“I’ll stay a bit longer,” Alice says, turning away. “A few more things to see to.”
“At eleven o’clock at night?”
Alice doesn’t answer.
Behind her, Ward sniffs.
“Very well, then, Your Grace, I shall see you at our next social occasion.” He slips from the door and escapes onto the darkened street.
And Alice’s knees grow too weak to hold her upright.
She sits on the reception room floor for a long while before finally picking herself up and seeing herself out, locking the door behind her. Her door. Her embassy.
The thought is a cold comfort, the thrill of achievement all but eviscerated now.
She’s glad, at least, that she never entered her brother’s name into her confidence with Ward McAllister. Still, the scoundrel knows far too much. She cannot risk him learning all of it.
A church bell rings as she passes the southern border of Central Park. Eleven o’clock, as Ward said. If there is ever atime when it would be acceptable for a lady of high station to walk alone on a city sidewalk, it certainly isn’t now.
That’s why I have this gun, she recalls, patting her pocket again in reassurance. In her early days in the city, she’d lived in places where women frequently walked alone and were subject to potential muggings, harassment, or worse. The gun was an investment against those possibilities, one she thankfully never had to use. Funny how it’s here among the wealthiest that she’s been forced to draw it.
But not to fire it.
She breathes slowly, walking against the blustery wind, and reminds herself that she is a person of free will, not to be battered about by the fates. No, not her. She is in control.
As she reaches the corner of Third Avenue and Forty-First Street, at this late hour entirely devoid of pedestrians, carts, and carriages, there comes a sound above her that sends the hairs rising on the back of her neck.
A crackling.
She looks up with a wild gasp. An electrical wire, the kind they use for the trolleys, has broken loose. One end is sparking madly, all of it shaking like a trapped serpent. Another barreling wind cuts through the narrow street, strong as a train itself.
Impulse reaches into Alice’s gut and propels her backward, sprinting for the other side of the block. She turns in time to see the live wire touch down right where she was standing, sending a hiss of angry steam rising from the pavement.
Heart hammering, she doubles back to Lexington, coming at her house from a different angle. She’s heard of the wires coming loose—they’re assembled in such haphazard fashion, it’s a wonder they stay up at all—but never has she come so close to being struck by one.
The lights are lit in her little apartment on Thirty-Eighth Street. Before she crosses to come inside, she watches the silhouettes in the window. Three women, all laughing. Singing issues from the windows—Cora’s yodeling folk song. She’s performing it for them at last. Dagmar is slapping her knee, doubled over with laughter. Béa’s hands are pressed to her lovely face as if to stopper the giggles. And Cora is dancing between them with pure, joyful liveliness.
I could have died tonight, Alice thinks.Forget Ward. Forget the embassy. No matter who I was or what I was doing, it all could have ended right there on Third Avenue, just the way it does for so many others. Abruptly. With no resolution, no justice, no revenge.
I keep waiting to live.Why not do it now?
Feel something other than this endless... anger?
As she slips inside the house, she’s careful to be quiet, to not interrupt their merriment.
Rather than joining in, she goes to her room and closes the door, shutting out good cheer, affection, all sentiment apart from that which is immediately useful.
Only ten days remain now.
This plan is a train, she reminds herself. And anger is its fuel.
Invitation
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Chapter 26
A New Game
