Cora stops when her gaze falls upon a young man lingering on the front stoop, dressed in a crisp, multipiece suit and a derby hat. Smoking a cigarette, as if he owns the place. He’s tall, Cora notes, with even features, striking blue eyes... Quite handsome, actually. Almost distractingly so. His smile rises when he sees Alice accompanied by Cora, one eyebrow quirking.
Alice spins around, cursing under her breath, dragging Cora backward a few steps.
“Who is that?” Cora whispers.
“That is no one,” Alice mutters. “A nuisance.”
Cora steps forward. “Well, can’t I—”
“You cannotdoanything. You’re not ready. He’s a newspaper man—and a particularly dogged one, if you must know.” Alice glances over her shoulder, then sighs. “Wait here by the carriage and do not say a word.”
Cora does as she’s told. Still, she attempts to glean whatever terse words are exchanged between them. The man trots off with only a smirk and a tip of his hat before she can parse much of anything.
Interesting.She makes a mental note to ask again about him later. A woman posing as a fictional grand duchess would hardly welcome the attention of the press. Then again, much of Alice’s con seems based in truth (if Cora was rightly following any of it).
She hurries forward, trailing Alice up two flights of stairs, and into a meticulously furnished apartment: mahogany bookshelves in the entryway, a homey sitting room with a lovely view of the tree-lined street below. And then all the way down a central corridor and into a tiny back bedroom, one containing no more than a bare cot, a small washbasin, and a decidedly less lovely view of a manure-speckled alley.
“This will be yours while we prepare. Luckily, we had it ready. It’s sat empty these past months, surplus to our needs.”
Cora nods, trying not to show her disappointment. Though what did she really expect at this juncture, a Württembergian castle with an emerald keep?
Alice watches her closely, eyes narrowing. “The others have taken the servants’ quarters, but I’m sure they’d be happy totrade for a room with a window if you’d rather lodge near the kitchen with them.”
So much for hiding her reaction.
“This is perfect,” Cora says. Then: “The others? Who—”
“My cook, Dagmar, and my housemaid, Béatrice.” Alice pronounces the latter in the French way. “And in case you’re wondering, yes, they know all about our plans and have their own parts to play. Though not as showy a part as yours.”
That gets Cora’s heart racing again.
“The season is already in full swing, I take it, considering last night’s affair?” she says. “I’ll need some fine dresses, not that that’s a priority, obviously. Just building out our checklist. Emeralds too, I suppose?” Cora swallows, attempting to recall the deluge of details Alice rattled off on their walk. “And if I could just get alittlebit more detail on my backstory—”
“Plenty of time for that,” Alice says. “The parties won’t begin in regular fashion again until late January, starting with the Patriarch’s Ball.”
“January?” Cora says, appalled. “But that’s months away. What am I meant to do in the mean—”
“You are to stay with me. Here. Hidden until you’re ready.”
“But... I am ready.” She spreads her arms impatiently. “Ta-da!”
Alice lets out a startled laugh. It’s a surprisingly infectious sound.
“We 'ave a guest, Your Grace?”
Cora turns to see a petite woman in the doorway, attired simply but immaculately in the dress of a housemaid. Her dark hair is piled atop her head, and it strikes Cora that she might be quite pretty if not for the jagged scar that mars the length of one cheek.
“Ah, Béatrice.” Alice’s entire body seems to soften at the sight of her. “You can dispense with the formalities. This is Cora. She’s one of us now.”
Cora feels an unfamiliar warmth spread through her at the sound of those words.One of us.She never had a true family, not really. Her brother left when she was just a girl, and the relationship between her and Da always felt more obligatory than fond.
She shakes her head.Come now, Cora, don’t be a fool.This is a job, same as the troupe was. It is silly, even dangerous, to think of this arrangement as anything else.
That shrewd thought is only further underscored by the sight of Alice’s second servant.
Dagmar is easily six feet tall, too wide to fit through the doorframe, and as solid and serious as a railway car. She eyes Cora with open dubiousness.
“One more for dinner, Dagmar,” Alice says, breezing past them all into the hallway. “She’ll be with us until our project concludes.”
