The Price {Completed}

Chapter Two

After the midday meal, which we ate backstage, the girls gathered to stretch and talk. I sat across from them on the floor, pretending to be focused on pulling my chest close to my knees but really listening in on their conversations. As much as they annoyed me with their scatterbrained antics and giggling natures, I found myself sometimes drawn to their inane gossip. A girl seeing another girl's former lover, how the grocer's boy always flirted with only the married women, and other such frippery. It felt like sneaking a spoonful of sugar.

                At the moment, the girls were full of talk about the male servants. Being an all-female company made them snatch onto any sort of attention from a boy. One of the redheads flipped her curls over one shoulder and smiled coyly. "One kissed me when I went to get a new pitcher of water during lunch."

                The other girls gasped and a few slapped her playfully on the arm. "He did not!" one said.

                The redhead shrugged, adjusting her stocking and lifting her nose as if she were above it all. "Well, I still have the taste of mint on my lips, but if you don't want to believe me than that's just your choice."

                "Wait, you kissed the mint-chewer?" the other girl squealed, suddenly now on the side of the redhead. "He's so dreamy!"

                The other girls all joined in on the virtues of the "mint-chewer" and his supposed charms. Casually kissing a girl who didn't even know your name didn't seem like something to be lauded, but I wouldn't upset their swooning and adulation.

                They prattled on and on, changing from one servant to the next, taunting each other over which they found most handsome and which they thought tried too hard or not hard enough. I eventually lost interest and began to focus in earnest on my stretching, when a name caught my attention. 'Ferdinand'. Unfortunately, I did not catch the context his name was mentioned in, though I glanced up in time to see the girls all gripping each other and bouncing up and down. A small girl with light brown hair stood in their center, glowing with the attention.

                "He was absolutely divine," she said, fanning her face with one hand and widening her eyes.

                 "What was his carriage like?" someone demanded.

                I hadn't even noticed the girl was not present before this, though I barely ever registered she was there at all. Her dancing was barely adequate, and her face and personality both were more inclined to blending than to standing out.

                "Oh, nothing fancy. Just a public one," the girl said. "But he was dressed like just anyone you could pass on the street!"

                "I can't believe he's here," one girl sighed. "He was the youngest dancer to ever perform a solo for the king's birthday. And now he's going to be dancing for us!"

                "I don't see why he'd want to dance with us. We're literally no one when it comes to the dance world. Why in the world would he break from his Rumonin National contract? If he stayed on there, he could become as famous as Lionel Frome, and have a mansion and carriages and everything."

                "Sometimes your stupidity amazes me, Gertrude." Rachel, one of our newest members, stood on the outskirts of the group, lazily practicing her footwork and suppressing a yawn. Gertrude narrowed her eyes.

                "We didn't ask you to join in, Rachel," she snipped. "You can just go back to scowling in the corner, thanks."

                "My opinion may not matter to you, but I'd be careful about uttering it where someone important might hear," Rachel said. "The Lennox Company may not have the acclaim that the Rumonin National has, but that won't last for very long. Mr. Lennox is a genius, and I don't use that word lightly. Frankly, Ferdinand Popov would have to be a complete dolt to not want to join now so that he can be billed as one of the original dancers when the Lennox Company finally comes into its own."