Free Ways to Be Wicked by Julie Anne Long

said solemnly.
    “Josephine,” The General barked.
    Josephine, a fair-haired woman who looked astonishingly ordinary in contrast to the rest of the denizens of the theater—as round and pleasant-faced and wholesome as the wife of a country squire—gave a start and landed on the pianoforte, her fingers finding and playing a song with a waltz pattern, tinkling and saucy.
    The girls onstage began to sway, arcing their wands to and fro gracefully above their heads.
    This presented little challenge; Sylvie managed to master the swaying motion quickly enough.
    She noticed The General’s eyes on her, and she could have sworn he looked a little amused.
    But the swaying motion was pretty in its way, harmless enough, despite the wands and shamelessly gossamer gowns and her pair of wings. She could even imagine how pleasing they all might look beyond the footlights during a performance, all shimmer and beauty.
    “Smiles, girls!” The General bellowed.
    Rows of pretty teeth were instantly bared. Sylvie suspected hers more closely resembled a grimace, from the feel of things. Still, she curled her lips back.
    The music tinkled on for a bar or so, at which point the girls rotated in a circle until their backs faced the audience, all the while twirling their wands in tight circles over their heads. And then they linked arms, a motion Sylvie managed to follow smoothly enough. Sylvie wasn’t particularly anxious to touch Molly, but she did it anyhow, and took Jenny’s arm, too, and continued to sway to and fro.
    This was child’s play; she could probably do this and nap at the same time. In fact, a nap was sound—
    The row of girls bent double and pushed their fannies up into the air and sang out
“Wheee!”
dragging a startled Sylvie abruptly down with them.
    And then they were upright and gently swaying again.
    “More derriere next time, Jenny! Get it up there high!” The General ordered, as if commanding troop maneuvers.
    They swayed for a bar, twirling their wands, and then, Dear God—
    “Wheee!”
    They did it again, chins to their knees, derrieres in the air, dragging Sylvie down with them.
    When she was upright this time, Sylvie’s eyes were wide and nearly watering with horror.
    “Ye’ve scarcely an arse, Sylvie. See the seamstress straightaway and get that dress altered,” The General barked over the music. “And the word is ‘
wheee!
’ I want to hear it.
One,
two, three,
one,
two, three,
one,
two, three...”
    And suddenly, abruptly, Sylvie unhooked her arm from Molly’s and Lizzie’s and almost blindly fled down the little stairs of the stage, reflexively fleeing what seemed to her the things she’d devoted her entire life to avoid becoming.
    She wasn’t quite certain where she was heading, but “away” seemed a sufficient destination at the moment, and her general direction appeared to be the White Lily’s door.
    She nearly ran headlong into the wall of a linen-clad chest, stopped abruptly and looked up into Tom Shaughnessy’s face.
    “Tired of dancing so soon, Miss Chapeau?”
    “Derrieres. . . bending. . .
wheee!
” Sylvie stammered furiously, hands flailing helplessly, unable to convey the horror of it all. “That is
not
dancing, Mr. Shaughnessy.”
    “You stand there, move about, smile.” He was obviously confused. “Of course it’s dancing. Audiences pay good money for derrieres and ‘
whee,
’ Miss Chapeau.
    Does ‘dance’ mean something else now in French?” And then he frowned in comprehension. “Oh! I believe I see what you are driving at. But I’m afraid no one will pay to see”—Tom paused, as if to give the word a wide mental berth from his other words, and said it gingerly. “
Ballet.
If that’s what you’re asking. There isn’t any money in it.”
    Sylvie went still for a moment. How on earth would he have known about—
    She took a deep breath. “Is there something else I might do to assist here at the theater?” she managed to ask in a steadier voice. “In