March 24, 1884
The oversize clock on the wall of the Lord & Taylor dressing room keepstick-tick-ticking. Is it growing louder, like Poe’s tell-tale heart? Cora could swear it is. There is ever so much to do before Alice’s grand scheme unveils its first and only performance—in precisely one week, the morning of April 1, Fifty-Seventh Street and Central Park, at the newly minted Württembergian Embassy—but still, here she is, whiling away an afternoon shopping for “commoner’s attire” with Arabella on Ladies’ Mile.
Arabella peeks her petite head out from behind a curtain. “Is a maid’s petticoat meant to drag along the ground?”
Cora shifts, forcing herself to give the girl her entire attention, and grits her teeth into a smile. This ludicrous and wholly tasteless poverty ball of Mrs. Witt’s has all the most fashionable families scrambling about town, clamoring to dress as shabbily as possible, gleefully spending far too much on bespoke, commissioned ball gowns that look, quite literally, like rags. “I’m not familiar with the customs of American maids.”
Arabella blushes. “Right. Forgive me. I’m a bit preoccupied.”
“Is the theme more beggar or servant, do you suppose?” Cora asks Arabella, wincing apologetically at the working-class seamstress who has hurried forward to help the girl with the necessary adjustments.
Arabella’s brow scrunches in concentration, as if attempting difficult arithmetic, and murmurs ruefully, “Yet another confounding dilemma.”
The seamstress barely disguises an eye roll as she kneels before the girl’s skirt to fix the hem. A few swift adjustments, and then Arabella ducks again behind the curtain.
In moments, Cora swears she hears sniffles issuing from the dressing room, but when Arabella reemerges, cotton dress and matching bonnet in hand, she has adopted a stiff upper lip.
“Do you know what you will be wearing to the ball, Cora?” Arabella asks, once they’ve exited the crowded shop and taken to strolling Ladies’ Mile southward, in the vague direction of Union Square. “Perhaps we can pop into Stern Brothers and have them craft you something.”
Cora shakes her head, eager to part ways now that Arabella has secured her costume for the ball. Ever since Harry pledged his and his father’s interest in Württemberg’s mining company, she’s loath to spend any more time than she has to around the marks. A late-game slipup would be devastating, after all.
The growing, gnawing guilt is quite bothersome too. It was kind of Arabella to issue this shopping invitation. Perhaps it was at her mother’s insistence, an attempt to stitch closer ties to the royal family come hell or high water. But Cora’s had the keen sense all day that Arabella is sincere in her offer of friendship to the woman who has stolen away her childhood love.
Which, of course, makes Cora feel all the worse.
“Thank you, Arabella, but I have already secured a garment from the McAllisters’ scullery maid,” she says quickly.
“How wonderfully authentic.” Arabella smiles. “Aren’t you clever?”
She would be if it weren’t a lie, as well as another increasing worry—Cora has hardly seen Ward McAllister in the past week, and Alice has barely spoken his name. Nothing so blatant as bad-mouthing the man, just a conspicuous absence, a large hole where his boisterous presence once took up so much space.
“A cup of tea then, perhaps?” Arabella says hastily. A look of outright desperation is shining in her eyes. “Or perhaps a hot chocolate? My mother once took me to a charming place, a bit more uptown, near where we—”
“Arabella?” Cora asks gently. “Is something ailing you?”
“Is it that obvious?” Arabella slows her pace, swallowing hard. She looks, again, to be mere moments from bursting into tears. “I’m really trying very hard to hide it.”
“And doing an admirable job.” Cora fetches her a handkerchief, then leads the girl toward a wrought iron bench bordering the park, insisting she sit.
“Please don’t worry,” Arabella sobs. “I’m crying tears of... joy!”
“I see that,” Cora hedges.
“I’ve received a formal proposal from your cousin, you see. Wilhelm. The prince.”
“A proposal... via letter? A proposal as to what?”
Arabella looks up, her eyes as shiny as green glass. “Why, marriage, of course.”
Cora’s eyes threaten to evacuate her skull. “Goodness.”
Arabella sniffs, pulling out a letter written on fine stock that appears to have been folded and unfolded many times. “He asked me to journey to Württemberg this very summer, spend some time there while planning a royal wedding. It’s everything my mother hoped for me. Everything thatIhoped for...”
Cora takes the offered letter. She knows Alice’s writing as well as her own, after so many months. It’s most certainly her handiwork, but why on earth would Alice require the girl to announce a proposal that will soon be revealed to be fake, given everything else at play? Just to take it away? To further crush and ruin her?
Thanks to Cal, Cora now fully understands just how completely and mercilessly these vicious families destroyed his sister. And yet, why enact such equally heartless vengeance upon their progeny? Will this awful cycle never end? What did Arabella do to deserve such manipulation and cruelty? It seems the one mote in Alice’s eye. Cora wishes she could help her mentor see it.
She blinks away her own threatening tears, unsure of what to say to this girl who is going to, what? Travel across the Atlantic in search of a prince who has never heard of her?
