(n) The urge to overcome melancholy by dancing
It’s the middle of the night, maybe closer to the smallest hours of the morning, but Maxwell doesn’t want to look at the clock. It’s been hours since he came to bed and tried to fall asleep, and he’s managed nothing but brief stretches of minutes and, frankly, it’s starting to get old. Annoyed and tired and bored and itching to move, Maxwell sits up and gets out of bed.
He paces. He stretches. He refuses to look at his phone because there won’t be a way to avoid seeing the time if he does. He paces some more. As quietly as he can, as he always does, he leaves his room to walk around the house.
It’s long since stopped feeling like a museum now that most of the statues and paintings are gone, but now it feels haunted by the ghosts of Beaumonts past, by old glories and distant memories, long-dead ancestors as disappointed in the state of their once great house as dear old Barthelemy always was in his younger son.
It’s spotless, mostly, the dust thin and the air fresh and well-circulated, but the house has an echo it never used to. That’s the hardest part: used to. It pains him to remember a time, some twenty-odd years ago, when he was walked through the house by Bertrand or their mother or a nanny to keep energetic, clumsy Maxwell from knocking into anything priceless. It occurs to him that the only really priceless things the Beaumonts had were never on display, and they’re the things that have been the hardest to let go of, things that can’t be bought back once there’s money in the coffers again and no liens against the estate.
As he passes through the downstairs study, the one with the shrine to Barthelemy’s life accomplishments and those of his wife and sons, a light in the ballroom catches Maxwell’s eye and makes him pause mid-step. Had he forgotten to turn it off when they finished Lisette’s table etiquette lesson earlier?
He thought he had, and then he hears a sound, a dull thud, followed by a rapid tapping, a muffled curse. Suddenly his restless night time wandering and boredom are forgotten, and now with purpose, he moves to the ballroom doors and slowly pushes them open, half expecting one of the few remaining house staff or Bertrand tidying up, and instead startles Lisette so badly she barely suppresses a yelp as she stumbles out of an arabesque, her pointe shoes thunking on the dancefloor as she catches her balance.
She yanks her headphones down around her neck and presses her hands to her chest. “Christ, Maxwell, you scared me!”
“Sorry!” He steps into the ballroom and pulls the doors shut. “I saw the light on, I thought–What are you doing up so late?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” She sweeps strands of her loosely braided hair out of her face. “You?”
He shrugs. “Just one of those nights, I guess.”
“I, uh, hope it’s okay that I’m in here.” She points at the ceiling, even though her bedroom is on the other side of the house like his. “I was too anxious up in my room.”
“Please. You live here, it’s fine.” He looks around the ballroom, noting that she moved a chair from one of the tables, still set from her lesson earlier, to the edge of the dance floor. “You want some company?”
“That would be nice, yeah.” She steps into open fourth position and lifts her arms into third before dropping them again with a frown. “I can’t believe this is all over tomorrow.”
Maxwell sits in the chair she moved. “Over?”
“The build-up part, I mean.” Lisette turns away from him and walks across the ballroom floor, her pointe shoes tak tak takking as she moves to the center again. “The season kicks off tomorrow.” The sound of her movement echoes through the room, just loud enough to have drawn his attention from the study, but not enough to reach the bedrooms upstairs. Feet apart wider than her shoulders, she lifts herself onto her toes and places her hands on her hips. “I get to see Liam again, meet these other girls, probably make an ass of myself in front of the entire court–”
“I don’t think you’ll make an ass of yourself,” he interrupts. Even in the dim light, the glare she casts over her shoulder is withering. “I mean it. You’ve picked up a lot over the last month, Lisette. It’s impressive.”
She smiles, just for a moment, before her brow knits into an anxious frown again. “That’s more to do with you and Bertrand than me.”
“You’re not giving yourself enough credit.”
“You’re giving me too much.” She taps at the big wireless headphones around her neck, and the tinny sound of classical music wails softly from them as she starts to dance. Her movement is clearly choreographed, but he can’t hear the music that well from across the room to guess what it might be from. She’s a little stiff in spite of the graceful, elegant flutter of her movements across the floor; she’d been a professional and danced in front of crowds of hundreds, once, so he doesn’t think she’s disturbed by his presence.
