Author's Notes: We finally get to see what resides under Mirabelle's
frumpy exterior, as she baits the line, for which our Potions master falls
hook, line, and sinker.
Disclaimer: If you recognize it from the books, then I didn't come up with it, and I don't own it.
Chapter 6: Dance Like Nobody's Watching, and Love Like You've Never Been Hurt.
The morning of the festival flew by in a blur at the tailor shop. Mirabelle had several last minute customers looking for something off the rack to wear to the dance, as well as people picking up robes that were special orders or which had needed alterations. The only problem was when Elizabetta Moorehead, one of Narcissa Malfoy's socialite friends, burst into tears over the fact that there was simply no time to have an elaborately beaded and embroidered formal robe made up for the dance later that evening. The one she had bought the week before was just not fancy enough, and she was afraid of being shown up by her friends. Mirabelle sent Tricia upstairs to retrieve some fancy jeweled and embroidered shawls from the crate of sample goods brought back from Morocco. She was able to placate the woman with a fine silk shawl that swirled with iridescent colors, and was edged in freshwater pearls. Reassured that no other woman at the dance would have a similar shawl, Elizabetta left the store with her nose in the air and a haughty smirk on her lips.
"Stuck up cow!" Exclaimed Tricia once the woman was out of the store and out of earshot.
"Tricia!" "You shouldn't talk about grown-ups like that... even if it is true".
"I'm sorry aunt Belle, it's just that her daughter is one of the Slytherin girls in my year at school, and she started a rumor that I had a crush on Professor Flitwick and kept all of my school papers from his class under my pillow".
"Oh, really? Hmmmm.... well, I was under the impression that it was another professor of yours that you fancied, the one who teaches your potions class." Mirabelle smirked wickedly as the girl turned red in the face and became totally flustered.
"No way aunt Belle! I'd have to fight you for him, and I know how badly you want him".
"Why you little BRAT! Take your ass home and get ready for the festival, before I curse you and you wind up dancing with two left feet tonight!" Mirabelle pulled her wand out and made playful swishing motions at her cousin's daughter, and chased her out the door of the shop. "That little brat, thinks she knows anything about anything" thought Mirabelle as she locked the door and hurried upstairs to prepare for the dance.
The professors who remained at the school during summer holidays were bustling about, getting ready to head to town for the celebration. Professor Sprout had a fancy bonnet with real flowers on her head and a new robe covered in ruffles, which made her look like nothing more than an overgrown lampshade. Even Hagrid was in the spirit of the celebration. He was just leaving for the village, as he had volunteered to help decorate the bandstand in the town square and carry casks of butterbeer and mulled mead from the pub to the refreshment stands. Dumbledore watched the activity from one of the upper floor staircases. He would not be attending the event; his place was there, at the school. If anything should happen tonight, this is where he needed to be to organize and command the volunteers who had pledged their loyalty to him in the face of the coming battle.
Severus Snape finished up his daily tasks in the potions lab. The healing salve finished, his current project was to make a batch of deflection drops. Taken immediately before a wizarding battle, the potion would help deflect even the most destructive of curses and lessen their impact. A form of magical armor, this potion was complex and took many steps to make. He had come to a stopping point, locked a cask of the half-finished potion away in his cabinet, and retired to his chambers to prepare for his mission.
Snape slipped through the corridors unseen underneath the invisibility cloak, and went to the edge of the school grounds where he apparated to the spot under the bridge. He had cast a silencing charm on his shoes to muffle the sound of his footfalls, and with carefully controlled breathing, he was unlikely to be heard nor seen while infiltrating the crowd. He proceeded directly to the center of town and found a spot just off to one side of the town square and leaned against a lamppost to watch and wait. He observed the townspeople starting to trickle into the town square. Never to be one for parties, he was not at all sad to be there on official business instead of as a participant. It was getting dark, the festival would be starting soon, and he would need to be alert and ready for anything.
Mirabelle checked herself in her mirror, pleased with the alterations and embellishments on the sample robe. She clasped a silver and garnet necklace around her neck, grabbed a diaphanous black spun silk shawl that was edged in fine silver trim and headed down the stairs. She would be meeting her friend, Lucilla, in the square. Tricia, Susan, and Albert would already be there, as Albert was on the festival planning committee and had a seat at the VIP table.
