Relief akin to joy floods warm through Alice’s body.
But she still startles when a parcel falls onto her own lap.
Alice looks up to see Cora standing like a triumphant child, hands on hips.
“Merry Christmas, Duchess. Go on, open it.”
It is a book, leather bound. But when Alice opens the cover, she finds only blank pages inside.
“You’re always keeping so many plans and ideas in your head,” Cora says. “I thought maybe you’d like a place to write them down.”
The last thing Alice would ever do is keep a record of her plans, providing concrete evidence of wrongdoing to anyone who happens to lay eyes upon it. She has jotted notes but immediately burned them in her study’s stove.
Any other day she might have admonished as much, provided another key lesson to this upstart fraud in her charge.
But something about the hope in Cora’s blue eyes makes her press the book to her heart instead.
“This is ever so thoughtful, Cora. Thank you.”
She’ll find some use for it. Perhaps as a ledger.
Lesson Ninety-Nine: Street Comportment (Yet Again)... and Key Information ~ January 19
Cora perches beside the frost-fogged window in the dining room, readingThe New York Herald, an activity that has started to feel illicit, given Alice’s glare every time she catches her.
When footsteps approach briskly, Cora is prepared to fold away the news headlines she was reading—political trouble in Egypt, an alderman convicted of embezzlement, the dispute over ownership of a new coal mine, a forgery plot foiled, murders galore right here in this very city.
Perhaps she’s afraid all this reality will send me running for the hills, Cora thinks, but then Alice appears in the corridor, dressed for an outing.
“Béa’s laid out clothes for you and will set your hair,” Alice announces, perfunctory as ever. “We’re going for a stroll.”
Cora is thrilled—but leashed like a puppy, she realizes, as once out in the brisk city air, Alice dictates a strict path of no more than a two-block radius for their little outing.
“So we’re not overheard,” Alice says lightly. “I want to go over the marks again. And every time someone notes us as we pass, with a nod or a tip of the hat, we will switch to German, or close enough. Understood?”
“Verstanden,” Cora answers, not a little smug.
“Have you ever been fishing?”
That question confuses the smirk right off Cora’s face. “I... Yes.”
“Good. Then you’ll understand this analogy. My overall strategy is to hook all five families in tandem, but to then reel them in one by one. Carefully. And in a bespoke fashion.”
As Alice outlines the backgrounds and foibles of all the marks, she keeps her voice light and sweet as a tea biscuit. A few times, when passing men tap their canes to their bowler hats, they switch quickly to Germanic nonsense, with an accented “good morning,” and then continue their conversation where it’s left off.
It feels like no time at all has passed when they draw up outside Alice’s steps once again.
The moment they step into the blessedly toasty interior, Alice removing her gloves and coat, she fixes her eyes stonily upon Cora and says, “Let’s see what you’ve retained. Ames.”
“Robert and Pearl. First-generation wealth, which has kept them excluded from places like the Academy of Music. Their daughter, Arabella, believes herself to be in correspondence with your brother, the prince.”
“Your angle?”
“They want a royal title in the family. A pedigree. Make Arabella believe an engagement is possible.”
“Vandemeer,” Alice goes on.
“Old money. James and wife, Olivia. Daughter...” This takes her a moment. “Marion, known as Mimi. My angle is to flatter, while dropping subtle hints that others may offer competition.”