“You’re nervous,” he says after a while.
“Whatever gave you that idea?” she asks drily. Her voice is breathy, but her movement never falters.
“It’s perfectly understandable.” She laughs just once, ha! like a cartoon character. “It is! Bertrand’s nervous. Hell, I’m nervous.”
“You both have a lot riding on me,” she mutters as she dances past him. “I don’t blame you.”
They lapse into silence again as she whips herself into an effortless pirouette, her long red braid whirling around her like a whip. It’s been more than fifteen years since Maxwell switched from ballet to hip hop, but muscle memory is a funny thing and his calves ache as they recall the exact clench of muscles that make dancing pointe possible. Lisette might not be able to pop or break, but her fluidity is something Maxwell has never been able to achieve, and he knows from dancing with her for the last month that she’s deceptively, impossibly strong despite her slenderness, and that her frame is unshakeable and solid when she leads.
The music swells to its conclusion and Lisette folds herself elegantly the floor, still balancing on her toes. Maxwell claps, and her face is flushed from more than exertion when she looks up.
“You’re really talented,” he says, because it’s true.
“Thanks.” She walks back towards him, the effortless confidence of her dancing replaced by embarrassment. “I was going to be a principle in my company, you know.”
“You never told me that.” Maxwell stands to offer her his chair and takes another to the edge of the dance floor for himself.
Lisette shrugs and collapses into his vacated chair, bending to unlace her shoes. The low back of her leotard exposes the dips and ridges of her musculature and all sorts of interesting constellations of freckles along her spine and a birthmark under the blade of her left shoulder. Maxwell is incredibly glad she doesn’t catch him looking at her. A stupid, impulsive part of his brain that’s loud and used to being obeyed shouts that it might like him to kiss that birthmark sometime. He mentally and literally shakes the thought out of his head, wondering what brought it on, and sits down beside her.
“It was a few years ago. It doesn’t matter now.” She sighs heavily, sitting up and slouching against the chair as she starts picking at her cuticles. Her voice is bitter, just barely loud enough for him to hear. “It was my own fault, anyway.”
Normally, this is where he would make a joke or direct her attention elsewhere, but something about the late hour and being the only two people awake in the estate, and probably for miles around, keeps him from doing so. Instead, he takes her hand to stop her picking, but doesn’t let go. One corner of her mouth twitches into a smile, even though she fights it like she wants to stay sad when he rubs his thumb over her knuckles.
The house is quiet, and the night is quiet, and for once he’s not the only person awake and restless in the middle of it all.
“You know, I’m probably a little–a lot rusty,” he says after the moment passes. Her eyebrows raise as he stands without releasing her hand. “I probably can’t keep up with you, but I want to try.”
“Huh?”
He tugs at her, just a little, and smiles. “Come on. Dance with me.”
She laughs and allows him to pull her out of her chair. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Know what would cheer me up,” she says. “You don’t know me that well yet.”
“Ah, but that’s just it.” He taps the tip of her nose and she playfully swats him away. “Yet. Yet, I can work with. Yet, I have something to work toward.”
She grins. “You’re very optimistic.”
“Someone in this house has to be.” He takes her other hand, holding them both in his own between their chests. “Lisette, you’re going to be amazing. You are amazing. Don’t let anyone – not even Bertrand, and especially not you – get in your head and convince you you won’t be. Okay?” She looks at the floor, so he squeezes her to get her attention again. He raises his eyebrows, waiting for her affirmation.
She looks up at him through her eyelashes, then looks at the floor between their feet again and smiles gratefully. “Okay.”
“Good.” He releases her to moonwalk a few paces away, and she chuckles. “Now, do you American ballerinas only dance choreography or can you freestyle?”
“Oh, we can freestyle, alright.” She advances on him with a smirk. “Is that how you Cordonian nobles do it?”
“It’s certainly how I do it.” He waggles his eyebrows.