Mirabelle locked the store and joined the procession of people headed towards the square. Everybody was in their finery, there was laughing and joking, a complete change from the usual guarded seriousness that had settled over the village after the attacks of recent months. Lucilla waved for her from a corner of the square. Lucilla was with her current lover, Garrett. Garrett, a large wizard from a nearby farm, was Lucilla's latest in a long line of romances. The trio was joined shortly by one of Garrett's friends, who carried a drum, and a woman who carried a type of instrument that resembled a set of bagpipes. They exchanged pleasantries, and the musicians made their way to the center of the town square, where the bandstand was located.
Snape stood motionless and invisible beneath the enchanted cloak, observing the crowd moving closer to the center of the square, towards the bandstand. A short and stout wizard approached the podium, made some brief announcements, and lit up a riot of tiny lights in the trees and strung above the square with a flourish of his wand. The crowd cheered and the band took the stage and began to play. The music was slow and ponderous traditional wizarding music. The dances consisted of formal precise movements. Descended from Medieval court dances, they were a very important part of the wizarding culture. All of the old wizarding families held elaborate and formal dance balls to celebrate the holidays or a special anniversary or birthday. Snape recalled many a dance he was forced to endure in his youth, partnered with a vapid young social climber or a pucker faced old matron. He let his mind drift and lost himself in the music. After a full set of traditional music, the highborn and other notables drifted away to take refreshments, socialize, admire each other's finery, and rest their feet.
Snape felt he could use a drink, but he couldn't break his cover by removing the cloak. The who's who of Hogsmeade taking a breather, the band broke into more raucous country music. Peasant songs. The dancing was faster, more energetic, with whoops and cries from the crowd. Snape found himself tapping his foot to the music. It was a quiet night, as far as trouble goes. Aside from a few ruffled feathers over dance partner disputes and the expected drunken displays of bravado, the evening was shaping up to be anticlimactic. A complete waste of an evening's work in the potions lab. Snape shifted his weight from foot to foot and checked his watch again, the celebration was winding down, hopefully the crowd wouldn't linger long and he could return to the school, return to work he felt was far more important than being an invisible wallflower at a town dance.
Mirabelle's cousin, Susan, had set her up with a dance partner for the formal dances. He was a widowed trader, a business contact of Albert's. She danced the dances, but felt stiff and stilted. This was not dancing, this was posturing, she thought. Mirabelle just wasn't interested in following her cousin's footsteps in becoming a "cultured lady" of the village. Since her cousin moved to England to be with her love, Albert, so many years ago, she had changed. She was not the carefree girl that Mirabelle had considered more of a sister than a cousin in childhood and adolescence. She was serious, and older than her years. She even dropped her French name for an Anglicized version. She wanted to be a social climber, but had not quite figured out that the grand ladies of the wizarding world were only polite to her because good breeding demanded it. Being a merchant wife, and not from an ancient English wizarding family herself, she would never be accepted into the inner circle of wizarding society. But she tried. Oh, how she tried. The "right" robes, the "right" school for her daughter, the "right" location for their house. But unfortunately, not the right ancestry. Although Mirabelle and Susan were descended from an old French wizarding family, their more recent familial ties with the muggle world tainted their lineage as far as the purebloods were concerned.
The formal part of the evening's dancing completed, Mirabelle accepted a chaste kiss on the hand from her partner, and thanked him for the dances. Then she immediately threaded her way through the crowd to find her friends. Lucilla grabbed Mirabelle by the wrist and pulled her back towards the bandstand. "Come on, I know you want do some real dancing tonight!"
Mirabelle smiled, took the shawl off her shoulders and tied it securely around her hips. She danced with Garrett, she danced with Lucilla's brother, Arnold, and she even danced a turn with Hagrid, the gamekeeper from Hogwarts, who literally lifted her up off the ground and spun her around in his enthusiasm. She caught the eye of her cousin who was sitting with the other ladies, and Susan shot her a disapproving look. "Poor Tricia" she thought. "Having to sit out the fun dances, having to dance with the snobby little sons of the highborn". Tricia looked miserable, but ever so much the little lady she was expected to be, with a pasted on fake smile, chatting idly about nothing with the daughters of the Hogsmeade social elite. The music stopped, and the lights above the square exploded into a shower of multicolored twinkling sparks. The crowd applauded and cheered, the evening had come to an end. Garrett took Mirabelle and Lucilla by the waist and escorted them to the edge of the square. Being a gentleman, despite his country upbringing, he took off his over robe and spread it on the grass for the two women to sit on and rest from dancing.
