A chill sends goose bumps rising all over Alice’s arms.
“Which brings me to my burning question,” Ward says, his tone featherlight as he raises a hand to keep them from exiting. “Which additional marks shall we be adding into the mix tonight?”
Cora outright stares at Alice now but again has the good sense to stay quiet.
Alice shrugs one elegant shoulder. “None. But don’t you fret, Ward. I’ve figured out a way to manage the funds in a manner that will suit us all to a T.”
“Me?” Ward points to himself, mouth agape. “Fret? Never!”
He raps Alice lightly on the knee with his cane. “I always knew you’d work it out.” He rises, waving for them to step down from the carriage.
“One last celebration before the biggest one of all,” he announces grandly. “Now let’s go slum!”
Chapter 28
Rotgut and Vittles
If the Night of Illusionsball had been the overture to Cora’s New York social season, it is perhaps fitting that Mrs. Witt’s latest private banquet will be her final act.
The Witt estate has gone through its own extraordinary transformation in the interim, Cora notes as they arrive on Madison and Fifty-First Street, although one might more accurately call it adebasement. Mrs. Witt’s careful landscaping of ivy, rosebushes, and potted topiaries is now covered in ratty, tattered blankets. Her dozens of stained glass windows besmirched with dirt. A collection of buckets and dusters has been arranged into a sculpture at the soot-stained, Baroque-style entrance, with a handwritten beggar’s sign atop the pile, gleefully misspelled in accordance with the invitation posted weeks ago:
Welckom to the Poverty Balle!
488 Madison Aveneu, New Yerk
Ward offers Cora a hand down from the cab, looking around with a smirk as he adjusts his pageboy cap. “My, my,better than I could’ve expected. Iris Witt may be many things, but understated ain’t one of them.”
They open the door themselves, in keeping with the theme, Cora supposes, not a butler in sight, other than the costumed guests themselves.
Inside Mrs. Witt’s grand hall, the party is already in full swing, hundreds of partygoers in custom rag gowns and footman uniforms mingling about under the Witts’ crystal three-tiered chandeliers, which are bespeckled at present by dirty mopheads. The parlor on the right—the one that was repurposed as the troupe’s backstage space during theNight of Illusions, if Cora remembers the house correctly—has been arranged like a clapboard tenement, complete with cots on the floor and laundry lines ribboned like a spiderweb across the ceiling. On the left, the dining room chairs have been replaced by wooden boxes, and folded newspaper-napkins decorate the table.
The lump in Cora’s throat grows into a ball as she follows Alice deeper into the manse, the overwhelming tastelessness of tonight very nearly derailing her intended mission. How on earth did she ever envy these wretched people, ever see them as the shiny American victors?
“I spy the Vandemeers,” Ward murmurs, gesturing ahead to a refreshments table, which has been arranged like a food line in a lodging house. “Shall we make the rounds? Start handing out our coveted invitations?”
Alice nods, threading her arm through Ward’s.
Cora shakes her head, following them. She’s not sure she’ll ever understand their relationship, which seems all the murkier after Ward’s little walk down memory lane. Currently, he and Alice seem as tight as ever, though Cora can’t help butworry that whatever “arrangement” they’ve come to likely doesn’t bode well for the rest of them.
“Duchess,” Mrs. Vandemeer says vacantly, lifting her glass as they approach, her silver bodice cascading into tiered bustles of rags. “Perhaps it’s premature to celebrate ourcompany...but ha, let us drink all the same.”
Mrs. Vandemeer must have dipped into her snuff quite early tonight, Cora notes—the woman nearly knocks down the pyramid of bowls displayed on the table with her intended toast.
The rest of said company ignores her faux pas, Ward merely smiling coyly. “Perhaps not so premature.”
He glances at Alice, then pulls a thick cream envelope from his hobo vest with enough dramatic flourish to rival Prospero.
Mr. Vandemeer takes the invitation as one would accept a Communion wafer, hands outstretched, face twisted with rapture. “Is this... what I think it is?”
Mr. McAllister winks. “You’ll have to wait and see when you open it.”
“Yours has been delivered first, naturally,” Alice adds demurely.
“How many?” Vandemeer presses. “How many have you—”
“Only five,” Alice says. “Including yours.”
“You ask me, competition is the spice of life,” Ward crows, helping himself to a glass of rotgut punch. “I myself keep urgin’ our dear duchess to open trading on the exchange down on Wall Street, but her little heart is set on the embassy and the company of friends only...”
