One worker who was probably younger than Lydia cried, “Marry me! I promise I’ll never complain if dinner’s late!”
“A tempting offer,” Beatrix said, and hustled Lydia into the tent so she could vote.
“How many still have their ballots?” Lydia asked as she sat at a table full of Hazelhurst alumnae.
Beatrix cast an eye over the other tables. “At least half.”
“They can’t make up their minds.”
“Considering how many thought they had by the end of Mrs. Gossard’s speech, I call that progress,” Beatrix said.
She went back to the crowd, worried that it was still so large with nothing left to occupy the men’s attention, and heard Blackwell say not ten feet from her, “Shit, it’s after six.”
“Wife’ll be wondering where I got to,” another man muttered.
“Yeah, show’s over,” said the burly man who had encouraged Gossard to sing and leered at Lydia. “Who’s up for a beer?”
When half the crowd seemed content to stay put, Beatrix found paper and pens and called out, “If you’d like to support our efforts, write your name and address here.” And thatworked like a charm. Dozens used that as their cue to leave. The ones who wanted to help stayed just long enough to scribble their information.
“That was nerve-wracking,” Blackwell muttered invisibly near her. “I’m going to go keep an eye on the ballot box.”
“Bless you,” Beatrix said.
She tried to think how she could even the scales until recollecting that he had a lot of scale-balancing to do himself. This was followed by a moment of wondering whether he wanted to make her feel beholden to him for some nefarious purpose. Then her mind turned back to her dream and howthathad made her feel.
She had to stop thinking.
She darted back into the tent with an eye toward getting Lydia to eat something, but her sister was laughing with the Hazelhurst alums about a professor who would not accept type-written papers with so much as a single drop of correction fluid. Lydia seemed so at home with these women—so much more comfortable with them than with her. And for the first time, it occurred to Beatrix that Rosemarie, however influential, might not have been the reason for the awkward distance she felt between her and her sister.
College divided them. Lydia, who once looked up to her and peppered her with questions about everything, was now better educated than she was. Which was exactly what she’d wanted for Lydia, but by sending her to Hazelhurst, had she relegated them to lives lived at arm’s length?
Her sister pulled a former classmate in for a tight hug. Heart constricting, Beatrix turned away—and nearly smacked into Ella.
Speaking of ruined relationships.
“I talked to Meg.” Ella’s voice had a flat quality. “She said someone passed you a film yesterday that proved wizards switched the contracts.”
“Yes, I?—”
“Why didn’t youtellme? I hardly slept last night, thinking everyone would blame it on Lydia! And today—you never once thought I’d like to know?”
Beatrix tried to answer this perfectly reasonable complaint and faltered.
“Oh,” Ella said, an octave too high. Her face crumpled. She took Beatrix’s arm and pulled her just beyond the tent, away from the tables of women who still had not voted. “You think … You think I’m the traitor.”
“Ella—”
“Because I was the last one with the invitations?” Ella dropped her voice to a whisper. “I swear I delivered everything I got to the post office. Anyone at the meeting that night could have grabbed a handful from the box.”
“I know. I know.”
“Then—what is it? What do you think I did?”
Beatrix swallowed, throat dry. “Whoever stole the contract and replaced it with the one that had the wrong dates knew where we kept the lockbox and key. And had access to them.”
“I didn’t—I never—” Ella was nearly hyperventilating. “Please believe me! I didn’t take the contract. I didn’t even see it. There’snothingmore important to me than what Lydia is trying to accomplish, and there’s no one whose good opinion is more important to me than yours.” A tear ran down her cheek. “Beatrix—please.”
Beatrix desperately wanted to assure her that of course she believed her. But the timing of Ella’s arrival in Ellicott Mills was troubling. Her effort to get Evelyn Becker out of the house last month so she could move in seemed in a certain light to be rather sinister. Her suggestion that someone in the League was collaborating with wizards could have been a clever diversion. And she’d been perfectly placed to sabotage the invitations, switch the contracts and inform on their decisions.
