“How kind,” Alice says with a sardonic glint in her eye. “But I’m afraid you have more faith in my charms than I do. Twenty-eight may not be elderly, but it is decidedly spinsterish, not exactly the prime attraction for a young man. Even if it were, playing him off Ogden would risk losing them both.” The woman waves her hand, exasperated. “It’s not worth muddling over tonight. I’ll find a way to drag Peyton out of his house and into our trap. Within months, he’ll be left without a rag to wipe his forehead.”
Cora flattens herself against the shelves. A magic trickwould really prove opportune right now. She’s learned quite a bit about deception from watching Prospero’s acts, but an escape stunt remains far outside her current capabilities. Her mind free-falls through increasingly outlandish possibilities: Could she fold herself in half, stuff herself between the books?
“And we’ll be filthy too,” Ward chuckles. “Filthy rich!”
“Precisely.” Alice nods in a way that suggests punctuating the end of the conversation. “The plan is in place. The through line of it, at least. All that’s left are mere details.”
Cora closes her eyes, shifts her legs, which are starting to turn numb from remaining in place so long. Praying for reprieve, until finally,finally, those prayers are answered.
She hears the door to the main sitting room open and close.They’ve left.
Cora bursts toward the door.
And collides straight into the waiting duchess.
Chapter 2
Leave Them Wanting More
“Isn’t this an interesting magic trick?” Alice says in a decidedly German intonation, gripping the younger woman’s elbow. “Levitating into our hostess’s private quarters. I don’t suppose you’ve received a personal invitation.”
“Whereas you got yourself a plum one,” the girl answers, a smart tilt to her chin and a smirk playing on her Gibson Girl lips. “You can drop the accent, by the way. You may have others fooled, but I just heard plenty to suggest where you’re really from. And it sure as heck isn’t Europe. Unless Upstate New York got annexed sometime in the past few years and I didn’t know about it?”
Alice’s grip loosens ever so slightly.Upstate New York.This girl has a good ear. Too good.
“Aren’t you the clever one,” Alice retorts dryly, dropping the accent as requested. The girl rocks back onto her heels like a precocious child who’s just won a spelling bee. “You’re not the one I took you for, are you? The magician’s assistant, up there on the stage. But surely you’re not an invited guest. And in any case, I can’t let you waltz out of here with that.”
She nods to the side of the girl’s long skirt that she’s clearlygripping with the fingers of one hand. The girl feigns bewilderment, but that hand doesn’t budge.
“Don’t know what you mean,” the girl says. “I was just relieving myself, if you must know, in cleaner facilities than that dank little cupboard in the servants’ wing. There. You got me. Haul me off to toilet jail!”
She tries to saunter off, but Alice blocks the way, arms crossed, unimpressed. “Go on. Let’s see it.”
The girl’s eyes flit here and there, as if to assess whether a physical scrap might get her out of this one. Alice is tall, over five feet nine inches, and of a slim but formidable build. Even so, she knows it’s her expression of absolute intractable marble that manages to dislodge the younger woman’s confidence.
The girl sighs in capitulation. Immodestly she digs into the skirts of her gaudy dress, her hand emerging with four slim diamond pins. Iris Witt was wearing them earlier, wasn’t she, to affix that horrendous headdress? It’s a score so obvious that Alice nearly laughs aloud at the foolishness of Iris making such a show of removing them from her head.
If this girl successfully absconds with the jewels, she’d create a ruckus that would, as a best-case scenario, merely distract from the impact of Alice’s own introduction into society; at worst, she’d put these grandees on their guard for the rest of the season. Unacceptable.
The easiest way to stop this little thief currently rests in a discreetly sewn pocket in Alice’s gown—the derringer pistol she never leaves the house without. But perhaps there’s a more delicate way to approach this.
“They’re fakes,” Alice says with a pitying cock of her chin.
The girl’s eyes widen with surprise, but only for a blink. She’s suspicious now, as well she might be. “How can you—”
“Watch.” Alice leans close to the piled pins, enjoying the sight of the girl flinching, then breathes hot air into her hand. “See all this fog? The stones caught and held the humidity. Diamonds don’t do that. This is crystal.”
The girl shuffles back with a scowl, having a look on her own. “I don’t see any fog.”
“It takes a practiced eye, especially in this light.” Alice raises her eyebrows. “It occurs to me that instead of giving you trade secrets, I ought rather to turn you over to the police. This sneak-and-grab routine appears to be a well-honed trick.”
“You? Turnmeover?” The girl laughs. “I’ll be out that window and gone before you can even shout ‘thief.’”
As if to test that theory, she edges closer to the far wall.
Good, Alice thinks,the conversation has moved on from the gemstones.
“An escape artist, are you?” Alice blinks. “I must have missed that part of the act. I’ll have to ask the magician for your name.”
