The servant thrusts her chin in the direction from which Cora came. “Thataway! Guest has a tear, yes, yes. It’s a parade of fashion emergencies. Out you go—”
“To Mrs. Witt’s quarters?”
“Ha, are you mad? They’ll be in the guest room upstairs.” The woman all but shoves Cora back into the hall.
All right, Cora, reset. Time for a new plan.
She returns to the marble hallway, then stealthily crosses over into the empty theater. Once inside the space, she spies a luxurious velvet shawl discarded on a seat. Perfect. She nabs the piece and heads backstage for Dinah’s dressing room.
After closing the door, Cora hastily exchanges her black shirtwaist and skirt for one of the assistant’s gaudy, floor-length gowns. As a final embellishment, Cora opens the sewing kit she’s been saddled with and, with a few swift stitches, secures one of Prospero’s black silk scarves into a waistband that matches the shawl.
Next, she helps herself to Dinah’s mess of rouges and powders stacked on an end table, then tugs down her hair and, with a couple of deft moves, retwists it into a piled tousle of curls.
Cora studies herself in the room’s opulent mirror.
“Not quite Madison Avenue. But it’ll do.”
She hurries onto the stage, stopping for a moment to look out at the empty theater, imagining, for just a moment, those elusive spotlights finally shining onher.
In another life, perhaps. In this one, Cora is running out of time.
After leaving the theater via the far entrance, she enters the main hall on its opposite end. From there, she walks swiftly into the Witts’ grand foyer, holding her head high, as if she owns the place. Disregarding the quizzical tone of a butler asking if she’s lost.
“Just taking a break from the festivities,” Cora says airily. “These events can be so demanding, do you not agree?”
“Yes, madame, but if I could—”
Ignoring him, she glides headlong past, rounding another hall peppered with marble busts and tapestries. Mrs. Witt’s dressing rooms must be somewhere in this expansive maze.
The hall soon dead-ends, and Cora makes the swift decision to turn left, and...Voilà.She’s rewarded with the sight of the two footmen and a lady’s maid now holding the feathered headpiece and tray of pins, the lot of them idling and chatting down the other end.
Cora tucks herself into an alcove, waiting, watching as the servants share a quiet joke. The footmen finally disappear into a doorway on the right as the maid takes the bounty, passing two rooms before turning into the third door on the left.
Cora hangs back for one heartbeat, two... and then sneaks in behind her.
Mrs. Witt’s private quarters.
The room is dark, but Cora can still see enough that pureenvy closes around her, stifling, like a spell box. Such luxury, extravagance. Excess. A canopy bed, damask-patterned walls, a sitting room, a moonlit vanity, and an elevated dressing stage.
She retreats into the shadows, feeling even more determined now.
The lady’s maid carefully lifts each diamond pin from the tray and places them one by one inside a jewelry box on the vanity, then crosses the room and lays the feathered headpiece down like a sleepy child into a long velvet box at the foot of the bed.
Finally, the maid returns to the hall, shutting the door with a satisfyingclick.
Showtime.
Cora hurries toward the vanity and opens the box, lifting one of the pins for inspection. The delicate, intricate piece glimmers like a promise under the tall casement window’s swath of moonlight. Twenty-four beautiful diamonds.
She swallows a triumphant squeal. No more waking up in one city and falling asleep the following night on the way to the next. No more toiling away in the shadows for her weekly pittance or slinking through the vaudeville crowds, always on the prowl like a famished hyena.
Cora conjures the image of her old clapboard farmhouse, the endless stretch of wheat, the way the sun glints off the winding creek at sunrise. Then, even more satisfying, she pictures the stunned, defeated faces of those avaricious lenders when she walks into their offices and slaps a stack of bills on the table.
Coraline O’Malley, victorious. Nobody’s fool.
Invigorated by her fantasies, she affixes the pins inside her skirts.
When she attempts the door, however, she finds it locked.Good God, nothing is ever easy.
