Alice made certain of that, stockpiling them fastidiously in preparation for her larger game. The move to New York this past year. All careful, methodical, nothing rash.
Until that day in Union Square when she met Ward McAllister. She ran the vase trick. He’d seen it pulled by others before. But rather than turning her over to the authorities, he offered her a partnership. He’d been running a bit of a scam himself, it turned out, practically his whole life. Playing the role of a family man of sustained and considerable means. Styling himself as the sole arbiter of taste and good breeding, along with his patroness, Mrs. Caroline Astor. Pretending he didn’t completely loathe all the society denizens who surrounded him day in and day out.
When he learned her plan, he was all in, for a fifty-fifty split, with the understanding that anyone else Alice brought along—like that French-Canadian pickpocket, say, or that brute of a Hun woman from the Battery—would draw their cut from her portion.
Alice doesn’t trust Ward McAllister. She knows better than that. It is an arrangement of mutual usefulness. Isn’t that what all friendships are in the end?
But by that logic, whynotoffer the same to this Cora girl? Perhaps Ward’s right and all it will take is a pretty face and an eager ally to gain access to the last, most important target, the as-yet elusive Peytons.
She slips inside her home without waking her own servants—if she can even truly call them that—slides into her small bed, and sleeps on it. Briefly, as ever.
She wakes just after noon with the next stratagem, and tento follow that one, clear in her mind. And by the time she’s finished her lunch, she’s got it all lined up—the adjustments, the improvements, the new lures and tightening hooks and locked door traps, bespoke to each family—all the way from this very moment, today, November the tenth, until the first of May.
The final stage of a revenge fourteen years in the making.
Chapter 5
The Vanishing Ladies
Upon first seeing her, Cora assumes she is a mirage, a trick of the light, just like Pepper’s ghost. Or else an angel, with her white-blonde hair, smart fur-lined coat, and matching wide-brimmed hat, descended from on high to the hellish bustle of West Forty-Ninth Street. But no, the fake duchess is real, andhere, right at 5 p.m. as requested, standing outside the front doors of the Hopper House.
Cora bursts out of the dingy lobby and into the cold, late afternoon air like a child rushing toward a Christmas tree.
“You came for me.” Cora longs to wrap her arms around the woman but doesn’t dare.
“Whether I leave with you remains to be seen.” Alice archly looks over her shoulder. A few paces down the road, two of Prospero’s burly crewmen guard the show’s caravan of props, while another hefts Dinah’s many pieces of luggage toward the back. “Not the safest place to talk.”
“Perhaps the lobby?” As soon as Cora suggests it, though, she winces. “Although my fellow stagehand, Maeve, will be down at any moment.”
Alice nods down the road, toward the river in the distance,sparkling blue between the rows of dilapidated tenements. “Walk with me.”
Cora folds her coat tighter around her waist and sets out with the regal woman. Past the line of desperate street vendors shouting into the crowded streets from their wooden carts, the sagging front stoops, the elevated Ninth Avenue line rumbling over it all like a gloomy thunderstorm.
“Charming place,” Alice muses.
A gust of frigid wind blows off the water as they turn the corner. Cora tries not to react. This conversation may well be her audition, after all, and instinct tells her that this cunning, ruthless woman beside her might consider shivering a weakness.
“Believe it or not, this is quite nice compared to where we stayed in Philadelphia,” Cora says. “Although I believe one of the buildings down the road from the Hopper is called Hell’s Kitchen. And there was some sort of squabble between street gangs transpiring when I arrived in the wee hours this morning, but they hardly noticed m—”
“Now that we have some privacy, I think it’s best to discuss next steps,” Alice interrupts. She has dropped the accent, at least, but still cuts an intimidating figure, looming over Cora with her perfect posture.
“Yes. Right. Next steps.” Cora nods. “I’m ready. And have some suggestions. Some ideas, rather, given what I overheard between you and Mr. McAllister. I’ve been running plays on my own, you know, for a while, and—”
“A while?” A faint smile lifts Alice’s lips. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.” Cora tries to ignore Alice’s eye roll. “I’m not claiming to have pulled any big jobs, but I’m a quick study, and I’ve long thought about—”
“I’m not interested in your thoughts.” Alice purses her lipsas they sidestep two young men quarreling in the street. She takes Cora’s elbow swiftly and pulls her along. “I have a very discreet, specific need and believe that you might be able to fulfill it. I expect you to do exactly as I ask, without hesitation, objection, or embellishment. If you are so willing, we can continue this conversation. If not, it looks as though your troupe is minutes from embarking on yet another magical adventure. So which is it to be?”
Again, Cora resists the urge to bristle, this time from Alice’s chilly tone. So she is expected to play a lackey once more, a mindless minion to a greater star. Not exactly the type of angle or experience she was hoping for when she solicited this woman as a mentor.
Then again, given the circles this confidence woman moves within, Cora suspects she’ll get everything she wants in the end—the money, her farm, a real future. Besides, who’s to say Cora can’t work to earn the woman’s trust, just as she once hoped to do with Prospero? After all, there is always room for upward mobility, for growth.
Cora nods. “I am so willing.”
“Good.” Alice turns her attention forward, setting a new pace, as determined and brisk as a military general. Cora has to scramble to keep up with her. “The game I’ve begun, and that you have now entered, is already fully laid out. The rules. The players. The strategy. So it’s best that you simply listen from here on out. Mr. McAllister and I have recently concluded the first stage, establishing credibility—”
“With whom, exactly?” Cora interjects, genuinely curious.
