Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards by Kit Brennan

Author:Kit Brennan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Whip Smart
Publisher: Astor + Blue Editions Llc
Published: 2012-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

Meanwhile, I was still meeting with Donatella and pursuing my dancing lessons—one of the most enjoyable portions of my week. I carried on energetically in my role as Cupid, burning the midnight oil in true Spanish style. Spaniards, I’ve come to understand, are tempestuously exhausting, and usually exhausted. That is why they need siesta; after sexual satisfaction comes the only hour or two they’re truly asleep. I was at the palace all day, I danced in the late afternoon, performed all evening, didn’t eat until midnight, and my night was still going strong at two or three in the morning as I tried to slow down enough to be able to sleep. The only thing missing was the sex, alas.

Not everything was rosy at the theatre. It was Christmas; the audiences seemed in raucous moods prior to the closing of the season. I did finally track Ventura down; he’d been organizing the impending masked ball in a different venue and was pulling his hair out over it. “It’s our best opportunity, Rosana. I’m receiving updates from Grimaldi daily.”

My stomach lurched. “And is he pleased with our progress? I mean, with mine? We must speak about the tutor, Ventura. It’s damnably difficult, the man is so—”

The playwright looked up from his desk. “What?”

I blinked rapidly and tried to stay calm. “He is corrupt, but in this matter I believe he is incorruptible. We need to come up with an alternate plan concerning the tutor.”

He looked down at his papers and pursed his lips. My heart lurched in my chest. Why was he not saying anything?

“That matter of the fly tower,” I said. “Did you ever discover—?”

“Nothing.”

“There was a man in Paris. Your brother said he knows him as an associate. Pedro Coria? Has a glass eye; tall, mad bugger? Is there a chance that he—”

“We don’t know who it was,” he said, returning to his paperwork and ending our discussion, “but it will never happen again.”

Oh, I was sure of that too, because I’d decided to take my safety into my own hands. Every night now, I flew with one of the little pistols tucked into my costume, powder tamped and little metal cap secured over my left nipple, ready to place in the loaded barrel at a moment’s notice. I kept the second pistol hidden in its faux book in my dressing room; they returned with me to the palace at night. I was taking no more chances. Now, when I landed on the platform (like a tiger on a roof) after my flight upwards, one hand was at my waist, ready for the return of that shadowy demon.

Desire to remain sharp also led me to ask Luisa Fernanda whether I could set up a target in one of the palace gardens and be allowed to shoot. This request thrilled her and, being the curious child that she was, she even managed to pry out of me a bit of the story behind the request. I told her the theatre was dangerous sometimes and that there had almost been an accident.

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