Free Reserved for the Cat by Mercedes Lackey

being wrapped around her. When she managed to open her eyes, she saw a blurred face, a man’s face, looming over her. She had just enough wit to remember her story and her new name, to gasp out that name and a few more words, and then the effort just became too much and she let her eyes fall shut again.
    When she next came to herself, she was in a huge bed, engulfed in it, in fact, lying on what must have been a feather mattress and covered in eiderdowns, with hot bricks all around her and the cat sitting smugly on a pillow next to her.
    “Ah, she is awake,” said a voice in English, and another man, this one an old one, in a dark suit, with a full white beard and moustache, loomed over her. “Drink this,” he ordered, putting a glass to her lips as he raised her head with the other hand.
    It proved to be hot brandy rather than some nasty medicine; she sipped it cautiously, then blinked at him as it went almost straight to her head. “You’ll do,” the man said with satisfaction, and looked off to a part of the room she could not see without sitting up. “It is a good thing she is a dancer,” he said in that direction. “They may look fragile, but in my experience, they’re strong as horses. I doubt anyone without that kind of strength could have survived a wreck in that storm last night. But with some rest and good food, she’ll be as right as rain in a few days.”
    “Glad to hear it, Doctor Lambert,” said the voice she remembered from the sand. And a moment later, the man who owned the voice, face no longer a blur, came to the side of the bed. “Do you know where you are?” he asked in French.
    “Somewhere in England?” she replied.
    “You said your name was Nina,” he prompted.
    “Nina Tchereslavsky, yes. I am a dancer, a ballet dancer. So many Russian dancers have had great success in the West, and I am tired of the snow of St. Petersburg. I asked my friend Nikolas—” it was the only Russian name she could think of “ —if he would take me on his pretty little boat to England. I thought I could find a good company here. My reputation—” here she raised her chin a little, in haughty imitation of La Augustine “—should more than suffice.” Now she faltered. “But there was a terrible storm. A terrible storm. The boat began to break apart. We went into the water and I lost Nikolas—”
    Unbidden, the memory of her Maman lying, slowly dying, wasting away with fever in the cold of the garret came to her mind, and she burst into tears.
    The man, an earnest fellow with brown hair and eager eyes in a round face, patted her hand awkwardly. “Now don’t give up hope yet!” he said, even though his face told her that he didn’t have any hope at all that the imaginary Nikolas would have survived. “A tiny thing like you survived, there’s plenty of hope for him.”
    “But I am all alone!” she wailed. “All alone, and I have nothing and no one—”
    All of that was true enough, and gave force to her fear and grief. “That will be enough of that for now, Mr. Barrett,” the doctor said with authority. “Let her sleep. The powder I put into her brandy should be working any moment now.”
    And indeed, even as she raised her hand to wipe the tears away with a corner of the soft, soft sheet she lay under, the room did a kind of spin, and she found her eyes closing all by themselves.

    Nigel Barrett was in his element, reporters clustered about him, shouting questions at him. This was a good setting for him too, the opulent sitting room of his apartment, fitted out in the latest and most expensive style. He beamed at them all, impartially. Not only were reporters from the Blackpool, Liverpool, and Manchester papers here, there was even a man come up from London. London! There was nothing, nothing that he could have concocted that could have produced this windfall of publicity!
    Knowing a good yarn when he heard one, Nigel had rung up the papers once he knew the little dancer was going to be