“You will be fantastic,” said Cheryl in a bright, aggressive voice. She caught him by the arm and dragged him toward Jane. “This is Fred,” she said quickly.
Jane blanched at the informality of the introduction. “I beg your pardon, madam. May I know his family name?”
“You may not,” she replied. “Fred, meet . . .” She studied Jane and scratched her head. “Right, I’ve misplaced your name.” She nodded at Jane.
“I have not told you it,” said Jane. “Miss Jane Austen.”
The woman glowered at Jane. “If I wanted sarcasm, missy, I’d spend time with my daughter.” She scowled and turned to the man. “Fred, dance with . . . this person,” she said dismissively. She pushed Jane toward the man she branded only “Fred.”
Jane stumbled into his chest and blushed. “My apologies, sir,” she said. He helped her to regain her balance. His hands felt strong as he gripped her elbows to lift her up.
“No worries,” he said, a strangely confident phrase that Jane comprehended but had never heard before. Cheryl walked away. The man smiled at her awkwardly, and Jane smiled back.
She scratched her head at the strangeness of finding herself about to dance with a man she’d never met, in a hall she’d never been in before. Still, queer as it was, it would be inconceivably rude to refuse to dance with this Fred, so she turned toward him and prepared to Grimstock. “I suppose we should dance, then,” she said with a nervous laugh. She put her shoulders back, ready to start.
The man called Fred leaned in toward Jane, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know how to dance. I’m not even supposed to be here. But if you go see the third AD—that’s the one over there who looks unnervingly like Danny DeVito—he will find someone else for you to dance with, okay? Cheers.” He nodded and walked away from Jane.
A moment passed before she realized for sure that he was indeed leaving her. She gasped. “Have you no decency, sir?” she called after him on instinct. She did not even want to dance, and the whole event confused her, but still, she would not take such discourtesy so easily. “You are despicable!” she declared, for effect.
He stopped walking and turned. “I’m sorry?” She expected him to react with anger, but instead he smiled at her. “Did you just call me despicable? I don’t think I’ve ever been called that before, and I’ve been called a great many things.” He smiled at her again, which infuriated her. She suddenly found herself indecently angry at his rebuttal. She did not understand what she was even doing here but since she was, she would not let a rogue whose trousers were too short for his legs refuse to dance with her.
“You heard me perfectly well. How dare you agree to dance with a woman and then renege on the deal.” He walked slowly back toward her as she spoke. She tried not to let this distract her. “Don’t flatter yourself that I even wanted to dance with you. My feelings extend merely from the fact that an agreement was struck, and now you have backed out. The terms of the contract were ideal to neither party, I assure you, but nevertheless, here we are. You have ridiculed not me, but everyone, by refusing.” He kept walking toward her and had almost reached her. Jane ignored him, cleared her throat, and kept talking, in a faster and higher-pitched voice. “Indeed, will the first thing to crumble be not society itself, when people no longer dance with each other!” She raised a fist to indicate her outrage, then, realizing she may have ruined the effect with overstatement, put it down again. She coughed and gazed at the floor.
“I don’t care if you find me the most hideous woman in Christendom. You said you would dance with me,” she added, in a softer voice. She swallowed. She said none of this for herself, of course—she did not even want to dance—but for spurned women in general. It was the height of rudeness to withdraw an invitation to dance, and this man deserved to be educated.
“I don’t find you hideous,” he said. He looked at her and their eyes met.
Jane exhaled and hoped he did not see. “So, what is the problem, then?” Jane said, coughing and looking away.
He shrugged. “I don’t like dancing.”
Jane scoffed. “Too bad.”
“I don’t dance well. I don’t do anything well, really, and you’ll be thankful in the end this didn’t happen.”
“You do not dance well? So, here is an opportunity to practice.”
He smiled at her. “You’re scarier than Cheryl,” he said. “Do you dress down all your dance partners?”
“Only the ones who annoy me,” Jane replied.
“So, all of them, then?”
Jane felt the corner of her mouth twitch, like she might smile, but she forced it back down to an even line. She bristled at the exchange, at how quickly she had entwined herself in an argument with a stranger.
He opened his mouth and laughed, and she stifled a gasp at the sight of the whitest teeth she had ever beheld. A perfectly straight row of ivory pegs shone back at her from his mouth, with no stain of tobacco or food, nor any incisors or canines missing.
“Your britches are too short,” she said in an accusatory voice. She pointed to his knees and looked away.
“‘Britches’? Is that what they are called? It’s all they had. I’m just an extra, sort of. I’m tagging along with my delinquent sister—she’s the famous one up in the front somewhere,” he said. “I’m not supposed to dance. I was told to stand and mouth ‘rhubarb’ multiple times. Apparently, the shape that your mouth makes when you say it looks good in the shot.”
“Shot? Who was shot?” Jane demanded, looking around the room with concern.
“No one,” he told her, shaking his head with a confused look. “The film shot.”
This was the strangest conversation she’d ever had with a dance partner.
“Well?” he said
