Jeannette takes a long hard look at herself in the mirror. She is the center of the world for no one.

  She puts on her toe-shoes, pointing and flexing each foot to make sure the ribbons are tight enough but not too tight, securing the knot on the outside of each ankle with a gob of spit. She knows she needs to focus—and needs to stretch before she goes downstairs again.

  Snatches of music and random squeaks float up the stairway as the horn players puff and blow and the fiddlers tune and bow and do whatever they need to do before they play. And then the oboist coaxes out a single, pure A and all the musicians follow suit, adjusting and tuning until they find the same note and the sound of a single complicated instrument reaches the dressing-room.

  All the other chorus dancers are already warming up, using the garment racks as a makeshift barre. Several of them shriek when Vaslav Nijinsky leaps past their open doorway, his thigh muscles bulging in his white tights, the long curling hair of his wig and the chaste poet’s blouse making him look like something in between a man and a woman. With his high cheekbones and Tatar eyes, he is the most exotic-looking male Jeannette has ever seen.

  She would like to dance with him—to be lifted into the air by him, as Pavlova is in their glorious pas de deux that seems like a dance between a man and a butterfly. Jeannette has never learned choreography like Fokine’s, unmoored from the familiar tropes of ballet. The choreography for les Sylphide is doubly hard, because the chorus dancers never stop moving and every movement is interconnected. They’re supposed to move like water. Like trees in the wind.

  It’s terrifying. So much that Jeannette could do with ease before is hard now. At twenty-nine, she already feels old. She knows that her jumps aren’t as high. Her heart sometimes pounds so audibly that she dreads the places in the score when the orchestra plays pianissimo. Every night at home, after rehearsing for hours and hours, she plunges her feet, bruised and aching, into a bucketful of ice.

  She spends far too much of her pay on ice. Just the night before, she was woken out of a dead sleep by a pain in her left knee so intense that it kept her awake, worrying. Is it over? Am I through?

  She didn’t have a single newspaper clipping that she might have framed and put on her wall. How often she’d fantasized about seeing the words: A lively performance by demi-soloist Mlle. Jeannette Dupres… An expressive moment of tenderness in the pas de trois featuring… Today she had thought, like a fool, that her moment had arrived, finally, and none too soon.

  She is nearly used up now as a dancer, alone in the world, without a pension. Without a husband. She could have had a husband if she hadn’t continued, with such naïveté, to believe that Paul Poiret would eventually marry her. That it was Jeannette, and Jeannette alone, he really loved.

  She finishes her hasty warm-up with a reverence, catching a last glimpse of herself in the mirror, realizing with horror that she forgot to put on her wreath of pink silk roses. Pinning it as she scurries down the metal staircase, taking the last steps two at a time, she tries to seem invisible as she bolts past the regisseur, who is standing with his clipboard in the wings. He narrows his eyes at her and growls, “Ten francs, Dupres!”

  And her rent is due!

  The Prelude is at the second-to-last bar. All the other dancers are poised and ready in the twilight onstage when Jeannette runs on, lowering herself down as noiselessly as possible among the other members of the corps and the demi-soloist, all of them reclining at Nijinsky’s feet, with Anna Pavlova posed adoringly on one side of him and Tamara Karsavina on the other.

  Someone whispers something nasty-sounding in Russian. Jeannette tries to slow her breathing in the four seconds left to her before the Nocturne starts and the curtain rises.

  Paris

  1903

  Paul Poiret was determined not to linger any longer than necessary in his position as junior designer at the House of Worth. Landing the job in the first place had been a coup. But now, in his second season, he found himself chafing at the bit, constrained by the institution’s hidebound rules and his own lack of power. He had seamstresses at his disposal. But there’d still been no one assigned to help him accomplish those crucial and yet pedestrian tasks facing him as he oversaw the assembly of his newest creations.

  And so Paul himself went to the Gare du Nord to meet the shipment of Canton crepe, organza, and Habutai silk due to arrive on the Nord-Express just hours before the showroom parade, when all the final details of his six ensembles would need to be actualized.

