Assuming she didn’t lose in round one. Which, if Gwen let herself think about it at all, seemed all too likely.

Isobelle took her hand and sat her down along the edge of the room as Gwen became aware of a voice shouting, slightly distorted by the echoes of the vast space.

“They will step on your toes!” the voice snapped in a noticeably French accent. “They will bumble about, sweaty-palmed, too close, with the grace and elegance of newborn foals.”

The owner of the voice was a wiry woman whose obvious athleticism and angular features made it impossible to place her age any more accurately than somewhere between forty and sixty. Her brown skin was barely lined, but her hair was a luminous silver. She was stomping up and down between two rows of twelve girls, carrying a cane she used to thump on the marble floor to accentuate her words.

“You must be ready!” she shouted, paying no attention to the two new arrivals now perched at the edge of the room, watching. “You must guide them without seeming to guide, for they must believe they are in control. You must protect your precious feet without appearing to wince. You must be ever prepared!”

“Yes, Madame Dupont!” the two dozen girls chanted in unison, each staring straight ahead like military recruits.

“Sophie!” Madame Dupont whirled and pointed her stick toward a younger girl with auburn hair and liquid eyes. “What do you do if his sweaty hand starts to slide down your back, inexorably lower?”

The girl went even straighter, barking her reply instantly. “I giggle! ‘Oh, sir, we will be seen,’ I say breathily! I blush and look distressed!”

Madame Dupont turned again, choosing a new target among her charges. “Arabella,” she snapped, “what do you do if you encounter a toe-stomper?”

“I am nimble, madame!” Arabella replied, folding her hands behind her back and lifting her chin. “If he cannot be stopped, I pretend I am faint!”

Madame Dupont reached the end of the formation and turned once more, resting the cane against the floor and folding her hands across the stone at its top. She gazed at them, twenty-four girls all holding their breath at once.

Then Madame Dupont shook her head. “You are not ready yet. But you will be. Clarissa, Joriana, I will know if you haven’t practiced your footwork next week. Now, filez! Off with you all!” She thumped the cane against the floor. “And you, Mistress Hobbes, merci.”