She laughs and sweeps both hands in front of herself at him. “Show me what you’ve got, Maxwell. Not ballet, and not breaking. Something we can both keep up with.”
Maxwell points finger-guns at her approvingly. “Good idea. Music?”
“You wanna do the honors?” She twists her arm to tap offer him her phone, and he leans down to tap at the screen, out of her ballet playlist and to a mix merely titled MOVE. He’s only passingly familiar with most of what he sees as he scrolls until he sees something that appeals to him. He’s glad what plays has a beat they can immediately start getting into.
Unconsciously, they’ve started to sway together, almost mirroring each other’s movements as they get a sense of how to move as one without Bertrand observing them or classical music backing them up. It’s sloppy, but it’s fun, and that’s exactly what she needs it to be. It’s not how they danced together at Kismet when they found each other in the dark on the crowded dance floor, and it’s not how they’ve been dancing together for the last month under Bertrand’s critical eye while they taught her courtly dances she’ll need over the next several months.
They don’t touch much, just brushes and grazes here and there, all in neutral places like hands and backs and shoulders, except when she communicates she wants him to support her weight for a dip or when he wants to try to lift her. It’s more intuitive, more aware of each other and anticipating what they’re going to do and trying to make their different disciplines make sense together.
After a while, she giggles. “Did you ever see any of those dance movies? Like Step Up? Did they ever get released here?”
“Oh no,” Maxwell gasps. He actually stops moving after her to cover his face with his hands. “You’ve killed it. This was a good thing we had going here, and you’ve ruined it.”
A strange thrill goes through him as Lisette wraps her hands around his wrists to force him to look at her. Her eyes are bright with mirth but her expression is serious. “But the real question is: are you mad because that’s exactly what we’re doing right now, or because I reminded you those movies exist?”
Maxwell’s groan the loudest thing in the house, almost a scream, and Lisette tries her hardest to shush him while fighting back her own laughter. “God, I don’t even know!”
“Shh! You’re gonna wake Bertrand!”
“He’s the least of my problems right now, Lisette!”
She wails and leans into him for support. She has to press her hand to her mouth to try and stifle herself and only succeeds in making herself snort, which sets them both off on another peal of helpless laughter.
“What the hell was that?”
“I’m laughing! You made me laugh!”
“It was so cute,” he chokes out, “Like a little pig.”
“Oh my God, Max!” Lisette shoves him, desperately trying to stop herself from doing it again and failing miserably.
Maxwell is laughing so hard he has to bend over to support himself on his knees, and Lisette leans on his shoulder. It takes them several long moments to sober up because they can’t look at each other without being set off again, but when they do it’s wiping tears from their eyes. The song has changed from the one he’d picked to rap, which surprises him because it’s not the sort of thing he’d expect a formerly Catholic ballerina to listen to.
“Oh, wow, I haven’t laughed like that in a long time,” she admits once she’s caught her breath.
Maxwell presses a hand to his stomach. “I think I can skip the gym after that.”
“Same.” She fans herself with her hands. “I think I have my six pack back.”
The stupid part of his brain whines, petulant and intrigued, and he hates it more than he’s ever hated anything. Lisette doesn’t seem to think much of his audible swallow, or that he needs to clear his throat to not sound hoarse. “Do you still want to dance?”
“A little, but it is really late…” her voice trails off as she weighs the cost of continuing to stay up.
It was already well past midnight when he got out of bed, and they should try to get some sleep before driving to the palace tomorrow, but it’s the last chance they’ll have to spend any time together like this before being under the constant scrutiny of the entire court for the next three months. Tomorrow he has to step into his official role as her sponsor and she out of the proverbial frying pan of Bertrand’s disapproval and into the fire of being House Beaumont’s bid for Liam’s bride.
When Lisette looks back at him, it’s with a mischievous, hopeful smile. “I saw this lift on Youtube I want to try.” She squeezes his bicep. “You’re probably strong enough for it. If you don’t mind losing more sleep with me?”
Maxwell exhales a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Lady Carignan,” he says, bowing slightly and offering her his hand. “I would be honored to stay up with you.”