And as Alice watches him leave, unnoticed by any onlookers on the sidewalk, she feels the loss of him as freshly as the day he packed his bag and set out from Poughkeepsie with nary a look back.
But there’s no use in sentiment. Not unless you can leverage it to a greater cause.
“Cora,” she calls sharply, summoning the girl from the kitchen, where she’s apparently launched into an impromptu celebration over her potentially canceled nuptials, she and Béa both sitting atop the counter, emptying glasses of liqueur from a bottle Dagmar is still holding high. “I’ve noticed you’ve got a particular skill withlegerdemain.”
“Béatrice?” Cora looks to the maid. “Care to translate?”
“I believe that in this context,” Béa says, “it means robbing someone. Without getting caught.”
“I’d like your guidance here, Cora,” Alice says lightly.
“Ah.” Cora’s face, already growing rosy with fresh hope, brightens a few watts more. “Right. Happy to oblige.”
“Let’s say you were at the Metropolitan Opera House and you needed to replace the necklace Mimi Vandemeer was wearing with a fake. What would be your strategy?”
“Oh. Well, first, I suppose, we’d need to arrange to bump into her. Naturally, of course. Stage some kind of accident. We should choose somewhere either completely solitary or chaotically crowded.” Cora’s eyes dart to Alice’s. “I do assume we can drop the hypothetical now?”
Alice shrugs, caught. “A fair assumption.”
Cora grins. She straightens, hands clasped to her heart, sighing, “I’ll finally get to wear the opera gown!”
Alice has to turn quickly away to keep in a far-too-fond laugh.
Chapter 22
High-Wire Act
March 17, 1884
“What a wonderfully appropriate performance tonight, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Peyton?” Mrs. Ames winks like a doting aunt at Cora and Harry before taking her seat beside Arabella and her husband of few words in the first row of their private opera box. “A story of love, romance,amore!”
From what Cora’s heard aboutCarmen,it’s actually about the power of one selfish woman to destroy the life of the man who falls in love with her. But given that Harry, her own intended object of seduction, is sitting rigidly beside her, it feels best to keep that observation to herself.
Harry glances briefly at Arabella before taking Cora’s hand and giving it a perfunctory kiss. “Indeed, Mrs. Ames. Maybe the Met knew we would be coming.”
The performance already began before they could take their seats. A cigar factory scene, female choristers singing. Apparently it would be beyond the pale to arrive on time for the opera, she learned recently. That’s when all the more inexpensive seats below are filled. On this level, arrivals are far more leisurely.
Cora must admit, she’d have liked to hear the overture.
A woman enters the scene, draped in beads and gossamer scarves, exotic even for this Spain-set scene. All eyes onstage and off turn to her, just in time for her to begin to sing, deeply, soulfully, and yes—seductively.
Cora flashes Harry a suggestive smile before she, too, considers Arabella. Her smile turns hollow. It’s impossible to ignore how positively peaked the poor girl looks tonight. She appears to be wearing powder, as if to cover splotchy skin, but it’s her puffy eyes that bear the marks of recent crying.
As if to consciously block Cora’s view of her daughter, Mrs. Ames whips her fan open and puts it to immediate use. Cora herself feels no need of her fan, clasped daintily in her lap. The air up here is rarified in more ways than one, nice and cool against Cora’s skin—of which, in this particularly low-cut gown, much has been bared, as per usual these days. Up here in the Diamond Horseshoe, as they call these prized box seats, she feels laid open to society. On display. Exposed.
Or perhaps that’s her mounting jitters over just how much she’s meant to achieve tonight, and the height of this upper-level private box is not helping quell the vertiginous sensation of being about to fall off a cliff.
The Metropolitan Opera House, Cora’s learned, has been open only since October, which may explain why this magnificent space still smells of fresh paint. Despite how new she is to this world, she can clearly see why the house has asserted itself asthefashionable place to convene on Monday evenings in the span of one season. A true feat of design, ingenuity, andthe power of persuasion. Huge, sparkling chandeliers float atop a pasture-sized audience, the curved walls lined, floor to ceiling, with spacious gilded boxes, like lace on the bustle of a massive dress. Downtown’s Academy of Music hardly stands a chance of survival when faced with this competition. One triumph among many for the “new money” millionaires who helped fund the place, including the company Cora is currently keeping.
The Ameses’ box is situated close to the center of the upper ring, though still not as central as Mrs. Ames would have liked (she’s mentioned something to that effect at least five times tonight), and most certainly not as primely positioned as the Vandemeers’ box, which Cora has been watching surreptitiously since the moment they took their seats.
The pretty, perpetually scowling Mimi Vandemeer, dressed all in white, is hard to miss. She’s somehow positioned herself so that the lantern light reflects against the emerald solitaire, making it shine like a green beacon even from this distance. The woman seated beside Mimi is far more subdued in a gown of deep blue, in keeping with her perpetual state of somber fretting over the fate of Württemberg.
No amount of staring will amend the situation, but Cora can’t help but inwardly gripe over Alice’s placement—right beside the damned necklace! If onlyAlicehad the deft hands. For once, she could be the one carrying out someone else’s strategy. And if onlyCora’s own invitation into the Vandemeers’ box hadn’t been preempted by Harry Peyton’s insistence that they attend the opera together, as a newly betrothed couple, in the box of his dear friends, the Ameses.
Alice, as usual, was unperturbed.
“I’m sure you’ll figure out a pretext for visiting us,” she’dsaid and left it at that. What a time to finally have trust placed in her.
