I can get those. Leave it to me. You will have to find a place to hide them, though.
That was easy enough; it would be even easier once she had a private place of her own, but for now, thanks to any number of overheard conversations and the plots of any number of sensational operas and plays. “I will ask for a Bible and paste the papers inside the cover,” she said. The jewelry would probably escape notice. The marriage license, however, would give her age away. Fortunately dancers tended to look ageless so long as they did not put on weight. She should be able to pass, easily, for being ten years older than her real age. Old enough to be the real Russian dancer.
“How did you manage to talk to these men?” she asked, finally. “I thought you could only talk to me.”
The cat grew tense. That . . . is an excellent question.
She waited, but the cat remained silent. “Well you ought to answer it then,” she said impatiently.
I am thinking. The cat washed an ear with one paw. You believe in magic by now. Yes?
It was her turn to hesitate. Did she? Real magic, not stage magic? The thing of fairy tales? How else could she be talking to a cat?
“I . . . suppose . . .”
The two gentlemen that “rescued” you are magicians. That is why I can talk to them too. There is no need to go into much detail, but talking cats are the least of the astonishing things in their world.
She stared at the cat, who began washing his other ear. “But I’m not a magician!” she protested. “Am I?”
True, you are not. But your father was. He . . . charged me with taking care of you, you know. And some things, like being able to talk to magical creatures, come with the blood.
“But I never did before!” For some reason, she felt indignant, as if this sudden ability was an imposition. “Why is it that I have not been talking to magical creatures all my life?”
They would have had to be willing to show themselves and talk to you first. Could a cat smirk? It sounded like he was smirking. They don’t display themselves before just anyone. If you are a magician, you can coax or coerce them, but if all the power you have is to speak to them, they are likely to stay in hiding. Except for the ones you would not have wanted to see. Those, I kept away.
That gave her pause, and she bit back the irritated retort about snobbery she had been about to deliver. “There are bad creatures?”
So bad, you would have spent all your life in terror.
In that case she certainly did not want to see them. “So these men are magicians?” She thought about that. The cat certainly had known, well in advance, what he was doing. He’d gotten her onto the ferry, across the Channel,. And across England to this specific town. “Did you plan for this all along?”
I have planned for this for months, among other plans. The cat hesitated a moment. I have been planning for your future for most of your life. I had hoped you would become an etoile at the Paris Opera, but as that plan fell to pieces, this was my second. Clearly this one is riskier, resting as it does on deception, and my ability to cozen these magicians. If this had fallen to pieces, I had a third, and a fourth, although neither of those were as desirable, and they did not make as much use of your dancing. I am more familiar with Britain than I am with France, so when the first plan fell apart, it was here that we needed to come.
“Did you come to France with my father?” she asked, now very interested.
In a sense. That is not important now. I am engaged in a deception with these men. It will not hold forever. I am certain that at some point they will learn the truth, but at that point you will be their great star and it will not matter. They are showmen, first and foremost; it is the show that matters. Do you take my meaning?
Ninette nodded. That was always true to a greater or lesser extent in the theater. The great stars were as much publicity and showmanship as talent, with the exception, maybe, of amazing talents like the Divine Sarah Bernhardt and Eleanor Duse. Even then . . . would they have been quite so acclaimed if they had not been so eccentric?
“Do I need to be eccentric?” she asked.
Hmm. A good question. Let me think about that. The cat hunched down over his forepaws, eyes half closed. I think, eccentric in simplicity. Elegant simplicity, not all bare feet and scarves like Isadora. But we will have plenty of time to work on that. First, let me drill you on your mythical yacht-person.
Needless to say, Ninette knew nothing about yachts. But she did know a great deal about the rich old men in fur coats who would be expected to own a yacht. Together she and Thomas concocted a plausible story for the apocryphal Nikolas. He could not be too rich, or one would expect a hue and cry about his missing state. He could not be titled either, for the same reason. So it was to be a very small yacht, something a bourgeoisie merchant would have bought to impress young dancers and singers. And Nikolas would have been Nina’s friend, but not her particular friend. She would have been ready to accept favors, but not yet ready to let him into her bed.
Over the course of the day her two rescuers found many excuses to check on her progress. Soon, she was calling the two of them by their first names.
And the cat drilled her mercilessly on her story in between times. So when they finally asked her questions, she was able to weep and cry, “Poor Nikolas! Poor old man!” in a way that left no doubt in the minds of her benefactors that she had very little emotional investment in “Nikolas,” and that in all probability he had offered this trip in order to impress her enough that she would take him as her protector.
This cheered both of them up immensely, even as they tried to comfort the weeping “Nina.” This was understandable; a dead lover was a terrible complication, but she would probably be able to put Nikolas behind her in fairly short order if he was only a “friend” from whom she had perhaps accepted a few gifts.
In the late afternoon someone from the Royal Lifeboat Service arrived, resplendent in a uniform, to talk to her about the sinking. She almost panicked, but the cat soothed her, and quietly coached her on what to say. As she sat between her two benefactors, wrapped in an elegant dressing gown, the officer remained standing, looking acutely uncomfortable.
It was not difficult at all to seem upset, because she was upset, but her visible efforts to calm herself seemed to earn her some respect from the Lifesaving Officer.
“We are trying to learn where the ship might have gone down, miss,” the officer said in English.
She blinked at him. “My Eenglish, not so good,” she said, and gestured to him gracefully. “Parlez-vous francais?”
“I do,” Arthur spoke up, and turned to the officer. “I’ll be translating; sir, it’s not uncommon for Russians artists to know French, but not English.”
The officer grumbled a little about “foreigners,” but nodded. “All right then, how many were on this yacht?”
“Myself, and Nikolas, and five others,” she said carefully, coached by the cat. “It was a motor yacht. Two of the men took it in turns to steer it. There was one man who was Nikolas’ servant, and the other two did things, took care of the pretty boat, cooked, cleaned. Nikolas had just bought this yacht, and he did not know much about these things, I could tell, but he pretended that he did. I wanted to go to London, but he said, no, no, we must sail all around England that you can see all of it and then decide.”