Pas De ... Don't

6. First Variation

            "I wanted to warn you earlier," Devlin said.

The sunlight streamed in behind Kate, highlighting the rich embroidery, and embedded pearls on her off-white dress. She had a tight crown of white feathers completely covering her hair and fiddled with the straps on a white and gold mask. Colin greeted her with what appeared like a script. He then glued a series of green dots along her chin and the bottom of her mask. A pair of actresses, in equally splendid ballgowns took their places on either side of Kate as Vince asked for their attention.

"Please make your way to your marks. We are going to walk through the quadrille this afternoon to make sure the hand-helds can follow the action. Then we are going to speed things up with the music. If you have assigned lines, we need to hear them. There have been some difficulties with the radio-mics of late so we have to use the booms. It is their job to stay out of the shot but I expect it will take a couple of runs to get it right." His crew jumped to his snapping fingers, he scanned the room announcing, "On four." Vince counted in, then clapped steadily as the pairs wove through the steps.

With the expert guidance of their dance crew partners, the actresses avoided any incidents more serious than a ripped hemline, and confidently delivered their lines. Devlin managed to get himself out of place and Bethany laughingly re-directed him. The stern look she earned from Vince prompted her to blush. Except when holding his partner a touch too close, or lingered with a hand clasp, Phillip was much more precise with his steps. Daniel seemed to be moving on autopilot, narrowly missing the hand-held rig during his cross-overs.

Kate found trying to remember both her lines and the dance steps challenging, so had to put more trust in her partners. She twirled into Phillip's orbit.

"The lovely Lady Eloise, at last," he said fully in character.

"My Lord," she inclined her head slightly before spinning away and then returning. She completely blanked on whether she had another line so focused on conveying a sense of shyness by minimizing her moves. Phillip tried to spin her closer than appropriate so she gave him a deft warning with her elbow.

"Delightful as always, my dear," he said through gritted teeth.

"My pleasure," she answered with an innocent smile before spinning over to her next partner. The turn after that brought her into Devlin's arms.

"I trust my brother behaved himself," he said while nodding in Phillip's direction.

"He is as much a gentleman as any other," Kate improvised. Devlin looked startled.

"Do you mean to wound with such meagre praise?" He asked.

"My dear sir, I fear you misunderstood. I mean neither to wound, nor to praise." Kate tried her best to channel what she could remember of period novels but knew she was well out of her depth. Luckily, the director called cut as the music stopped.

Vince gestured for his crew to come over and gave them some general notes on how to bridge the difference between the traditional dance form and the modern soundtrack. "Remember, this is all about proper frames and subtle flirting."

"Wish all our partners kept to your rules," one of the young men in the crew complained.

"Yeah. Nothing subtle about Mr. Handsy," Bethany said while nodding toward Phillip.

"At least you got to dance in his group," one of the younger girls whispered. Bethany looked at the girl with pity but did not respond. Kate only half listened as she paged through her part of the script.