Alice lays the parcel on the table still wrapped in its muslin, then peels the fabric back to reveal it, just as she’ll do for the others. The marks.
“Goodness,” Cora breathes. “That is shiny.”
And shiny is the least of it. A thirteen-carat stone dangling upon a slim, twenty-inch gold chain, its solitaire setting adorned with finely carved roses and vines, creating the illusion that this astonishing gem has simply sprung up from the ground.
The more apt word, to Alice, isperfect.
“And so big,” Cora says, her fingers hovering over the necklace without daring to touch. “Is it a real emerald?”
A fair question, Alice must admit. They’ve spent easily half of their forty-thousand-dollar budget on this piece of jewelry alone.
“Not only is it real and practically flawless”—Alice turns it so that the light catches on the green and reflects it onto the wall—“this is aWürttembergianemerald.”
Setting it down, she leans back in her chair, her hands folded upon her lap.
“Friends, it’s time I laid out to you the next and final stage of our plan, from today through the first of May.” Alice smiles with deep and bitter satisfaction. “The day we take them for all they’re worth.”
Chapter 11
Unexpected Battlefields
February 8, 1884
The carriageclip-clopsdown ice-lined Fifth Avenue, past a parade of gleaming white mansions and stately townhomes, the snow-dusted promise of Central Park growing ever closer from the distance. New York in February is a good sight more frigid than winter in Kansas, though this afternoon’s jaunt has warmed Cora indeed. Béa recently secured the truly marvelous necklace as a lure to intrigue their marks (which admittedly does make Cora wonder about the limits of Alice’s budget), Cora has captured Harry Peyton’s unique attentions, and Alice is thankfully beginning to trust her.
Case in point: While Alice has run off for some mysterious errand involving real estate, Cora was sent back alone from the dressmaker’s early to ready herself for tonight’s dinner at the Vandemeers’. The first time she’s traveling singly as “Miss Ritter” in the three months she has been living in this city.
She settles herself against the bench, bracing for the inevitable turn onto Thirty-Eighth Street, for the now-familiar front stoop of Alice’s home. This is what it must feel like to bepart of a family—ateam, rather, a crew. She never felt valued by Prospero and the troupe, always relegated to behind the stage, hardly embraced as one of their own, even after so many months on the road together. No one besides dear old Maeve even bothered to show her the ropes or teach her the tricks. And yet with Alice, Béa, Ward, even Dagmar, she finally feels she’s where she belongs. On the front lines and, hopefully, on the march toward victory—preparing to take down the city and get exactly what she wants.
They turn off Madison. The driver of the hansom cab helps her down.
“Miss... Ritter, is it? Or can I still call you Cora?”
Cora stops at the bottom of Alice’s front steps with a frown.
She turns to find that increasingly omnipresent reporter fromThe Heraldleaning against a lamppost a few yards away. Cal Archer. Goodness, Alice is right. The man is relentless. Cora is beginning to wonder if he is really seeking out more information about Württemberg or if he’s onto them. And if it is the latter, how long Alice will be able to fend him off.
Cal’s well-fitted brown suit shows off his tall, lean physique. He’s smiling at her, his derby hat set jauntily askew today, a notepad in one hand, a pencil in his other.
Seeing no polite way out, she smiles too. “Cora, yes. It’s lovely to see you again, Mr. Archer.”
He cocks his head, wry. “Is it?”
The question is apt. He’s truly the last person Cora wants to be detained by at the moment, especially without Alice here as chaperone and buffer.
“A joke,” he adds quickly, as if apologetic, but humor lingers in his eyes. “I know how people of my profession are often perceived, even by fans of our work.”
Cora’s cheeks grow hot. Alice was right to glare at her in that last encounter. What had she been on about, declaring her “love” of his writing?
Cal hoists his notepad, seizing on her moment of discomfort. “I was only hoping for a few minutes of your time and then I’ll let you get on with your day.”
“Right now isn’t ideal, I’m afraid,” she says. “I have a dinner engagement tonight and I’m already late.”
Cal glances at his pocket watch. “It’s three in the afternoon.”
She laughs, flustered. “Late to getready.Obviously.”
He nods, eyes sparkling. “It seems you’ve ingratiated yourself quite quickly into New York society.”
