He slowed his approach. “Forgive me, but I simply don’t know what to make of you. I’ve never heard of anyone willing to take on the label of a dancer without any of the spoils of the trade.”

“I’ve never admitted it before.”

“But you practice.”

“Every day.”

“Hmm.” He shifted down onto his right knee, gaze still holding mine. “May I?”

I nodded, and he slipped the shoe onto my foot. Butterflies—oh, the butterflies. How beautifully that red slipper fit. It struck me again as his solid hands wound the laces, the small kindness wrapping itself around me.

I looked away. “Why must you stare? Haven’t you seen enough?”

“It’s just that . . . well, these do resemble a rather famous pair of slippers. One might wonder how you came to have them.”

“Oh?” I focused my gaze on the floor beside him. He knew these shoes, of course. He had to. They were legendary.

“I’m speaking of the missing ballet shoes of the extraordinary Delphine Besseau.” He watched my face.

“Oh.” I tried to act properly astonished, but he’d gotten it wrong. It was Bessette.

He looked at me as if I’d stolen them, which I hadn’t, thank you very much. Not exactly. Three weeks of extra wash I had done for the pleasure of having her slippers, my hands rubbed raw just so they could hold the gleaming satin shoes at last.

Mrs. Boffin, Craven’s laundress, had scrunched up her face as she handed them to me only an hour ago, jamming a hair cloth back over her wiry wisps. “What do you want these for, anyway?”

I paid the woman my extra wages to filch them from that old underground dressing room long since abandoned, since everyone seemed to have forgotten about them, so that made them more mine than anyone’s.

“Ain’t none of my nevermind, but you ain’t no dancer, Ella Blythe,” she’d declared. “You’re a regular churchgoer. A good girl, you are.”

Good, indeed.

Supremely good was precisely how I felt as I slipped my foot into that other shoe, heart beating the rhythm as if it was already inside me, tapping away. Was dancing truly so divorced from God that they could not both be woven tightly into the fabric of the same girl? Something inside me resonated so deeply with the immensity, the vibrant beauty, of both. I had quite a weakness for beauty. Such as this man—the sight of him pulled at the core of me.

He tied off the slipper and rose, gaze still searching. “Did you know, she died in a tragic gaslight fire in this very room, a dozen years ago or so.”

I knew.