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door and settle on the fringes of the room, washing Juliet away from Ruth. Victorine Vaillancourt entered arm in arm with Lily Bediant. Behind them came a woman who looked strangely like an older, taller, slightly distorted version of Elektra Andreades. Then a little crowd of dancers came in all at once, a knot of men and women including Elektra herself. A moment later, a tall, muscular young man with thick black hair and rough, handsome features entered and hurried after her.
    With a strong, surprisingly elegant hand, he caught at Elektra’s elbow and pulled her away from the little crowd she’d been with. The man’s eyebrows were very dark and the eyes they surmounted looked both angry and cold at once. He was a strikingly good-looking man—most of them were, come to that—but there was a ferociousness about him, a lack of ordinary, civilized restraint in his movements, that Juliet found disturbing. However, he did not seem to trouble Elektra. She regarded him with serene detachment as he raised one heavy eyebrow and said, quite audibly, “We have to talk.” Then she ignored him as he turned abruptly away and strode off toward one of the barres.
    â€œWho’s that?” Juliet asked Patrick, who had materialized by her side after enjoying a break of some two or three minutes, during most of which time he had attended to his own overflowing nose.
    â€œRyder Kensington. Mr. Elektra Andreades.”
    â€œThey’re married?”
    Patrick nodded.
    â€œIs he a principal?”
    He shook his head. “Never made it out of the corps. They were both in the corps when they married, I think. But Ruth likes him. She cast him as Magwitch. He’s quite good.”
    â€œI see,” Juliet said thoughtfully. “And who’s the woman who looks so much like Elektra Andreades?”
    â€œOlympia Andreades.” He smiled. “Elektra’s big sister.”
    â€œOh! Is she in the corps, too?”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œHmm.”
    Intrigued and a bit unsettled by the anger she had seen in his face, Juliet sought out Ryder Kensington again, locating him as he finally reached a corner at the farthest end of the room. Once there, he cleared a bit of a space and began to practice a powerful kind of leap Juliet could not name; it was short and quick and involved a little kick and turn before a landing on bent knee. Even from across the room, Juliet could see the thick, hard muscle tense on his thigh as he landed. His expression severe, he performed the maneuver perhaps half a dozen times before Ruth clapped and brought the room back to order. Uneasily, Juliet resumed her chair and prepared to observe for another hour.
    *   *   *
    Some ten minutes into the session, Gregory Fleetwood stole noiselessly into Studio Three. To Juliet’s surprise, he came directly to her, seated himself in the chair beside hers, put out his hand and, with a sort of noblesse oblige, murmured his name.
    â€œJuliet Bodine,” she whispered back. After a moment of inward debate, “We’ve met,” she added.
    Fleetwood’s thin, angled eyebrows shot up skeptically, but the rest of his aristocratic features gathered in an expression that implied the mere possibility delighted him. Before Max Devijian managed to sign him on as the Jansch’s artistic director, Gregory Fleetwood had danced with most major American companies and quite a few European ones. Even now, in his early fifties, he carried with him a powerful aura of artistic authority. He was tall, with sharp, hawklike features and an arrogant bearing that trumped even the accomplished arrogance of the company’s foremost current performers. As the new artistic director, he had torn into the Jansch, sweeping away every vestige of quaintness and signing up principals from leading companies all over the world. While maintaining the traditional repertory, he invited contemporary composers and cutting-edge