“It’s not for walking, it’s for beating people! Like my idiot son! Thinks he can tell me anything. Medical or otherwise.” Harold Senior’s voice falls into an incoherent grumble. Harry feels his own spine beginning to weaken once again under his father’s glare. “You think you’re a big boy now, don’t you, Harry, with your fiancée and her emeralds, but I’ll tell you something. They’re going to bemyemeralds soon. You are coming with me in order to roll my chair. Nothing more! You got it? I don’t want to hear a damn peep out of you while the men are talking.”
Harry sniffs, picturing the long Bow Bridge in Central Park. A stroll with his dear old dad. A feigned misstep, a hoist of the chair, his father tumbling straight into the lake...
“What was that?” Harold shouts.
“Nothing, sir,” Harry says. “Didn’t make a peep.”
“Test it once more,” Alice says.
Béatrice sits before the telegraph machine and begins to type.
“And can you hear me through the wall?”
Silence. Then, on the ticker tape, the typed word: “Yes.”
Alice laughs as she opens the door to the “ambassador’s” office.
“Good,” she breathes, leaning against the desk, close to Béa. She nods up to the wall, where a large clock is displayed. “If for whatever reason you can’t hear the announcement through the door, you’ll stick to the timings regardless.”
“Announcement of lunch by ten fifteen, out the window before half past.” Béa reaches for her hand. “It will all be splendid, Alice. No more arranging, no more planning. We are ready.”
Alice lets her fingers curl into Béa’s for a few blessed seconds before letting go and striding to the door.
“It’s a quarter to nine,” Béa says softly. “I suppose you should go out into the salon now. I’ll... well, I suppose I’ll see you at the meeting place.”
Alice’s hand lingers on the doorknob.
“For all your grand plans and brilliant schemes, you are the most idiotic person I know if you walk away from Béa.”
Alice swallows around a vise-tight throat, then turns around. “As a matter of fact, there is one more matter to be arranged.”
“Oh?” Béa frowns.
Alice glances over her shoulder, at the closed door leading to the reception room, and then joins Béa once again.
“I... well, you see, I’ve bought a set of coach tickets, heading west. First to Albany.” Her feet fidget upon the floor. Lord’s sake, she’s more nervous about this conversation than she’s been about any aspect of this plan thus far. “I thought we might lodge for the night there before we board a train to... perhaps somewhere in the Midwest?”
Good grief, where did that idea come from? Another influence of Cora’s, no doubt.
Although, my goodness, she’s surprisingly grateful for that influence now.
“We could go farther,” she blurts. “All the way to the Pacific coast. Or even abroad, if you’d prefer?”
Béa slowly smiles. “I’m still puzzling over that ‘we.’”
“I’m rather hoping you’ll come with me,” Alice says. “Stay with me. In fact... I’m desperate for it.”
Béa stays very still. She closes her eyes, as if pained.
I’m too late, Alice thinks.She’s written me off as a poor investment.
“I’ve been closed off,” Alice says. “I know it. It was a struggle, often, and I fought to maintain that... distance. Which hasn’t been fair to you. Not to Cora either—Dagmar I don’t suppose cares either way.”
Béa lets out a breathy laugh of acknowledgment. Her eyes still don’t rise to Alice’s.
“I pretended it was about the plan, keeping a steady heart and a cool head.” Alice’s voice comes out a little broken. She draws a heavy breath and forges ahead regardless. “But it was more than that. You have to understand, Béatrice, everyone...”
A sob chokes at Alice’s throat. She whispers around it.
