The Unloved Read Online Free Page B

dancing technique she herself had learned in her youth, was she able to forget the pain in her hip. Indeed, sometimes when she was teaching her girls, she would forget her ruined hip completely and once more find herself dancing as she had when she was young. Of course, it wasn’t the same—her movements weren’t nearly as smooth as they once had been—but the girls always watched her carefully, seeing what she was trying to show them, rather than what she was actually doing. And somehow, despite the clumsiness her lame leg inflicted upon her, they were able to understand what she wanted from them.
    Often, after the class was over, the girls would stay at Sea Oaks for a while, listening as Marguerite talked to them about what a career in ballet could offer them.
    “It can be the key to the world,” she would often say. “The dance can take you anywhere you want to go. It can open a world of music and art and beauty that no one else ever sees.”
    And it was true, even for Marguerite, whose life as a dancer had been cut short before it truly began. For even here, in the faded elegance of the ballroom, where no ball had been held for more than thirty years, Marguerite could still escape into the music, transporting herself to the great theatres of the world.
    Sometimes she would imagine herself in the Royal Ballet of Copenhagen, whirling across the stage of that small jewel box of a theatre in the heart of a city she had never seen but could clearly imagine. And it was her dreams, as well as her knowledge, that she was passing on to her students. They didn’t have to stay in Devereaux, didn’t have to give up their futures to the enervating torpor of the dying town.
    And some of them hadn’t. Three of her students had gone on from her tiny classes on the third floor of the ancient plantation house to study in New York, Paris, and London. One of her girls was a prima ballerina now, and in her room, hidden away in the bottom drawer of her bureau, Marguerite kept a scrapbook full of clippings.
    Once in a while, when she found a girl of particular promise, she would take the scrapbook out and share the treasured clippings. “This can be you,” she would say. “All it takes is work, my dear, and you can have everything.”
    With the work, Marguerite offered the girls endless patience, giving them as many hours of her time as they wanted, never too busy—or too tired—to rehearse them one more time, until every movement of every step was as perfect as she could make it.
    Except today.
    Today Kevin was coming, and though she was doing her best not to let her impatience show, she knew the girls could sense that something was taking her concentration from their lesson. And so, as the last notes of
Swan Lake
faded away, she smiled, and clapped her hands once in the gesture she always used to gain their attention. “I think that will be all for today,” she said. “And I want to apologize to you. I know I haven’t been quite myself this morning, and I know it hasn’t been fair to you. But my brother is coming today, andI haven’t seen him for nearly twenty years. I’m afraid I’m a little excited. I—”
    The harsh sound of the buzzer over the door sliced through her words, the buzzer her mother could use to summon her in an emergency. She smiled apologetically once again. “I guess I’m talking too much, aren’t I? Well, thank you all for coming, and I’ll try to be better focused next week. All right?”
    She started toward the door, pausing to speak to each of the girls as they said good-bye to her. Jenny Mayhew—Marguerite’s favorite, though she tried never to show it—hung back, pacing herself automatically to match her teacher’s slow step as they made their way down the stairs.
    “Does your brother have children?” Jenny asked when they were halfway down.
    Marguerite smiled at the girl. “As a matter of fact, he does. A girl just your age, and an eight-year-old boy.” A hint of a smile played