The only glitch came at the end. That girl, the magician’s assistant, or so Alice assumes.
But that was resolved neatly enough. Didn’t even have to use her gun. Five dollars is far less than those pins were worth, even if they had been crystal, but as far as a trouble-free bounty goes for someone of that chit’s station, it’s nothing to sneeze at.
Neither, for that matter, is the five-hundred-dollar banknote Mr. Ogden passed her earlier in the evening while whispering a declaration of admiration into her ear.
“For your own troubles,” he’d breathed. “You mustn’t neglect yourself, Duchess. You arefartoo beautiful to bury yourself in worry.”
She’d had to fight the urge to scrub the humidity of his breath from her ear, along with the memory of a dinner party long ago, that same ever-so-handsome Mr. Ogden sliding his hand over her mother’s wrist, murmuring into her ear. Her own mother, fighting to hide her horror, for the sake of propriety.
Brett Ogden may well prove the easiest of the five marks.
Alice mentally recites their names in a loop as she steps from the carriage onto the night-damp street and up the stoop into Ward’s home.
“Allow me a moment to loosen my tie,” Ward drawls, motioning Alice toward the sitting room while he trots upstairs,tugging a bell string as he passes, to rouse some poor housemaid or other.
Ward’s wife is also abed, but Alice doubts he’ll wake her. She may not have even realized he’d been out to a ball tonight. All social invitations include Sarah, but she always declines, due to her ill health and borderline agoraphobia. Alice herself has only met the wan woman once in these past few months of her business acquaintance with Ward McAllister, and came away with the impression of an actress who had been assigned the role of “Wife” but not been given any lines to memorize. They have three grown children, Alice recalls, spotting their childhood portraits in oil hanging upon a wall in triptych. Clearly they had some degree of rapport before Sarah’s convalescence, but even so, Mrs. McAllister feels akin to so many other aspects of Ward’s life—his Southern grandiosity, his “working farm” in Newport, his highly placed social intimates—all a matter of well-thought-out conspicuousness and clever misdirection. Distractions from his bevy of male companions and, perhaps more importantly, his perpetually strained finances.
As predicted, a maid appears in the sitting room doorway, hastily dressed, her hair still rumpled from bed beneath her white cap. Alice is too exhausted to sympathize with her at the moment.
“A glass of claret before you see to the fire,” she says, retaining her royal hauteur and Germanic accent.
The servants have more power than most people realize. And goodness, do they talk.
“Very good, miss,” the maid replies, swallowing down a yawn.
Alice resettles her gaze on the tired woman. “Just leave usthe bottle when you’re finished. I shouldn’t expect we’ll need anything else.”
After the maid gratefully retreats, Alice sips her heady wine, basking in solitude on the settee, listening to the fire crackling back to life, along with her own habitual recitation:
Ogden. Vandemeer. Ames. Witt. Peyton.
Ogden, that cut-rate Don Juan. Vandemeer, that overgrown child, who must always be fastest, first, best. Ames, who hates that he’s new money. Witt, the merry widow with her vicious, ever-changing whims. And Harold Peyton Sr., the ringleader, the mastermind, the one who put it all in motion, and therefore the true worst of them.
All five of them complicit. Those fine families. Their upstanding reputations built on rotten foundations.
And her own family, their greatest victim.
Alice sips her claret, taking in Ward’s modest sitting room with its charmingly chintzy furniture. Still larger than any room in Alice’s current home, though her apartments a few blocks uptown are certainly respectable enough for the exiled duchess she purports to be. Lolling her head against the back of the settee, she recalls the first bolt-hole she landed upon returning to the city, a small hostelry run by a woman of exquisite confidence, who didn’t bat a single eye to see Alice step out day after day in the very same elegant gown (indeed, the only one she owned). When she’d given her landlady her final rent payment and announced she’d be moving on, she was greeted with a knowing wink and a “well done, my dear” that made an unaccustomed smile rise to Alice’s own lips.
She thinks now also of the places she lived before that. The indistinguishable stream of lodgings in out-of-the-way corners of Montreal, one to the next, so she’d never get waylaidor caught. Before that, the years upon years squandered in that ancient, claptrap, falling-down mansion-turned-boardinghouse in Poughkeepsie. The single room she shared with her mother and, for a time, before he made his escape, her little brother. And the baby, of course. So very briefly.
She remembers the shuddering sobs of her mother from the other side of the tin bed, shaking the thin mattress night after night. The swarms of flies in the summer and the chill of winter seeping in through the cracks in the ill-fitted window frames. And all around them, the sounds of other boarders, wracked with coughs, or barreling drunken laughter, or singing softly to children who were born hale and healthy, unlike her own little sister, who barely was.
And though she’s not in the habit of training her mind back that far, now Alice remembers her sitting room on Madison Avenue. Her nanny holding her by the hand as she greeted the grown-ups in their glittering gowns and smoking jackets, the sweet smell of pipe smoke filling the room. Her mother rosy-cheeked then, eyes bright and innocent. Her father with his straight smile and white teeth and bristled mustache.
Alice stands, inhaling deeply. Her pulse roars in her temples as she grips the stem of her glass.
“Your Grace?”
Alice stifles a flinch as she turns to see the housemaid standing in the doorway, looking bewildered. “I believe you may have a visitor.”
Chapter 3
Loose Ends
Compared to the grandeur of the Witt home on Madison Avenue, Ward McAllister’s residence is modest, a narrow, three-floor townhome on Thirty-First Street, although Cora supposes there is a certain unmistakable care and pride in its keeping, the set of rosebushes encased inside the wrought iron fence, the potted plants lining the stoop.
She steels herself with a fortifying breath, watching the home from a ways down the block. She can see movement through its front window. A maid, perhaps, or butler. Given that she followed Alice and Ward here by carriage—having spent the bulk of Alice’s measly five-dollar payoff on this trip—she knows they’re inside too. Scheming, no doubt.
