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Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, Frances O'Flaherty thanked her lucky stars that the troupe was only for girls. Partly due to her height, and partly due to her insistence, she always got her pick of roles that would let her wear heavy boots and waistcoats, roles that would let her trail, lovelorn, after all the other girls—Jenny Monaghan especially, if she could help it. (And here her aunt thought a bit of the arts might civilize Frances! Sometimes, she had to laugh.)
Well, that had been last year. Jenny had moved, and now their leading lady was May Lacy. Although Frances was quite sure she would mourn the loss of Jenny until her dying day, she was not displeased with May. Even if Frances and May and Lizzie hadn't been thick as thieves already, Frances's own sense of justice would still demand that she acknowledge how spectacularly May burned when she was performing. It seemed that she had all the energy of a full-grown, six-foot woman packed into her petite frame, and there was something wicked in the flash of her dark eyes and the purse of her rosebud lips. Most of the girls, Frances included, were merely good at acting; they could put meaning into their lines. May was beyond that. She imbued every silence with meaning; even in moments when she did not look at another actor, that avoidance was laden, charged.
When she did look, though. Like right now. It was the first day onstage and with props, and they were figuring out their gestures, their blocking. May was center stage, her desperate heroine declaiming righteous wrath to the audience, dead husband's cavalry saber in hand. Trust this lot, Frances thought wryly, to make a cavalry officer somebody worth fighting over. But May was so magnificent that Frances almost felt sorry for the bastard, English and fictional though he was. For her part, all Frances had to do was stay kneeling and look the angry villain. (Story of her life, right?) But then May turned to her, mid-dramatic-pause, and pointed at her with that saber.
It was a real saber. God only knew how May had gotten her hands on it. You could tell it was real just by looking at it; it was a beautiful thing, long clean sweep of steel, glinting dangerously in the hot stage lights. They had, in a previous production, used it to cut a wedding cake for some extravagant reason, and it had sliced through all those layers like a hot knife through butter.
Now it was barely an inch from Frances's face, and slowly, agonizingly slowly, it approached until it just touched her cheek. Her mind went blank, except for a vague admiration for the perfect control of May's wrist. You wouldn't expect it from a girl so slight with a hand so carefully adorned with cherry nail polish, but then Frances had always suspected that May had hidden depths. And then even that thought floated away, to be replaced by a dazed sort of anticipation. Fucking hell.
"Look at me," May commanded.
It looked deadly sharp.
"Look at me." The swordtip flicked from Frances's cheek to just under her chin, tilting it upwards, and finally Frances followed orders. She couldn't remember her lines. She couldn't even remember if May's command had been in the script at all. Her throat was dry.
May's eyes burned. There was such force in her gaze that Frances wondered how she was still upright, and yet the metal touch at her throat was so delicate.
"You will never win," May said, and in her mouth the tiredness of the line, the littleness of it, flaked and fell away, leaving behind, by some miracle, power. It came off her in waves.
Very carefully, Frances swallowed.
Far off, it seemed, someone else shouted something. May lingered a moment, and then all that tension drained away, the saber point dropped, and out came the same lively smile she always wore. "Thanks," she said.
"I mean it," said the other person. Their director, as it turned out. "This is going to be some of your best work, I can feel it. Frances? You can get up."
Ah. Yes. She was still on her knees. She managed to get up.
"Are you all right?" May put her free hand on Frances's arm. "You're looking a bit strange. Did I go too far?"
"No. No. You were—" No adjective would do. Frances managed a short, sharp nod. "Well done."
May Lacy was no Jenny Monaghan; she had eyes and she used them. She was one of the sharpest. Frances could see some kind of question coalescing in her.
"I have to go," Frances said, no further explanation, and then she turned and fled.
They did not end up using the real saber for opening night. It seemed to have too strong an effect on Frances's delivery. Frances was more than fine with that.