Page 20 of Our Strange Duet

I nodded.

She squinted, as if picturing me onstage in a spotlight instead of in a line of ballerinas. “I can see that.”

My heart warmed, inordinately touched by her unearned confidence. “You think so?”

Meg smiled. “But I wish you’d skip your coaching tonight.” She took my hand in hers, lacing our fingers together. “I really do miss you, Christine.”

“And I miss you,” I swore, squeezing back. This was the moment I knew I should suggest some other outing on some other night, but I couldn’t. I’d made a promise, a holy vow as real as a nun’s, to my Angel, and I intended to keep it. “Tell me all about everything tomorrow. At group stretch?”

With a final nod, she wished me good night and bounded off.

When I reached my dressing room, I could instantly tell something was different. Something had changed. It took only a quick scan to spot the item perched upon the piano lid.

Curious, I picked it up.

It was a rose, blooming with an extravagance of velvety petals so vividly red they seemed obscene.

I glanced toward the hall behind me, wondering who might have left it and why, but all was quiet in my little corner of the theatre. I shut the door before lifting the rose to breathe in its scent. Its sweetness went straight to my head, and I absently brushed the bloom over my lips, pressing a kiss to its softness. It was foolish, a silly thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself.

After Father died, my own shroud wafted over every aspect of my life. Everything turned flat and gray and ugly, tasteless and tepid. I dutifully went with the Girys to class after class, only stopping for a few hours of exhausted slumber, and then I’d wake and start the whole process again. Even after securing a position within the corps and having the money to rent a little apartment for myself, my days played out in similar cycles. So much energy was spent trying to survive I was left with little opportunity for anything else.

But I wasn’t immune to wondering.

During a production of Henry VIII, my attention caught on a young man in the front row. There had been something about him—his twinkling eyes, the sharp line of his jaw, the elegantly careless way he wore his tuxedo—that grabbed hold of my imagination. The handsome stranger filled my thoughts for weeks after. I let romantic—and increasingly fevered—scenarios play throughout my daydreams. I pictured us having grassy picnics at the Square du Vert-Galant, window-shopping along the Rue de la Paix while I slipped a daring hand along his forearm. There were cozy dinners in little restaurants, our table lit by a single candle. Sudden rainstorms that would send us running for secluded shelter. We’d arrive under a striped awning, giddy and breathless with laughter, and he’d offer me his coat, then push me against the brick wall and bring his lips to mine, kissing me with a passion too strong to be held in ch—

“Are you familiar with that rose?”

I startled at the Angel’s voice, feeling a mixture of guilty embarrassment and joyful exhilaration.

It had been seven torturous days since we last spoke.

“You’ve come!”

“Of course,” he said, with no mention of what had kept him away, no apologies or requests for forgiveness. He already knew I’d grant him anything. “Rosa Joséphine,” he went on, returning my attention to the flower. “Do you know it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“There’s a wonderful story behind its existence. A love story…as it so often goes.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that.

“You know, of course, of Empress Joséphine and her great fondness for both roses and her husband, Napoleon Bonaparte.”

Unable to recall any of the specifics, I said nothing and let him continue.

“Shortly after they’d married, Napoleon went off to fight in Egypt, and Joséphine bought a manor here in Paris—the Château de Malmaison. Napoleon was furious when he returned. The house was falling apart and needed extensive renovations, but Joséphine loved it. She oversaw its repairs and filled the grounds with gardens and heated nurseries for her roses.”

“Like this?” I asked, holding out the blossom.

“And many others. She filled the grounds with new varieties from all around the world and, on occasion, would create hybrids, mixing the pollens of two strains to make something wholly new and wonderful. While Napoleon was away, she set out to make a rose as deep as her love for him and created that…the Rosa Joséphine.”

I breathed in the heady fragrance appreciatively. “It’s one of the loveliest roses I’ve ever seen.”

Somehow, I felt his smile. “Before he returned, she commissioned an artist to sculpt a set of figures locked in a most passionate embrace—Eros and Psyche—then surrounded them with her new roses to show Napoleon how special the estate could become.”

“Eros was the god of love, in Greek mythology, wasn’t he?”

“God of desire.”