  He told the cab driver to wait. He engaged a porter.

  Cloaked in a cloud of steam, the Nord-Express arrived, by the station clock, just on schedule. Though Paul winced at the ear-splitting sound of the brakes as the great beast squealed to a stop, he was filled with the sense of excitement and pleasure he always experienced at train stations. His body was still aglow from the delicious love-making he’d enjoyed with Jeannette—and in less than twenty-four hours now, he would astonish Paris with dresses of an elegant simplicity that hadn’t been seen since the time of the ancient Greeks.

  His mannequins, all chosen for their slim figures, were indulging in their best-loved beauty regimes, so as to look their best. The seamstresses in his department were hard at work. He had every reason to hope for a triumph that would set the world of fashion ablaze. If he could save enough, and get his license by then, he would launch his own maison du couture in the fall.

  As the steam evanesced, he waited at the place on the platform where he thought he’d have the best chance of seeing the baggage car unloaded—and making sure his specially commissioned bolts of silk weren’t mistakenly or otherwise claimed by other hands.

  And then he saw, staring out of one of the windows of a third-class carriage—inexplicably but unmistakably—Jeannette. Jeannette who, just hours ago, he’d dropped off at her flat. With an expression of wonder on her face, she was gazing out the window, straight past him, as if looking out at a magical landscape.

  Oh, that devil of a woman! How in blazes—and why in blazes—was she on this train?

  Forgetting momentarily about his bolts of silk, he hastened to the door of her car.

  “Chérie,” he said, removing his hat and handing her down.

  She looked at him quizzically. “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur?”

  And then he started laughing, overwhelmed by her cleverness. By God, he didn’t think she’d had it in her to pull off such a prank.

  “‘Pardonnez-moi, monsieur?’” he minced, mocking her fake foreign accent. “‘Monsieur,’” he repeated, laughing so hard that tears actually ran down his face, into his beard.

  When she only continued staring at him wide-eyed, he stopped laughing. “Enough,” he said in the same tone he used when a seamstress made the mistake of failing to follow his instructions precisely. He examined her ensemble, head to toe—it was an excellent simulation of a foreigner’s idea of high fashion, very correct.

  “Yes, it was funny and clever of you—and God knows how you got on this train. But I have work to do. Won’t you be missed at your—whatever?”

  She blinked—and then a tall and well-dressed, mustachioed man rushed toward them, pausing for just a moment to stare at something he held cupped in his hand. With an expression of relief, he looked up at Jeannette—and then, standing before her, ignoring Paul, he bowed.

  With one long attentive gaze over her shoulder, full of curiosity but devoid of any sense of even knowing who he was, Jeannette turned away from Paul. She and the man—he looked like a banker or maybe a lawyer—started speaking together in another language. Was it German? It wasn’t German, but it was something very like it. Paul realized that he was staring with his mouth open.

  “Monsieur Poiret?” the porter said at his elbow. “The trunk has been unloaded—there.”

  The doors at Chez Worth would open in less than three hours. Paul absolutely didn’t have time now to deal with whatever game this was that Jeannette was playing—or whatever game it was that fate was playing, if the woman actually wasn’t Jeannette but someone else. Someone who looked exactly like her. The idea was strangely exciting.

  “Make haste,” he said to the porter. “We haven’t a moment to spare.”

  

  Sonya had trouble concentrating on what Monsieur Blum was saying to her—and was a little self-conscious that he was speaking to her in Yiddish as he apologized for being late.

  So if this was Daniel’s friend, René Blum, who was the bearded young Frenchman who’d greeted her with such familiarity and handed her down from the train just now? Was it possible—at this, her very first moment in Paris—that someone had just mistaken her for Zaneta?

  Daniel had warned her, in a tiresome lecture, that Latin men were all unconscionably flirtatious—and that she had to take care not to encourage them in the slightest way. That unless she adopted a contemptuous mien in Paris, she was bound to be mistaken for a woman of easy virtue. But surely, she told herself, her brother had been exaggerating, out of concern for her safety.

