Marietta said wryly. Before her chaperone could voice another criticism, before the horses had halted, Marietta opened the carriage door and jumped down. Ducking under the brim of her hat, she lifted her high-waisted skirt up over her laced boots, and dashed in through the door marking the entrance to the ballet studio. She felt Miss Worther’s stare score her back. When the carriage clattered up a narrow side street to lie in wait for her class to finish, Marietta sighed in relief as she hurried up a steep flight of stairs and into the safety of the dressing room, where she slipped into her softer dancing dress and ballet slippers.
Marietta was the first one in the studio. Warming up, she eased into lower and deeper stretches, cajoling her muscles after the damp and cold that had permeated her bones. Water ran in rivulets down the large windows on each side of the studio. It was perched atop the building, up another steep flight of stairs, an eyrie overlooking Goose Gate. The studio was a blank canvas. Pale wooden floors and mirrored walls waiting to be painted in music and life. Two long barres were fixed beneath the windows on each side and a small worn piano was set next to the door.
Inside the townhouse, Marietta’s feelings were tightly corseted, but here that corset had been shucked off and she had escaped any watchful eyes. She leapt across the studio in a series of grand jetés, luxuriating in her freedom. As she performed a series of tight spins, twirling down the centre of the studio, her frustrations floated away as she felt the weight of expectation vanish until there was nothing but her and her dancing. She whipped a leg up high behind her in a penché, the vertical split a triumphant finish. But she was no longer alone.
Her ballet mistress glided into the studio, her spine as straight and unyielding as the starched collars returned from the Stelle launderer, despite the antique silver-plated cane she used. Olga Belinskaya had been born in St Petersburg in the early nineteenth century and was a former Imperial ballerina at the Maryinsky Theatre. She oozed glamour and refinement in a pastel chiffon gown, each step, each movement considered and elegant. Few lines dared creep across her classic Slavic features, her green eyes sharp and framed with false eyelashes, her silver hair pinned in a bun, shrouded by an emerald silk scarf.
‘Pozhaluysta,’ she said, sweeping a hand out. Marietta caught a flash of the sapphire cocktail ring rumoured to have been gifted to her by one of the tsarevnas after an exquisite performance of the pas de deux in the second act of Giselle had brought the young princess to tears. ‘Continue.’
‘I have finished.’ Marietta swept a hand over her forehead. ‘I wouldn’t wish to intrude on class time.’ She might be The Honourable Marietta Stelle, but in this studio Olga was of higher rank.
Olga struck the floor with her cane. ‘You are in my studio, devushka; it is in my purview to decide when the class begins. Show me the Rose Adagio.’
Marietta swallowed her protests; Olga was authoritarian in her teaching, and if anyone disobeyed, the following class would hold an empty space at the barre. She stepped into the allegro entrance. One of the most technically challenging pieces in ballet and pinnacle of the role of Aurora she had been cast in for their upcoming performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, she was unused to performing it as a solitary adaptation, striking high balances en pointe.
‘Pay attention to the shape of your arms; remember, dancing is in the details. Register the music and respond accordingly.’
There was no music playing but as Marietta spun slowly in place, keeping the arch of her back taut, she imagined the sweet strains swelling and spilling out into the studio. Ballet was the golden key to a world of her own, one which she never desired to leave. She pirouetted, lost within that world, spinning out into a high arabesque, when she became aware that the door was cluttered with onlookers; the rest of the class had arrived.