The crowd was dissipating, Snape watched as many of the attendees trickled down the streets towards their homes, many were apparating, and several took off on broom. The social elite made a great show of being transported back to their manor houses in fine flying carriages pulled by fine horses. Scattered groups of people remained in and around the square. Across from Snape sat a small group of people, including a pair of musicians who had performed during the dance. The man and woman started to play; they played slowly and with an intense beat. One of the women got up and began to dance. Snape's attention drifted, hoping that the stragglers wouldn't drag out the party until dawn, but was brought back to the little group when they started to cheer and applaud and the woman bowed and sat back on the grass. One of the women, a blonde, pulled on another's robe and said, "Your turn now, go on!" The group cheered and applauded as another woman rose and moved to the circle of light under the streetlamp, in front of the seated group.
The music started slow and mournful, the woman started to move to the music. She danced in a way that Snape had never seen a woman dance. She was moving with strength and fluidity, swaying and twining her arms around. The music picked up a heavier beat and she started to move faster, following the backbeat with her hips and shoulders. There was something familiar about her, but her face was to her friends, he knew her, but he didn't know from where. Maybe a former student? The beat picked up in tempo, and she started twirling round and round, and it was when the light from the streetlamp flashed across her face, that Snape realized who she was. It was that woman again. The one from the tailor shop and the tavern. She lived here in the village. He walked to the opposite corner, to get a closer look. She certainly looked different this evening. She was in a dress that clung to her curves and shimmered with the movement of her body, and her hair wasn't up in that frumpy knot she usually wore. The music slowed and she stopped twirling. The drummer intensified the beat and she started to move in a way that made the professor's jaw drop. She faced her friends and started to move her hips and torso in a way that was both sensual and graceful.
Snape stood transfixed, his eyes locked on her hips and the shimmery robe clinging to them. She turned to face him, and the group she was dancing for responded with catcalls and whistles. She was a very sensual woman and relished in it. Snape was quite embarrassed at the sight of her dancing. Wizarding women, no make that wizarding women from good homes, were demure and ladylike and quite a bit old fashioned. The woman dancing before him was none of those things. In fact she was downright tarty. However, not in the same way as the world weary and used up witch whores who plied their wares down in Knockturn alley. This woman held her head high and had no shame. Sexuality and self-awareness like that is magic in its own right he thought. He found himself fixating on her swaying hips and wondered what it would be like to grab her by those hips and pull her down on top of him. He felt the warm flush of arousal in his groin, and was grateful to be inside an invisibility cloak, as he was becoming visibly and rapidly aroused by her dance. She seemed to be dancing for him as the music wound down and she slowed her movements. The group applauded and others who had drifted over to watch her let out catcalls and whistles. She bowed to her audience, and turned and locked eyes with him and smiled.
"How the hell does she know I'm here!" thought the professor in a moment of panic that his cover had been blown during his distraction. He looked down at his feet, realized that he was still completely covered by the invisibility cloak, but wary and taken aback by her seeming ability to know he was there. He quickly crossed the square, putting some distance between himself and the group of people she was gathered with. There was definitely more to this woman than meets the eye. Snape didn't trust her, she was just too different and out of place here in Hogsmeade. There was a story there, and Snape would bet gold that it was a complicated one.
He decided that since the main crowd had left the square, if anything was going to happen, it would have happened already, and decided to call it a night and head back to the school. He had nothing to report, and would not disturb the headmaster this late in the evening. He moved to a secluded alleyway and used the silver matchbox portkey to apparate to the edge of the forest. He made his way undetected to his chambers, went immediately to bed, where he dreamed of being lured into the forbidden forest by dancing nymphs. It was a welcome change from his usual dreams of past deeds and impending doom.
"That was positively inspired, love," the drummer cooed to Mirabelle as she sat and fanned her face.
She smirked and said, "I know, it was for the benefit of my mystery admirer. He never showed his face, but I sensed his presence. I hope he enjoyed the show as much as I enjoyed performing for him. I just hope it wasn't that stick in the mud my cousin set me up with at the dance".
A few more of the women took their turn at dancing, but none could touch the performance Mirabelle gave. They either lacked in physical grace or they lacked the confidence and abandon that Mirabelle felt when she danced. As the evening turned to dawn, the musicians stopped playing, and the stragglers returned to their homes in the village. Lucilla and Garrett walked Mirabelle to the shop, where she bid her friends a good morning, and dragged herself up the stairs and into bed for a few hours of sleep before she had to get up and mind the store.
