Free Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune by Kate Griffin Page A

neckline.
    ‘You are beautiful, Joseph,’ I whispered. ‘You always have been and you always will be.’
    I felt a huge shudder go through my brother’s body. He kissed my right cheek and then my left and then took a step back and held me away from him a little way.
    ‘Thank you.’ He couldn’t quite say the words aloud, so he mouthed them and blinked hard as more tears threatened to ruin his makeup. Then he pulled me tight against him and murmured into my ear.
    ‘Josette, that’s what my friends call me here.’
    I nodded. ‘I already know that. It’s a pretty name.’
    As we stood there locked together I was dimly aware of a great sound crashing around us. It wasn’t the end of the world or anything biblically judgemental, it was the sound of whoops and cheers and applause.
    *
    I liked Joey’s – rather, Josette’s – friends.
    Upwards of twenty of them were gathered round the table that night, mostly French, but I was introduced to a couple of English lads who were nearly as pretty as my brother, a striking Spaniard who sang for us with such sweet sadness that she (he) would have been an asset to any of my theatrical establishments (the punters always liked a bit of misery, ’specially if it was foreign and came with a good pair of ankles), and a little party from the East.
    Two of them were dressed as girls and two of them were dressed as men, but according to Joey, they were all male and all Russian, and they were nearly all dancers from The Moika.
    It was the second winter The Ballet Moika had come to Paris. The performers – the male and properly female ones – were, according to Joey, the toast of the city. Half the Imperial court had followed them and the locals had gone wild for ‘ le style russe ’, wrapping their heads in jewelled turbans and paying over the odds for cobble-dusting furs. Apparently there was a particular fashion for emeralds among the noble Russian ladies and now the women of Paris were draping themselves with rivers of stones to keep up with them.
    Joey reckoned the hock shops over on rue des Rosiers had never done such trade seeing as every woman of taste was prepared to pawn her grandmother’s jewels – and quite possible the old girl along with them – in order to wrap a string of emeralds round her neck.
    ‘They are striking, don’t you think?’ Joey reached for his glass.
    I laughed. ‘Emeralds? I’ve never given it much thought. You don’t see many in Limehouse, that’s for certain. Do you remember Ma’s pearls? She used to let me wear them in Church Row, but they went missing—’
    I stopped myself. Ma’s pearls had gone missing around the same time as Joey. I likely knew what had happened to them now, but if my brother picked anything up from that it didn’t show.
    ‘I didn’t mean emeralds, Kitty, I meant my guests – the Russians. They have a certain look to them, don’t you think?’
    As if he sensed us watching, one of the dancers dressed in men’s gear – breeches and a loose white shirt open at the neck – turned to look back down the table towards us. Joey raised his glass.
    The lean handsome face was familiar. I was sure I knew him.
    Of course! He was one of the cheekbones who’d been chatting to Lucca at the dance hall the night previous. Now I looked proper, I realised that they all – all the Russians that is – had luminous pale hair and slanting pale eyes set into wide angular faces. They were striking, I couldn’t deny it, that was surely the right word for them all, but there was something fierce about them too.
    The man stood and raised his own glass in reply to Joey. Then he raised it to me, smiled and winked. He was tall and muscular – his gesture had a sweeping grace.
    ‘Ilya. He is one of The Moika’s principal dancers.’ Joey nodded his head in reply and took a sip from his glass. ‘On stage he jumps so high that sometimes you hold your breath watching, wondering when or even if he will come down again. I met him last