Author's Note: Edited for some spelling and grammar errors but is otherwise unchanged. Enjoy!
The curtain had fallen.
The cast had taken their final bows and once they were cloaked in darkness the budding young soprano, Clara Josepha Cavalier, tore from the stage with her heels striking loudly on the wooden boards while she held up the voluminous skirts of her lavender dress. She pushed past the chorus, stage technicians, and wardrobe to her private dressing room. With the opera now finally over she could no longer hold back her pain or the tears rolling down her powdered cheeks.
Shutting the door sharply behind her, the perfume of the many bouquets of flowers left by fans fill her nose as she tears at her powdered wig. Choking back sobs, she throws the buoyant hair onto a nearby chaise lounge. Her own hair, darkly colored and tightly curled, coil against the sandy skin of her neck and down her back. No amount of pale powder or wig could hide her dusky color but that only seemed to add onto the novelty of Clara's growing fame.
Sniffing back tears, the young woman attempts to pull herself back together as she stares into the mirror of her vanity. She wipes her makeup away with little care. The blush, the heart shaped "beauty spot" on her right cheek, the cherry painted lips, all of it must go. Then when she can sob more openly she does just that, sinking into the chair at her richly decorated vanity with only the flickering warmth of a candelabra to light her.
It is when she thinks she can cry no more that her door opens then closes softly and light but familiar steps approach her from behind. A rich and spicy cologne cuts through the sweetly feminine scent of the flowers, it is powerfully masculine and distinctive to one particularly masculine woman. Clara can feel her heart beating rapidly against the binding press of her stays.
"You were beautiful on stage as always, Clara," the young woman won't look up just yet, though the voice's husky baritone warms her, "and your crystal voice captured every mind and ear in the opera house."
The shuffle of clothes, the creak of the floorboards, the long curls of the woman's lion's mane hair brush her shoulders as she practically purrs in her ear. It sets the soprano's nerves on edge and when she feels the pressure of a gloved hand on her arm she can stand it no longer and slaps it away.
"Captured every mind and ear but yours, Louis! You
embarrass
me! Embarrass me openly in your box while I perform!" Clara accuses venomously, finally whirling around to face the very source of her anger and despair.
Louis HΓ©roux, well known as not only a lover of women but also so fabulously wealthy that what would be a scandal of her wearing men's clothes and adopting a man's name was almost entirely ignored. Yet she always insisted that she was a woman despite her handsome looks.
She was richly dressed to impress for the opera today. Her cravat was neatly tucked and crisply white, a stark contrast against the dark blue of her waistcoat, jacket, and breeches embroidered with gold thread. Her dark brown hair tumbled over her shoulders in an abundance of curls, most men wore a wig to achieve what came naturally to her.
Her olive skin spoke to her French countryside upbringing and her angular face carried a bemused smile at Clara's accusations. The tall woman raises a brow and begins to pull her gloves off finger by finger before answering her.
"Embarrassed you how, my love. My eyes were only for you." Perhaps her words were meant to be an inquiry but from Louis' mouth it sounds more closely aligned to a command.
"Yet your hands and lips were for that
snake
, Selina von Wulfen! I saw you, everyone saw you!" Clara hisses as she gets to her feet, her voice cracking with pain and her full skirts pushing the chair back from where she stands. Against Louis, the soprano is a head and a half shorter than her statuesque figure but she won't be intimidated.
"That would mean that I would have
paid
for Selina von Wulfen and I did no such thing." Louis' voice is calm and deep. Now finished removing her gloves she tosses them aside onto the chaise still holding Clara's forgotten powdered stage wig.
"You are a liar, Louis HΓ©roux. You lie to me! You think me a blind pretty parrot that you can keep in your gilded cage of-"
"Clara," Louis interrupts, some bite in her voice that warns the younger woman that she is edging dangerously close to a line, "tread carefully with how you speak to me."
This warning does make Clara shut her mouth but in her brown eyes it is clear the sun-kissed woman is seething with anger. And her anger wins.