Disclaimer: If you recognize it from the books, then I didn't come up with it, and I don't own it.
Chapter 6: Dance Like Nobody's Watching, and Love Like You've Never Been Hurt.
The morning of the festival flew by in a blur at the tailor shop. Mirabelle had several last minute customers looking for something off the rack to wear to the dance, as well as people picking up robes that were special orders or which had needed alterations. The only problem was when Elizabetta Moorehead, one of Narcissa Malfoy's socialite friends, burst into tears over the fact that there was simply no time to have an elaborately beaded and embroidered formal robe made up for the dance later that evening. The one she had bought the week before was just not fancy enough, and she was afraid of being shown up by her friends. Mirabelle sent Tricia upstairs to retrieve some fancy jeweled and embroidered shawls from the crate of sample goods brought back from Morocco. She was able to placate the woman with a fine silk shawl that swirled with iridescent colors, and was edged in freshwater pearls. Reassured that no other woman at the dance would have a similar shawl, Elizabetta left the store with her nose in the air and a haughty smirk on her lips.
"Stuck up cow!" Exclaimed Tricia once the woman was out of the store and out of earshot.
"Tricia!" "You shouldn't talk about grown-ups like that... even if it is true".
"I'm sorry aunt Belle, it's just that her daughter is one of the Slytherin girls in my year at school, and she started a rumor that I had a crush on Professor Flitwick and kept all of my school papers from his class under my pillow".
"Oh, really? Hmmmm.... well, I was under the impression that it was another professor of yours that you fancied, the one who teaches your potions class." Mirabelle smirked wickedly as the girl turned red in the face and became totally flustered.
"No way aunt Belle! I'd have to fight you for him, and I know how badly you want him".
"Why you little BRAT! Take your ass home and get ready for the festival, before I curse you and you wind up dancing with two left feet tonight!" Mirabelle pulled her wand out and made playful swishing motions at her cousin's daughter, and chased her out the door of the shop. "That little brat, thinks she knows anything about anything" thought Mirabelle as she locked the door and hurried upstairs to prepare for the dance.
The professors who remained at the school during summer holidays were bustling about, getting ready to head to town for the celebration. Professor Sprout had a fancy bonnet with real flowers on her head and a new robe covered in ruffles, which made her look like nothing more than an overgrown lampshade. Even Hagrid was in the spirit of the celebration. He was just leaving for the village, as he had volunteered to help decorate the bandstand in the town square and carry casks of butterbeer and mulled mead from the pub to the refreshment stands. Dumbledore watched the activity from one of the upper floor staircases. He would not be attending the event; his place was there, at the school. If anything should happen tonight, this is where he needed to be to organize and command the volunteers who had pledged their loyalty to him in the face of the coming battle.
Severus Snape finished up his daily tasks in the potions lab. The healing salve finished, his current project was to make a batch of deflection drops. Taken immediately before a wizarding battle, the potion would help deflect even the most destructive of curses and lessen their impact. A form of magical armor, this potion was complex and took many steps to make. He had come to a stopping point, locked a cask of the half-finished potion away in his cabinet, and retired to his chambers to prepare for his mission.
Snape slipped through the corridors unseen underneath the invisibility cloak, and went to the edge of the school grounds where he apparated to the spot under the bridge. He had cast a silencing charm on his shoes to muffle the sound of his footfalls, and with carefully controlled breathing, he was unlikely to be heard nor seen while infiltrating the crowd. He proceeded directly to the center of town and found a spot just off to one side of the town square and leaned against a lamppost to watch and wait. He observed the townspeople starting to trickle into the town square. Never to be one for parties, he was not at all sad to be there on official business instead of as a participant. It was getting dark, the festival would be starting soon, and he would need to be alert and ready for anything.
Mirabelle checked herself in her mirror, pleased with the alterations and embellishments on the sample robe. She clasped a silver and garnet necklace around her neck, grabbed a diaphanous black spun silk shawl that was edged in fine silver trim and headed down the stairs. She would be meeting her friend, Lucilla, in the square. Tricia, Susan, and Albert would already be there, as Albert was on the festival planning committee and had a seat at the VIP table.