  She wasn’t a child. The man had not been merely flirting with her—he’d spoken in a manner reserved for one well known and perhaps even well loved. She wasn’t sure, but she thought he’d used the tu with her. She wished she’d worked harder at her French lessons! At the end of their brief exchange, he’d expressed exasperation. There was no mistaking it. And when she’d turned for the merest moment to greet the real Monsieur Blum, who was running toward her—looking up from a photograph he held cupped in his hand—the bearded man had disappeared into the crowd of Parisians on the platform.

  Was it possible that the bearded man had mistaken her, Sonya, for a woman of easy virtue?

  She burned with shame. How grateful she felt about Daniel’s thoughtfulness and care in having his colleague and friend come to meet her! Kind Monsieur Blum took charge of everything, finding her luggage, whisking her off in a carriage to the small but very respectable hotel he’d arranged for her short stay in Paris. Telling her that he was at her disposal during her time there.

  As he said au revoir, his eyes sparkled. She could tell that he, too, was flirting with her.

  

  Paul Poiret could hardly breathe for excitement as he sat looking out at all the titled ladies and their liveried servants in the packed showroom at Maison Worth.

  The waiter, too handsome for his own good, passed out glasses of champagne. The various little dogs—just as well coiffed and nearly as bejeweled as their owners—trembled on the laps, and at the feet, of the crème-de-la-crème of Paris.

  Paul was also trembling, although he hoped no one could tell. His entire future depended on an overwhelmingly favorable reaction to his designs today.

  The elder of the two Worth brothers, Monsieur Gaston, possessed the commercial savvy to understand the value a forward-thinking designer could add to their enterprise as the new-born twentieth century struggled to its feet. But the younger brother, Jean, viewed Paul Poiret as nothing more than an upstart—a louse, he’d called him—who would damage their reputation as the dressmaker of choice for the crowned heads of Europe.

  But that’s what Gaston had, in effect, hired Paul to do—create designs for the everyday activities engaged in by the new century’s women of fashion, who didn’t only go to balls and soirees, but also rode the omnibus.

  A buying frenzy evoked by Paul’s ingenious little dress with its vertical pleats was bound to send Monsieur Jean into one of his fits of nervous dyspepsia. Paul had come within a finger’s breadth of being sacked when that foul Russian princess heaped scorn on his magnificent kimono coat. But then all the beauties of Paris showed what a fool she’d been—and Monsieur Jean took to his bed for a week.

  Oh, the sweetness of revenge! How Paul wished his loathsome first master, the umbrella-maker who’d tortured his youth, could be here now to see his triumph!

  But would he triumph? He watched as all the titled ladies peered through their lorgnettes at his dresses, whispering among themselves. If only he could hear what they said! What he would give to be a fly hovering just above one of those wrinkled décolletages! He hadn’t seen a single critic yet. But the critics mattered far less than the word of any one of these grandes dames. Would they clasp him to their sagging bosoms so that all the young ambitious ones, the beautiful ones—the social climbers—would be pounding at his door every Saturday night, from here on in, begging him to concoct a new creation, especially for her, on time for the Sunday races at Longchamp?

  Paul raised his eyebrows, seeing Jeannette walk in. She walked right past him.

  He was sure she’d told him of a class or rehearsal that would prevent her from attending the opening today. Secretly, he’d felt relieved. He didn’t like mixing business with pleasure. He didn’t want to have to worry about what Jeannette might say or do.

  He didn’t recognize her ensemble. Was it new? She was walking strangely, a little clumsily. Was it Jeannette?

  

  Sleep-deprived and overwhelmed by so many new sensations, Sonya felt far from her best and brightest by the time she reached the last of the fashion houses on her list. The parade was already in progress at Chez Worth. There wasn’t a single vacant chair in the rows arranged along each long side of the showroom. Her feet hurt from all the walking she’d already done in the beautiful shoes she’d bought the day before, with their steel-cut toes and three-inch heels. But faithful to her mandate from Pavlova, she was prepared to stand and suffer.

