Igenlode Wordsmith

“My Dear Vicky...”

Lermontov takes up his pen to write a letter, and is not interrupted. AU.

Staring down at the two letters on the desk in front of him, Boris Lermontov knew that he had lost. It was a sensation to which he had been so utterly unaccustomed of late that he experienced it as an almost physical pang, as if the excellent dinner the hotel had served up last night had abruptly begun to disagree with him.

He had thought that Vicky would realise the supreme folly of what she had done: the disaster that must inevitably follow for her career if she walked out on the Ballet Lermontov merely because he, Boris Lermontov, would not permit her to throw away her future on love, marriage, and all such distractions. He could see that stupid affaire with young Julian Craster for the ephemeral nonsense that it was. Sooner or later —he had clung to that certainty even after the news of the wedding— sooner or later she would come to her senses. The world would yield to the sheer force of his will, and Miss Victoria Page would not waste her talents, as she had been doing, in dancing for lesser companies...