Mirabelle locked the store and joined the procession of people headed towards the square. Everybody was in their finery, there was laughing and joking, a complete change from the usual guarded seriousness that had settled over the village after the attacks of recent months. Lucilla waved for her from a corner of the square. Lucilla was with her current lover, Garrett. Garrett, a large wizard from a nearby farm, was Lucilla's latest in a long line of romances. The trio was joined shortly by one of Garrett's friends, who carried a drum, and a woman who carried a type of instrument that resembled a set of bagpipes. They exchanged pleasantries, and the musicians made their way to the center of the town square, where the bandstand was located.
Snape stood motionless and invisible beneath the enchanted cloak, observing the crowd moving closer to the center of the square, towards the bandstand. A short and stout wizard approached the podium, made some brief announcements, and lit up a riot of tiny lights in the trees and strung above the square with a flourish of his wand. The crowd cheered and the band took the stage and began to play. The music was slow and ponderous traditional wizarding music. The dances consisted of formal precise movements. Descended from Medieval court dances, they were a very important part of the wizarding culture. All of the old wizarding families held elaborate and formal dance balls to celebrate the holidays or a special anniversary or birthday. Snape recalled many a dance he was forced to endure in his youth, partnered with a vapid young social climber or a pucker faced old matron. He let his mind drift and lost himself in the music. After a full set of traditional music, the highborn and other notables drifted away to take refreshments, socialize, admire each other's finery, and rest their feet.
Snape felt he could use a drink, but he couldn't break his cover by removing the cloak. The who's who of Hogsmeade taking a breather, the band broke into more raucous country music. Peasant songs. The dancing was faster, more energetic, with whoops and cries from the crowd. Snape found himself tapping his foot to the music. It was a quiet night, as far as trouble goes. Aside from a few ruffled feathers over dance partner disputes and the expected drunken displays of bravado, the evening was shaping up to be anticlimactic. A complete waste of an evening's work in the potions lab. Snape shifted his weight from foot to foot and checked his watch again, the celebration was winding down, hopefully the crowd wouldn't linger long and he could return to the school, return to work he felt was far more important than being an invisible wallflower at a town dance.
Mirabelle's cousin, Susan, had set her up with a dance partner for the formal dances. He was a widowed trader, a business contact of Albert's. She danced the dances, but felt stiff and stilted. This was not dancing, this was posturing, she thought. Mirabelle just wasn't interested in following her cousin's footsteps in becoming a "cultured lady" of the village. Since her cousin moved to England to be with her love, Albert, so many years ago, she had changed. She was not the carefree girl that Mirabelle had considered more of a sister than a cousin in childhood and adolescence. She was serious, and older than her years. She even dropped her French name for an Anglicized version. She wanted to be a social climber, but had not quite figured out that the grand ladies of the wizarding world were only polite to her because good breeding demanded it. Being a merchant wife, and not from an ancient English wizarding family herself, she would never be accepted into the inner circle of wizarding society. But she tried. Oh, how she tried. The "right" robes, the "right" school for her daughter, the "right" location for their house. But unfortunately, not the right ancestry. Although Mirabelle and Susan were descended from an old French wizarding family, their more recent familial ties with the muggle world tainted their lineage as far as the purebloods were concerned.
The formal part of the evening's dancing completed, Mirabelle accepted a chaste kiss on the hand from her partner, and thanked him for the dances. Then she immediately threaded her way through the crowd to find her friends. Lucilla grabbed Mirabelle by the wrist and pulled her back towards the bandstand. "Come on, I know you want do some real dancing tonight!"
Mirabelle smiled, took the shawl off her shoulders and tied it securely around her hips. She danced with Garrett, she danced with Lucilla's brother, Arnold, and she even danced a turn with Hagrid, the gamekeeper from Hogwarts, who literally lifted her up off the ground and spun her around in his enthusiasm. She caught the eye of her cousin who was sitting with the other ladies, and Susan shot her a disapproving look. "Poor Tricia" she thought. "Having to sit out the fun dances, having to dance with the snobby little sons of the highborn". Tricia looked miserable, but ever so much the little lady she was expected to be, with a pasted on fake smile, chatting idly about nothing with the daughters of the Hogsmeade social elite. The music stopped, and the lights above the square exploded into a shower of multicolored twinkling sparks. The crowd applauded and cheered, the evening had come to an end. Garrett took Mirabelle and Lucilla by the waist and escorted them to the edge of the square. Being a gentleman, despite his country upbringing, he took off his over robe and spread it on the grass for the two women to sit on and rest from dancing.
