Reserved for the Cat

an etoile at the Paris Opera, but as that plan fell to pieces, this was my second. Clearly this one is riskier, resting as it does on deception, and my ability to cozen these magicians. If this had fallen to pieces, I had a third, and a fourth, although neither of those were as desirable, and they did not make as much use of your dancing. I am more familiar with Britain than I am with France, so when the first plan fell apart, it was here that we needed to come.

“Did you come to France with my father?” she asked, now very interested.

In a sense. That is not important now. I am engaged in a deception with these men. It will not hold forever. I am certain that at some point they will learn the truth, but at that point you will be their great star and it will not matter. They are showmen, first and foremost; it is the show that matters. Do you take my meaning?

Ninette nodded. That was always true to a greater or lesser extent in the theater. The great stars were as much publicity and showmanship as talent, with the exception, maybe, of amazing talents like the Divine Sarah Bernhardt and Eleanor Duse. Even then . . . would they have been quite so acclaimed if they had not been so eccentric?

“Do I need to be eccentric?” she asked.

Hmm. A good question. Let me think about that. The cat hunched down over his forepaws, eyes half closed. I think, eccentric in simplicity. Elegant simplicity, not all bare feet and scarves like Isadora. But we will have plenty of time to work on that. First, let me drill you on your mythical yacht- person.

Needless to say, Ninette knew nothing about yachts. But she did know a great deal about the rich old men in fur coats who would be expected to own a yacht. Together she and Thomas concocted a plausible story for the apocryphal Nikolas. He could not be too rich, or one would expect a hue and cry about his missing state. He could not be titled either, for the same reason. So it was to be a very small yacht, something a bourgeoisie merchant would have bought to impress young dancers and singers. And Nikolas would have been Nina’s friend, but not her particular friend. She would have been ready to accept favors, but not yet ready to let him into her bed.

Over the course of the day her two rescuers found many excuses to check on her progress. Soon, she was calling the two of them by their first names.

And the cat drilled her mercilessly on her story in between times. So when they finally asked her questions, she was able to weep and cry, “Poor Nikolas! Poor old man!” in a way that left no doubt in the minds of her benefactors that she had very little emotional investment in “Nikolas,” and that in all probability he had offered this trip in order to impress her enough that she would take him as her protector.

This cheered both of them up immensely, even as they tried to comfort the weeping “Nina.” This was understandable; a dead lover was a terrible complication, but she would probably be able to put Nikolas behind her in fairly short order if he was only a “friend” from whom she had perhaps accepted a few gifts.

In the late afternoon someone from the Royal Lifeboat Service arrived, resplendent in a uniform, to talk to her about the sinking. She almost panicked, but the cat soothed her, and quietly coached her on what to say. As she sat between her two benefactors, wrapped in an elegant dressing gown, the officer remained standing, looking acutely uncomfortable.

It was not difficult at all to seem upset, because she was upset, but her visible efforts to calm herself seemed to earn her some respect from the Lifesaving Officer.

“We are trying to learn where the ship might have gone down, miss,” the officer said in English.

She blinked at him. “My Eenglish, not so good,” she said, and gestured to him gracefully. “Parlez-vous francais?”

“I do,” Arthur spoke up, and turned to the officer. “I’ll be translating; sir, it’s not uncommon for Russians artists to know French, but not English.”

The officer grumbled a little about “foreigners,” but nodded. “All right then, how many were on this yacht?”

“Myself, and Nikolas, and five others,” she said carefully, coached by the cat. “It was a motor yacht. Two of the men took it in turns to steer it. There was one man who was Nikolas’ servant, and the other two did things, took care of the pretty boat, cooked, cleaned. Nikolas had just bought this yacht, and he did not know much about these things, I could tell, but he pretended that he did. I wanted to go to London, but he said, no, no, we must sail all around England that you can see all of it and then decide.”

The officer groaned. “Gentleman yachtsmen. Does she have any idea if he registered at any ports?”

When Arthur translated, she shook her head.

“Probably not then.” The officer sighed. “The name of this vessel then?”

“Yvgenia,” she replied promptly. “Nikolas was alone in the world,” she added, as the cat prompted her. “He did something with speculation . . .” She shrugged. “I never could understand it. He laughed and said that Yvgenia was the name of his mother, who was always happy to see him leave.”

“And how is it that the young lady came to shore?” Now that was a dangerous question and one that Ninette had been hoping would not be asked. She would have to tread very carefully here—

Drop your head, the cat ordered. Don’t look them in the eyes and speak very slowly. You don’t remember a great deal.

She repeated that verbatim in a hesitant voice.

The storm came up suddenly, the cat continued. You were asleep. One of the crew came to wake you, and tell you to get dressed. You had never been on a boat before and you were afraid of the violence of the storm. You tried to make your way to the deck, when there was a great crash and you were thrown into the water. Fortunately you are a strong swimmer, but you could see nothing in the storm. You found a plank to cling to for a while, and you thought you saw lights and began to swim towards them. You were determined to live and that was all you could think of. You remember crawling onto the sand, and that is all.

“She must have wrecked just off the North Pier,” the officer said, and shook his head. “Though why we weren’t alerted—”

“A yacht that small? In a storm like that? With an inexperienced owner?” Arthur exclaimed. “The Lifeboat Service is hardly to blame, sir. No telling if she was even storm-worthy.”

“Well that does account for some flotsam that came ashore,” the officer muttered.

“Really, I cannot imagine anyone holding the Lifeboat Service to account for this. You’ll have to notify the Russian Ambassador of course.” Nigel nodded sagely. “Miss, do you remember the names of the crew?”

“Nikolas Petrov Vladisky,” murmured Ninette, as the cat dictated. “One pilot was Sasha, I do not know his last name. The other was Ivan Bolodenka. Nikolas’s man’s name was Borya Fedorovich. I never knew what the rest were called except their first names, Dimitri and Yuri.”

Now cry, the cat ordered. She was so nervous about being found out that it wasn’t at all hard to do as he ordered and start to sob.

Alarmed, the officer patted her hand clumsily. “There, there, now, miss, you’re a good, brave girl. I’ll let the embassy know these people were lost.”

She looked up, impulsively, and he flinched.

“Let the maid take you back to bed,” Nigel said, beckoning the servant over. She waved the maid away; the girl curtsied and left the room. “No, I shall be all right. Is there any sign of—” She looked up again at the Lifesaving Officer, and he winced.

“Tell her that we probably can’t hold out any hope at this point,” the officer said. “If they wrecked off the North Pier, we probably won’t even find bodies; they’ll be taken out to sea by the tide and turn up in Ireland, if at all.”

Arthur translated the first part of that, but not the last. She dropped her eyes.

“Thank you, miss,” the officer said ponderously. “Merci, mademoiselle.” He coughed. “I’ll be on my way, then. I doubt very much I will need to trouble the young lady any more, she’s been most helpful.”

“You expect to hear anything from the Russians?” Nigel asked in a low voice.

The officer shook his head. “One bourgeois speculator, related to no one, and a handful of sailors who might