“Practically,” Cora says. “How long do you think it will be before they’re forced to leave their homes?”
Alice can answer that from experience, but she refrains,choosing instead to peer askance at her young protégée. “Why should you care?”
Cora averts her gaze.
Alice’s own gaze narrows. “I’d think you’d be more preoccupied with what happens to us.”
“Okay then.” Cora’s eyes dart back to Alice’s, brash now. “So what does happen? To us? Immediately following the successful completion of the fraud?”
Béa steps back from Cora, her work complete, and turns to Alice, expectant. Alice swears she can sense Dagmar listening from the kitchen too.
“Once we’re out, we go to a secure location to divide our shares of the takings.” Alice speaks slowly, as if to a simpleton.
“And then?” Cora asks.
Alice laughs in frustration. “And then I told you, that’s up toyou. You can hardly expect me to sketch out the rest of your life for you, not after planning everything leading up to that moment. Once your share is in your hands, it is yours to do with as you see fit.”
“I suppose I just thought that plan might have changed a bit, given that you two are so...” Cora glances worriedly at Béa. “Are you suggesting weallgo our separate ways, or just me?”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Alice says. “Merely stating a fact. When the job is done, we scatter. Nothing has changed, Cora. Why would it? This was never meant to be forever.”
The room falls into a leaden silence, punctuated by the ticking of the mantel clock.
“And where will you be going, Alice?” Béa cuts in quietly, her eyes pained, unblinking.
Alice can’t answer. Not for the sake of secrecy but becauseshe truly doesn’t know. Something in her mind has not allowed her to think that far.
There’s also the fact that, for all her bluster, the prospect of going her separate way from Béatrice is the most unthinkable thought of all. She wonders if Béa had assumed the plan would change too, after all these months of growing ever closer. Béa, dear Béa, who has been battered by life at every turn, is probably even more disappointed than sentimental Cora.
A rap sounds on the door. Béatrice turns away to answer it.
Cora glares at Alice accusingly.
“None of that now.” Alice stands, reflexively brushing off her deliberately filthy gown. “If you’re really that helpless, I can secure you a coach ticket under a false name for that afternoon. We’ll need to be well out of the city by nightfall. I know you’re going out west to buy back your farm—”
“So you did listen,” Cora mutters.
“Just tell me, whereabouts is it?” Alice smiles, the very picture of patient amiability.
“Near Topeka. Kansas.”
Alice winces in sympathy. “And you’re quite sure you want to go home to... Kansas?”
Cora’s cheeks redden with indignation. “Why shouldn’t I? It’s beautiful there. Not to mention peaceful, especially compared to the city. You can hear the birds sing in the morning and the evening, and you can look out on an actual horizon, not a man-made one. You ask me, it’s the perfect place to go unnoticed for the rest of one’s days and not mind one little bit.” She gives a flat laugh. “I’ll tell you one thing I’m looking forward to; it’s taking off this damned French corset and setting fire to it out in the field. Never having to worry aboutwhich fork is which or how to make polite conversation with the likes of—”
“Mr. McAllister,” Béatrice announces from the entryway.
Alice blinks. She’d rather been enjoying that rant of Cora’s. “What?”
Béa glances behind her. “He’s arrived to collect you for the ball?”
Shaking her head, Alice hurries to fetch their invitations from her study, then follows Cora down the front stoop, past Béa, who has trained her eyes firmly upon her own feet to avoid looking at Alice.
Alice’s heart pinches. She swallows away the sensation and lifts her chin.
On the street below, McAllister is waiting for them from inside the open door of his carriage.
Ward, dressed in a head-to-toe hobo costume, is waving some sort of large frond about.