The crowd was dissipating, Snape watched as many of the attendees trickled down the streets towards their homes, many were apparating, and several took off on broom. The social elite made a great show of being transported back to their manor houses in fine flying carriages pulled by fine horses. Scattered groups of people remained in and around the square. Across from Snape sat a small group of people, including a pair of musicians who had performed during the dance. The man and woman started to play; they played slowly and with an intense beat. One of the women got up and began to dance. Snape's attention drifted, hoping that the stragglers wouldn't drag out the party until dawn, but was brought back to the little group when they started to cheer and applaud and the woman bowed and sat back on the grass. One of the women, a blonde, pulled on another's robe and said, "Your turn now, go on!" The group cheered and applauded as another woman rose and moved to the circle of light under the streetlamp, in front of the seated group.
The music started slow and mournful, the woman started to move to the music. She danced in a way that Snape had never seen a woman dance. She was moving with strength and fluidity, swaying and twining her arms around. The music picked up a heavier beat and she started to move faster, following the backbeat with her hips and shoulders. There was something familiar about her, but her face was to her friends, he knew her, but he didn't know from where. Maybe a former student? The beat picked up in tempo, and she started twirling round and round, and it was when the light from the streetlamp flashed across her face, that Snape realized who she was. It was that woman again. The one from the tailor shop and the tavern. She lived here in the village. He walked to the opposite corner, to get a closer look. She certainly looked different this evening. She was in a dress that clung to her curves and shimmered with the movement of her body, and her hair wasn't up in that frumpy knot she usually wore. The music slowed and she stopped twirling. The drummer intensified the beat and she started to move in a way that made the professor's jaw drop. She faced her friends and started to move her hips and torso in a way that was both sensual and graceful.
Snape stood transfixed, his eyes locked on her hips and the shimmery robe clinging to them. She turned to face him, and the group she was dancing for responded with catcalls and whistles. She was a very sensual woman and relished in it. Snape was quite embarrassed at the sight of her dancing. Wizarding women, no make that wizarding women from good homes, were demure and ladylike and quite a bit old fashioned. The woman dancing before him was none of those things. In fact she was downright tarty. However, not in the same way as the world weary and used up witch whores who plied their wares down in Knockturn alley. This woman held her head high and had no shame. Sexuality and self-awareness like that is magic in its own right he thought. He found himself fixating on her swaying hips and wondered what it would be like to grab her by those hips and pull her down on top of him. He felt the warm flush of arousal in his groin, and was grateful to be inside an invisibility cloak, as he was becoming visibly and rapidly aroused by her dance. She seemed to be dancing for him as the music wound down and she slowed her movements. The group applauded and others who had drifted over to watch her let out catcalls and whistles. She bowed to her audience, and turned and locked eyes with him and smiled.
"How the hell does she know I'm here!" thought the professor in a moment of panic that his cover had been blown during his distraction. He looked down at his feet, realized that he was still completely covered by the invisibility cloak, but wary and taken aback by her seeming ability to know he was there. He quickly crossed the square, putting some distance between himself and the group of people she was gathered with. There was definitely more to this woman than meets the eye. Snape didn't trust her, she was just too different and out of place here in Hogsmeade. There was a story there, and Snape would bet gold that it was a complicated one.
He decided that since the main crowd had left the square, if anything was going to happen, it would have happened already, and decided to call it a night and head back to the school. He had nothing to report, and would not disturb the headmaster this late in the evening. He moved to a secluded alleyway and used the silver matchbox portkey to apparate to the edge of the forest. He made his way undetected to his chambers, went immediately to bed, where he dreamed of being lured into the forbidden forest by dancing nymphs. It was a welcome change from his usual dreams of past deeds and impending doom.
"That was positively inspired, love," the drummer cooed to Mirabelle as she sat and fanned her face.
She smirked and said, "I know, it was for the benefit of my mystery admirer. He never showed his face, but I sensed his presence. I hope he enjoyed the show as much as I enjoyed performing for him. I just hope it wasn't that stick in the mud my cousin set me up with at the dance".
A few more of the women took their turn at dancing, but none could touch the performance Mirabelle gave. They either lacked in physical grace or they lacked the confidence and abandon that Mirabelle felt when she danced. As the evening turned to dawn, the musicians stopped playing, and the stragglers returned to their homes in the village. Lucilla and Garrett walked Mirabelle to the shop, where she bid her friends a good morning, and dragged herself up the stairs and into bed for a few hours of sleep before she had to get up and mind the store.