Beside Alice is Mrs. Ames, cheeks rosy, hands clasped with glee.
On Alice’s other side stands a demolished Arabella.
“So, Miss Cora Ritter,” Harry continues, his blue eyes wide and expectant, his brow now gleaming with sweat. “Would you do me the honor of marrying me? Of joining me as my field guide to life?”
Cora closes her eyes, heart hammering like orchestra drums. She should feel victorious. A sense of accomplishment. She knows this. This is the most important piece of the puzzle clicking into place.
But of all things, her traitorous mind has conjured Harry months from now, alone the day after she and Alice run off with his inheritance.
Will this hapless lad remember this very moment? Will he remember the moment he decided to stumble off the ledge and ruin himself?
She forces herself to smile.
“Of course I will.”
The crowd breaks into cheers.
“There is no time more enticing than as soon as possible,” Harry says into her ear as the crowd descends upon them, the waiters hastening off to fetch glasses of champagne. “I shall have to speak to my father about wedding details, but I am thinking next weekend? Or the weekend after that—”
Cora bites her lip. “Oh, Harry, weddings take time to plan.”
Harry shakes his head, more energized than she’s ever seen him.
“I don’t want to wait one day longer than necessary to start our lives.” His eyes alight. “The weekend of Easter, then. That Saturday. It will be a perfect time to celebrate.”
Cora pales. “I don’t believe I heard you over the noise? Easter Saturday? But that’s—”
Weeks before their ultimate fleece.
“To the future Mr. and Mrs. Peyton!” someone cries.
It’s like a starting bell, the crowd swallowing them whole, gnawing them apart with aggressive cheers before Cora can speak another word on the matter. Pats on Harry’s back, hands offered in congratulations, younger girls fawning over Cora as Mrs. Ames laughs in obvious relief. “What a grand surprise!”
Easter weekend.A mere six weeks from now.
How on earth is she to become Mrs. Harry Peyton in April and rob him blind in May?
And where the hell is Alice, given the grand mess Harry has just made of her carefully constructed plans?
Cora tries to magically summon her, to conjure the elusive woman to appear from thin air, right here beside her in the dining room.
But Alice is the true magician. She’s disappeared.
Nowhere to be found when needed most.
Chapter 17
Shuffle the Deck
As inconspicuously as she can walk in a songbird costume, Alice cuts her way through the gathered crowd, following the encouraging chill of a draft of night air. Passing the grand dining room, she sees that final preparations to the table have been made, the servants standing ready. Perhaps Harry’s proposal delayed the schedule somewhat, but they’ll call for the meal within minutes, leaving Alice only the space of a few breaths to herself to gather her thoughts and form a new game plan, now that the hand they’ve been dealt has been altered.
Out in the garden, the air is thick and cold, threatening more snow rather than delivering. It’s enough to make for a lonely setting, which is just as Alice wants it. She walks the boundary of the courtyard past wintering plants and silent statues.
Leaving aside the newest development—that marriage proposal was not on her list of possible events tonight—Alice has been anxiously preoccupied with what she and Ward were discussing all the way up to the Ameses’ front door tonight.
Thanks to her gesture of amity at the Vandemeer dinnerparty, Mrs. Ogden has felt compelled to issue an invitation of her own to her new bosom friend via Ward McAllister, who had popped by to talk emeralds with her husband. To move forward with an investment in the mining company, Ogden will want one of two things. One: an emerald to have valued. Or two: something Alice is not going to give him.
Before their next meeting, Alice will have to supply him that Colombian gemstone for valuation. As she cannot afford to purchase another, she had determined there was only one option. She will have to replace that necklace with a credible fake so she can remove the stone from its setting and present it to the potential investors as another example of Württembergian riches.
