“Ouch.” Cal accepts the bundle with an unblinking glare, submits to Béatrice’s apologetic fetching of his hat and coat.
He bows to a still bewildered Cora, then draws a breath as if to speechify once again.
“Heaven’s sake, surely you can speed this up!” Alice snaps.
Cal whirls around. “That’s it. That’s what we’ll do.”
Utterly exhausted now, Alice flops onto the settee so ungracefully that even Cora’s eyes widen at the sight of it.
Cal hands Béatrice his coat and hat again, then strides to the fire to stoke it—an ominous sign of his intention to settle in once more. “We’ll speed it up. All of it. What was it you told me, Allie-girl?”
“Allie-girl?” Cora mutters incredulously.
“It’s all coming together more quickly than you’d anticipated?” Cal’s eyes have lit up.
Alice blinks in protest. “By which I meant the marks. Getting them all in the same room and—”
“And now they’re all lining up to invest in the mining company. Isn’t that so, Cora?”
Cora sits up. “Well, yes, I think so. All but the Witts.”
“The Witts are interested,” Alice reluctantly admits. “Ward dropped a surreptitious mention over tea. Iris chased him out the door, demanding to know more. The only one missing so far”—she stares meaningfully at Cora—“is Harold Peyton.”
“I don’t know Cora all that well yet,” Cal starts. Alice notes thatyetin judgmental silence. “But something tells me she could wrangle an investment out of that Peyton kid by six o’clock on a Sunday morning.”
“He did propose rather quickly,” Cora says, her expression brightening with hope. “I don’t think a pledge will be much of a leap for him at this point.”
“Interesting,” Alice says. Also interesting is that her brother is gripping his teacup so tightly it looks like he might shatter it. “So what are you suggesting?”
“We move it up,” Cal says, eagerly grasping onto the slight subject change. “The gem evaluations, the sting, all of it.”
Alice’s heart starts to race. “You mean before—”
“Before Easter, yes,” Cal says, glancing at Cora. “So our dear friend here doesn’t have to tie any knots.” He smirks. “Withhim, anyway.”
“You do understand that carves our remaining timeline in half, putting investment day, what? Little more than a month from now?” Alice rises, walking the length of theroom, processing it all. “And there’s still the matter of the embassy—”
“I may have an answer there too,” Cal says. “Chum of mine in the international beat says Finland can’t afford the rent on Embassy Row anymore. I can put in a deposit—today, even. Not in my own name, naturally.”
“Naturally,” Alice repeats dryly. “You really are hell-bent on this, aren’t you?”
Cal meets Cora’s eyes. Something passes between them that Alice can’t decipher.
He turns back to Alice with a shrug. “Sooner we all get paid and get gone, the better, right?”
At long last, he takes that as a cue to exit.
Alice follows him to the door.
As he adjusts his hat, Alice reaches for his hand. Warmth fills her at his reaction to the gesture—so open-faced and earnest, just as he was as a boy.
“You need to stay away from her now,” she says.
He winces. “I—”
“I don’t care what there may be between you. She has a job to do. And she can’t do it with you filling her head with nonsense.”
A muscle works in his jaw. After a moment he nods, buttons his coat, and goes.
