Tina Connolly - Copperhead

“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.

“You,” she said, and stared, agape.

“You,” he agreed, studying her in return.

He was indeed just her height—and she was not tall—but lithe, as if he were a professional dancer or acrobat. His clothes were similar to yesterday’s—fitted, trim, nondescript—the sort of clothes she had identified as being for a quick getaway. His hair was ruddy-brown and his eyes flashed with light. Even in the gay room of actors and singers in bright colors he seemed like something wilder, something more real and alive. “Who on earth are you?”

“Who wants to know?”

A bit of temper flashed at his evasions. “After that uninvited dance, I think I have the right to know.”

“You didn’t seem to mind the dance while dancing.”

“My husband might mind,” she said, trying to squash him.