  Although she worked hard at taking in each detail of each mannequin’s ensemble, she found her attention wandering. She hoped they’d walk through more than once, as was done at the other houses she’d already visited that day. She had a small sketchbook hidden in her reticule, in case there were too many innovations to commit to memory—although she knew well enough that she’d be shown the door if she were caught making sketches of the designs. She limited herself to making notes in Russian with the gold-embossed pencil she’d been given at the entrance, along with a printed sheet that listed each dress by name.

  She drifted off in a fantasy that Zaneta herself was on the stairway in one of the designers’ ensembles. Their eyes locked. Both she and Zaneta were, momentarily, unable to move. And then Sonya, in her daydream, ran toward her twin, enfolding her in her arms, unleashing in her a heretofore unrecognized flood of feelings of relief, enlightenment, and love.

  The real scene before her eyes shifted into focus again. The last mannequin swept downstairs and the parade, as she’d hoped, began again. The room was stuffy. Sonya felt unbearably thirsty and hoped refreshments would be served. Six of the dresses seemed quite different from the others, different from any dresses Sonya had ever seen before. She took notes—and then allowed her gaze to wander from the line, examining the faces and the outfits of the other women who’d come to inspect the clothes.

  They all looked very grand and imposing. Some of them were well past the age of coquetry but not yet done, apparently, with fashion. There were a lot of lap dogs, and there was more than one liveried servant standing behind his lady.

  One of these grandes dames received a message from her chauffeur and got up to leave, nodding first at an elaborately decked-out, bearded gentleman who lounged on a leather fauteuil at the far end of the room, near the door. Sonya slipped into the vacant chair, hoping that her relief at being able to sit down wasn’t overly obvious.

  She stole a look at the bearded man in his throne-like chair, which must have afforded him the best view of the scene in its entirety. With a jolt, Sonya recognized him as the man who’d handed her down from the train. Who had, against every rule of gentlemanly behavior, spoken to her, even though they hadn’t been introduced. Who had—and now she blushed—perhaps insulted her with his overly familiar greeting.

  Here he was again! She ducked her head, hoping he hadn’t seen her. He must, she realized, be one of the brothers Worth, either Monsieur Gaston or Monsieur Jean. She had assumed they would be much older men than the man who sat lounging there, exuding the casual sense of entitlement of a young prince of the realm.

  But then two older men, impeccably and conservatively dressed, entered the room—and everyone, including the bearded young man, rose to greet them with polite applause.

  Sonya reasoned that the younger man must be one of the Worth’s designers. Could he be the one, that Paul Poiret, who’d been singled out by Pavlova as someone whose designs for the House of Worth she especially wanted Sonya to see?

  When the waiter offered Sonya a glass of champagne, she accepted gratefully. Before he walked past her, she put her empty glass on his tray and took another.

  She was so terribly thirsty. It must have been the pickled food she’d eaten at supper the night before, in a Russian cafe. Or the dust from the streets as she walked today, unable to determine where the omnibus stopped but often finding herself behind the omnibus in the wake of dust and horses.

  She cautioned herself to drink slowly. Her head was already spinning. And suddenly, now, she felt so very tired—and so out of her depth. If she could just close her eyes for a moment—could just rest them for a moment from the sight of all these swirls of color, these mannequins who looked too perfect to be real. This creamy murmur of French voices and French smells. These bubbles teasing her nostrils. The sense of destiny creeping up behind her—her destiny upon her.

  

  It was clear to Paul by the time his last mannequin made her graceful way down the stairs—it was evident from the widened eyes, licked lips, and escaped words of the grandes dames—that his dresses would be the talk of le tout-Paris. So much for the withering comments and dire predictions of Monsieur Jean! In six months’ time, it would be Paul Poiret, with modest gestures of gratitude, receiving the accolades and applause in his own showroom.