A loud cough from Alice at least manages to rattle the rapt look from Cora’s face.
Cora laughs breathily. “Though I have no idea where Tonkin even is!”
Too little too late, Alice thinks, closing her eyes to keep from rolling them.
“I’d be happy to show you on a map anytime, Miss Ritter,” the reporter goes on, leaning lazily against the stone stoop.
“Call me Cora, if you please, Mr. Archer,” Cora murmurs smoothly. She presses her fingers lightly, briefly into his, flushing slightly before dipping into a curtsy.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, thinks Alice.Of all times to master quietdecorum.“Cora, go inside straightaway now and warm from the cold. I will not be but a moment.”
With obvious reluctance but markedly improved grace, Cora inches her skirt upward, mounts the steps, and disappears inside. Alice raises her eyes to find Dagmar glowering down at the scene from an upstairs window like a particularly fearsome guard dog.
Alice keeps the requested conversation short, seeing young Cal Archer quickly on his way, and when she rejoins Cora upstairs, she is prepared for a peppering of questions.
“He seems to come by often,” Cora starts in. “How are we to handle him?”
“We can start with not appealing to his inflated sense of self-regard by naming other articles of his we’ve enjoyed.”
Cora reddens. “What do you do? He’s here to ask for updates on his Württemberg stories, clearly. What do you tell him?”
“The truth, to start with,” Alice lies. “That I cannot give him any information for fear of endangering my loved ones. He can read into that however he likes—or more to the point, howeverIlike—and run his story on a resistance movement so secret that it’s barely even spoken about from the safety of American shores.”
“But why would he turn up now?” Cora’s forehead wrinkles. “You don’t think he heard about the scene at the church, do you?”
That theory startles a laugh out of Alice. “Even I can recognize that my little outburst hardly constitutes front-page news.”
And yet, it was odd, wasn’t it? All those memories, that surge of emotion. It’s as if she’d summoned him.
“Never mindThe New York Herald, anyway,” Alice announces. “It took us twice as long to get home on foot than if we’d waited outside to take a carriage back. If we delay our Sunday dinner any longer, Dagmar will toss the lot of it away in protest of our rudeness.”
From the doorway, Dagmar grunts her agreement.
Béatrice must have returned mere minutes before their little confabulation with the press. Alice finds the maid warming her hands before the iron stove, her cheeks still pinkened from the cold.
“Did you get it?” Alice asks.
Béa looks confused, which stops Alice’s heart for a beat. “Of course I did.”
Alice lets out an enormous breath, warmth returning to her own body for the first time since she fled Grace Church. Or perhaps, long before that.
As Béa passes her the parcel, Alice lets her hand linger against Béa’s, her eyes downcast as she whispers, “I hope you know how invaluable you are.”
Béatrice lets out a shy breath of a laugh, but she doesn’t pull away until they hear the clank of platters against the dining table—Dagmar’s version of a dinner bell.
After Dagmar lays out the Sunday meal, the most formal one they tend to share over the course of a week—under this roof, anyway—they all four sit together. The sweet German Riesling flows as freely as the conversation, even Béa and Dagmar uncharacteristically matching Cora for chattiness. Alice, finally content, sits back and listens to them, her strange provisional family.
Her mind wanders again to the sidewalk, to the reporter, but she blinks the thought of him away. Tonight is no time forworry or discontent. Not when everything is lining up exactly as it should.
As Dagmar serves up dessert, Alice excuses herself from the table and retrieves the parcel Béatrice passed her earlier.
The spoils of Béa’s discreet and well-timed journey downtown to Maiden Lane’s Diamond District fit neatly into a small muslin cloth. Purveyor Albert Lorsch of Albert Lorsch & Co. may have been at church this Sunday morning, but other, more key members of his “and Co.” were more than willing to accept a covert exchange on a day they don’t consider the Sabbath.
“Do you remember when I asked you if you could fish?” Alice asks, returning to the table.
Cora laughs around the bite of pie she’s just taken. “Mm-hmm.”
“Well, the best thing to lure a big fish... is something shiny.”
