Slightly panicking, Cora surveys the whole of the room, her gaze soon falling on a second door—this one narrow and latched—on the adjacent wall beyond the sitting room.
Her body wilts in relief. Another way out.
It’s hard to tell where the pocket door leads as Cora inches it open, given that the adjoining room is dimly lit. Another sitting room, perhaps? A parlor? Regardless, Cora slides through, emerging in a narrow space between two tall bookshelves. But just as she’s about to make her exit...
She realizes she is not alone.
“I’d say that was a success, dear Duchess,” a male voice quietly crows. “If a brief one.”
Cora presses her back against the wall. There are two people here, in fact—the bearded man with the cane and the pretty European noblewoman with ice-blonde hair.
Damn it all.Maybe Cora won’t be noticed, wedged between these high shelves. Safer here, in any case, than utterly exposed in the middle of the hostess’s bedroom.
She’ll simply have to wait them out.
From her shielded vantage, Cora watches the man stride, cane-assisted, across the room. He makes himself right at home with the drinks cabinet, where a decanted bottle of sherry waits to be poured.
“I’m not taking unnecessary risks, Ward,” the woman answers in a low, flat American accent—a very different elocution than she had used earlier during the party, Cora notes.
“Time’s a’ticking,” says the man—Ward? “We don’t set this in motion soon and we might forfeit half the season.”
He hands his companion a glass of sherry.
The woman swirls it before sipping, scowling a little, as if in deep thought, while Ward sits back down with a contented sigh.
“And we can’t risk letting this play into the summer, Alice,” Ward says. “Only so long before word gets out about secret mines.”
Cora’s heart ticks like a metronome.Forfeit the season?Secret mines?
How... fascinating.
Also... none of her concern!
She’s hiding on her person a collection of stolen, hopefully exorbitantly expensive diamond pins. Whoever these people are, if they catch her, they’ll no doubt rat her out to Mrs. Witt. She’ll not only lose the score, but she’ll also lose the farm and likely her job, low-paying as it is. Perhaps she could even wind up in jail.
Cora focuses her entire being on willing their departure.Leave, you wretched interlopers!
“An excellent point,” says the duchess—or Alice, as this Ward fellow just called her. “And four of the five families are now at play, thanks to this social outing, so you were right about that as well.”
“As to the fifth...” Ward strokes his impressively pointed beard. “Are you dead set on Peyton? We could—”
“Peyton is nonnegotiable.” The tall woman’s voice has gone stiff. “He’s the worst of them.”
“As well as the most intractable,” Ward mutters. “I laid the groundwork with his business manager, but no dice. Silas posed the proposition, told him about the mines. Peyton shut him right down: ‘Not interested.’ I fear he’ll need a moresubtle form of persuasion, but I’m unsure as to how to achieve that without an actual tête-à-tête. And like I said, Alice, the man’s a veritable hermit. No one other than Silas—and I meannoone—has seen him for years.”
“We’ll simply have to find a way to draw him out.” Alice sits up straighter, eyes sharpening. “Perhaps we could approach him at his ch—”
“Church? Whatchurch?” Ward laughs. “The man’s the devil himself, as you said. What use has he got for God? He hardly lets his own son see the light of day anymore.”
“His son.There—that’s an angle. The son has got to be, what? Twenty-three by now?” Alice paces the room, thinking.
Cora feels her own heart pounding.
“Twenty-two, I believe,” Ward answers quickly. “Now, what are you pondering, Alice? That the younger Peyton might be lured into—”
“Forget it. It won’t work.” The woman sighs. “He’s too young.”
“You are very beautiful.” On the bearded man’s lips, it feels more like a clinical observation than a flirtation. “And twenty-eight is hardly elderly.”
