Encore by Monique Raphel High Page B

saying, his smooth tones easing her over the difficult moments, “King Edward charmed the French. Centuries of enmity—blood hatred—were somehow conquered by this English monarch, and if he can do it, so can we! A season of our robust Russian opera. Quite a change from Italian!”
    â€œWhy is it so important to spread our culture to France?” Natalia questioned. There was an edge to her voice because she was nervous.
    â€œWhy does anyone want to go beyond himself? This is the
    human secret. I don’t know, my dear. Why did you decide to become a dancer?” He quirked one fine blond eyebrow, smiling ironically.
    â€œI was too young to be a courtesan,” she retorted with asperity. Then, abruptly, she blushed. It had been an impulsive, defiant answer born of fear.
    But Boris laughed. “Nevertheless, you wanted to be loved! Whether as Oblonova the ballerina, or, if you like, as Madame de Montespan, whore to Louis XIV”—and he looked into her eyes with calculated mirth—“you did not wish to remain an anonymous woman. A country is the same. Russia wants to be loved, by the French, by the British—because we are a vain lot.”
    Pierre Riazhin had been watching them closely, and now he put down his glass and strode to them rapidly. There was a jerky quality to his movements, a half-repressed passion manifested in his limbs. Boris glanced up at the intruder with annoyance. “Ah, we have here our young genius, Pierre Grigorievitch Riazhin. Have you come to meet this charming lady?”
    â€œI do not need an introduction,” Pierre said, looking directly at Natalia. She was so small, close up—small yet strong, compact, athletic. And grave. He liked her seriousness, which contrasted so vividly with Boris’s careless ease. Suddenly Pierre wanted to be very rude to Boris, to lash out at him. Instead, he said to Natalia: “I wondered if you would be so beautiful in person. I see that you are.”
    Her brown eyes took him in, with his absurd Frans Hals hat, his earnest black eyes that seemed bottomless, his quick face, massive carriage, and slim waist. She shook her head, bewildered. “What do you mean?” she asked. She saw the dark, crisp hair, the large hands with their well-shaped, blunt fingers, the wide nostrils. She could almost breathe him. He smelled of maleness, a strange, unfamiliar scent that threw her off. She shivered, thinking of a Crimean wheat field swept by southern winds.
    â€œHe is paying you a compliment, Natalia Dmitrievna,” Boris laughed pleasantly. “But ignore the boor. He has all the delicacy of a young panther on the prowl.”
    â€œNo,” Natalia said, looking at Pierre, “it was the way you said
    it—as though you had seen me before. but 1 do not know you. Yet something was eluding her, something in the not-too-distant past—the women after the performance of Chopiniana! “Riazhin,” she intoned with wonder. “Yes, you are a painter. But we have never met.”
    â€œYou have never met me, but I did meet you, two years ago. I saw you dance the Sugar Plum Fairy. I have never forgotten that night.”
    â€œI was only an insignificant ballet student,” she stammered. The feeling in the black eyes that bore into her was disconcerting. She had never spoken to anyone like this young man, whose probing intensity dismayed her. She had not yet learned to parry compliments and was uncomfortable. “Please,” she said, and her voice trembled. “I am honored that you remembered me, but—”
    â€œPierre loves all beautiful things,” Boris commented. His fingers closed over Natalia’s delicate arm, but his eyes were leveled at Pierre Riazhin, and the girl stepped back, watching black eyes hold blue in an incomprehensible deadlock. She should have stayed at home. Here were Louis XIV and a seventeenth-century Dutch baron sparring. Around them floated the