Page 38 of Reverence

Damn, the phone call! And Helena.

For someone priding herself on being an intelligent woman, Juliette wanted to roll her eyes at her own blind spot.

“Helena will not be calling again.”

The words fell out of her mouth before she realized that this was perhaps neither the time nor the place. The resulting glare from Katarina was utterly predictable. Maybe she had imagined the moment after all? Although this much anger over a phone call? Surely?—

“I do not care about your escapades, Mademoiselle Lucian-Sorel. You are notorious for them. In fact, one of them is standing not ten feet away, showing off an impressive arsenal of curses for which her mother should probably wash her mouth with soap?—”

“Vyatka, you prude, for your information I learned all of these from my sainted mother and she’d be so very proud of me. You, on the other hand, kept silent for a month and I liked you more then. Juliette, if you can get your longing and pining out of the way, I’d appreciate you leading the dress rehearsal in twenty minutes. Now both of you can get ready in your own dressing rooms. Juliette, try the other tutu when you get there. As for me, I need to murder Madame Rochefort and I’d like no witnesses to my crime. Scram.”

Juliette blushed at Francesca’s offhand remark about her yearning and kept her head down as she pulled the large canvas bag with her shoes from her cubby hole and exited the room, studiously avoiding everyone’s eyes. Could Francesca embarrass her more?

Madame Rochefort was the only one she said goodbye to, receiving a rather sympathetic look in return.

Oh great, even the resident bog witch pities me.

Were all her emotions really written on her face? Katarina would probably be wise to avoid her since apparently Juliette was a lovesick fool. Absolutely unacceptable. Maybe if she herself stayed away for a bit, their pas de deux notwithstanding, she’d gain back either her wits, her dignity, or some semblance of control over her facial expressions.

As she took the stairs all the way down to the bowels of Garnier, where the dressing room she used on performance days was located, Katarina did not seem to have gotten the memo. The one about Juliette yearning. Back to the door and black pointe shoes on, she seemed to have beaten Juliette to her own dressing room. Why would she even be here in the first place?

“Ah, why—” Juliette was about to ask her that very question when Michel bellowed—again, why was everyone yelling at each other today?—that Gabriel was looking for her.

Katarina glared at Michel, murmured something decidedly profane in Russian, but otherwise did not move from the door to the dressing room.

“Um, I need to go see why Gabriel needs me,” Juliette whispered, starting to feel like Alice once she stepped through the looking glass. The entire situation was now taking a turn toward the bizarre.

“I’ll come with you.”

Juliette knew her eyebrows had climbed perilously close to her hairline, and she wished, as she often did, for the ability to raise a single one. That was such an expressive gesture. And just as the thought popped in her mind, Katarina proceeded to do just that, one perfectly manicured dark blonde eyebrow lifting regally up, giving Juliette a decidedly “move” command only an empress could impart without a word.

She shrugged, more for form than anything else, since shaking Katarina off clearly wasn’t an option. Katarina who, a few minutes ago, wouldn’t even look at her and now seemed glued to her side.

Gabriel was in his dressing room, which was usual. And he was wrecked by pre-dress-rehearsal panic. Which was par for the course as well.

“I am the worst dancer in the world, Jett! This will be awful. They will boo us off the stage. I’ll be fired and never get another principal job anywhere in the world!” His eyes were brimming with tears.

Okay, so this was quite a few notches worse than Gabriel’s norm. Was he really that affected by his first-ever negative reviews? Her own introductory one dated to two years ago and the callus that had formed over her heart was thick, yet even that very callus periodically had scabs torn off it and bled.

So, Juliette understood him. And because she loved him, and he was her only true friend in this city that was quickly turninghostile and nothing like the home they both adored, she lifted on her tiptoes and hugged him. Their usual peck on the lips should have followed, yet he grimaced slightly at the last moment and gave her cheek a chaste kiss.

“We have an audience, my heart. And I refuse to share our love with others.” He booped her nose, the gesture allowing him to duck the light slap he knew was incoming at any suggestion that the two of them were an item.

“Ass.” She shook her head at his antics, but her presence, and even that of the silent sentinel that was Katarina, quietly observing the two of them from the doorway, appeared to have lifted his spirit somewhat.

“Is your crisis of confidence over, Gabe?”

He nodded then leaned down and drew her in another long hug, rocking slowly side to side.

“Yes, darlin’, thank you. I will see you on stage.”

The day spun away from there. Everyone seemed to need her. Francesca for last-minute tweaks, Monsieur Lenoir for his usual double-check of the timing of her entrances, Monique saccharinely wishing her a successful dress rehearsal.

If one more person talked to her, Juliette felt she would just have to start pushing them out of her way. Or Katarina might, because for some incomprehensible reason, she had not stepped away from Juliette since intercepting her after the shoe room exit.

Even surrounded by people, well-wishers, ill-wishers, in-between-wishers, Katarina was at her side, never straying too far away. Though when Juliette tried to initiate a conversation, she couldn’t get very far.

“Ah, I thought we could talk about what happened last night?” Juliette knew she sounded breathy and tentative and tried not to get mad at her own insecurity around this woman. She was Juliette Lucian-Sorel, and she was about to lead theParis Opera Ballet into its revolutionary rendition ofSwan Lake, which would break records or break careers. And yet, here she was stuttering in front of a beautiful woman. A beautiful woman she had almost kissed the night before. A beautiful woman who maybe, possibly, probably almost kissed her back?

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