PROLOGUE
CHICAGO
NOVEMBER 28, 1903
Approximately Five Months and Five Days Before the Murder
GRACECARTERCOVINGTONwas dressed in layers of clothing—a fur coat and muff surreptitiously stolen from her aunt, a satin gown spun from her dreams, and even silk undergarments that didn’t belong to her—but she hadn’t realized quite how naked she would feel without her cousin Lillie there.
The mansion in front of her was intimidating, its carved limestone ablaze with lights against the winter night sky. Lit paper lanterns and rose-filled votives floated in two pools that flanked the entry walk like outstretched wings. Beyond it, warm strains of ragtime music beckoned them forward. A light snow was beginning to fall.
Grace took a step out of the carriage with her cousin Oliver at her side. He was utterly at ease, but this was his world, not hers, and it made her feel even more out of place. He must have felt her suddenly stiffen because his hand found hers within the fur muff.
“You’re understandably nervous,” he said sympathetically, squeezing her hand. “Given how the rich in Chicago select a guest at every party to be pecked to death by their pet geese.”
“Your attempts to relax me are alarming,” she muttered. But he laughed and the sound did make her calmer. She felt the tension melt a little from her shoulders as she tugged at the slip beneath her dress, onethat Lillie had lent her before collapsing back onto her bed that evening. Lillie, Oliver’s sister and Grace’s best friend in the world, was normally at her right hand, but she had suddenly come down with a fever and had insisted Oliver and Grace go without her.
“We didn’t come all the way to Chicago for you to sit at home with me,” Lillie cried. “Especially not inthatdress.” Lillie had ordered two gowns for herself but, unbeknownst to her mother, had one modified to meet Grace’s measurements instead. It fit Grace like a glove: pale blue satin with panels of embroidered flowers and a curve of wisteria vines trailing down her arm.
It was without question the most beautiful thing she had ever put on her body.
“It’s the party of the century,” Lillie had said. She waggled her eyebrows, her face flushed with fever. “That is, of course, until the Ivory City next spring.”
And so Grace had given her cousin’s fevered cheek a kiss and arrived with Oliver on her arm.
“Mr. Oliver Carter and Miss Grace Covington,” the butler announced.
The grand foyer was filled with Chicago’s most elite society members, all of whom now turned to examine them.
Oliver whispered in her ear. “I suppose this is as good a time as any to share that I’ve never forgiven you for squashing that orange down my pants.”
She snorted as he bowed to the crowd. “Nor I you,” she whispered, “for the melted chocolate in my bed.”
“You really were a formidable eleven-year-old,” he said.
She curtsied to the crowd, and for a moment she thought of her older brother Walt, and what it might have been like to arrive on his arm. But that was a dream for another life. She no longer knew whereWalt was, a thought that pinched like too-tight shoes. She hoped he was somewhere warm tonight. Saying a small prayer under her breath for him, like she always did, she brushed the trailing wisteria along the skin of her arm and handed her borrowed fur coat to the butler.
“The Chicago rich pecking you to death was actually a bit of a metaphor,” Oliver said as they moved to join the crowd. These were the people that Oliver and Lillie belonged to, as heirs of the Carter Merchant Company their shared great-grandfather had built. Once, in a different world, these would have been Grace’s peers, too. But her mother Nell had chosen the shame of falling in love with a working-class man and the disinheritance that came along with it. As it turned out, all manner of heinous sins could be forgiven a person, except for the deliberate rejection of her own class.
“You don’t say,” Grace said, as Oliver took a flute of champagne from a passing tray. She followed his line of sight to a young stage actress she recognized from back home in St. Louis.
“Is that—?” she asked.
“Harriet Forbes,” Oliver said. “Yes.”
“Ah,” Grace said with a wry smile. “And here I thought you’d brought me along for my scintillating company and sparkling conversation.”
“Well that, of course, darling,” he said, suavely turning away from Harriet, “but if people are talking about you they won’t be talking about us.”
“Thank you, cousin,” she said. “I love being used as a decoy. Please remind me to decline your next hunting invitation.”
He laughed. “Let me reward your invaluable service with a punch.”
“And a petit fours, please, at the very least,” she called after him. He raised his right hand in acknowledgment without looking back,shaking his head as though he were smiling. And she, without being asked, made her way through the crowd toward Harriet Forbes. Grace loved her cousins better than anyone and would do anything short of murder to help them.
“Hello,” she said warmly to Harriet as she approached. Outside of situations like this one, Grace normally had no problem making friends—shewasn’t the person concerned about her status, or lack thereof. And perhaps because she wasn’t doing this for herself, but for her cousin, she found that her nerves were suddenly gone. “I’m Grace Covington,” she said, curtsying.
“Harriet,” the woman said. “Forbes.” She wore her hair pulled up with ribbons, and earrings that were a cluster of dangling garnets. Her cream dress spilled over with dark roses.
