Chapter Fifteen
Cora changed her uniform, then the sheets in the Astral Bedroom. On her way out, she stepped into the bathroom and spritzed two heavy sprays of Clementine’s signature perfume on one of her own scarves. She would waft it outside Byrd’s office later like an invitation.
It was a tricky maneuver, designing romantic, secluded moments for them, because of the way their relationship worked—a big open secret and a game, and that seemed to be the way they liked it.
But she was running out of days, so it was time to force things into play.
She entered the kitchen and said casually to Dorothy, the cook, “Miss Garver is requesting a private table near the party’s end tonight, in the loggia of her suite.
Shrimp cocktail, two bottles of the reserve white wine. And a cheese souffle.”
Dorothy paused over the brining of two dozen pheasants, looking momentarily incensed.
“A private dinner? But tonight is meant to be the men’s night now.
” Dorothy maneuvered around copper stock pots of potatoes to check her pages of instructions.
“Cigars and brandy and oysters on the half-shell?” she said, perturbed.
While Dorothy’s back was turned, Cora nicked the heavy iron ring of keys hanging off the notch in Macready’s office.
“Don’t tell me it’s changed again,” Dorothy said, the color in her face rising.
“Sorry—” Cora said. “I must have gotten the dates wrong, then. But best make sure to have the ingredients on hand, anyway, for the next few days.”
The keys dropped heavily into her apron pocket.
Dorothy grunted and turned back to her pheasants, and Cora sauntered out the door.
She almost ran right into Mrs. Macready.
“Change of plans for you this evening, Ella,” Macready said. “You and Daisy are to staff the men’s night out there.” Macready jerked a nod toward the cascading outdoor porticos. “I’m sending some of the younger maids to serve the girls in the house tonight.”
“I thought I would be serving Miss Garver,” Cora said, eyes narrowing. She had been planning to eavesdrop on the conversations between the starlets. Hoping that some alcohol would loosen their tongues, and that Cora might find out something—anything—useful.
“Tonight you’re being reassigned. Because I know you can hold your own,” Macready said. “And the boys out there’ve been drinking since noon.”
Cora gritted her teeth. “Fine,” she said.
The keys tugged at her pocket as Macready led her back into the kitchen.
Cora tried to forget all about them, practicing the way her father had taught her to avoid a thought so that a mark couldn’t sense it.
“If it doesn’t exist to you,” he would say, “then it doesn’t exist to them.
” She had used the advice many times in the kitchen when she would stare into his lined face and try not to think about Jack.
Macready began to brew a strong batch of coffee, and Cora threw spiced jerky and freshly baked cheese rolls into a basket. “We’ll serve them this to soak up the booze,” Cora said, placing deviled eggs with horseradish on the tray.
“Don’t outright refuse if they ask for another drink,” Macready said, dispatching the coffee into cups like they were miniature soldiers with marching orders. “Just … water it down to almost nothing.”
Cora gave her a nod of acknowledgment. Byrd liked enough liquor to keep a party going, but he disapproved of sloppy drunkenness. “He likes order, and beauty; a world of cultivated excess under control,” Macready had instructed Cora in her training.
“Not people stumbling around like they’d been mickied,” Daisy had whispered in Cora’s ear.
But Cora could tell something was brewing outside as evening approached—whether trouble or opportunity, it was hard to tell.
She felt the change in the air as soon as she stepped outdoors.
The late afternoon was oppressive, the kind that made clothes feel damp and a half-size too small.
The keys sank a degree lower in Cora’s pocket to press against her leg.
She was disappointed that the plans had changed, that the women and men would be separating. That meant that Byrd would likely stay up too late playing cards, and another night would be lost.
She steeled herself. She wouldn’t think that way.
Daisy squeezed Cora’s arm as she passed, weighed down with a tray of seltzers.
“Watch yourself tonight,” Daisy said, giving Cora a careful look as she passed.
They all knew what happened when powerful men in packs had too much to drink and started to feel entitled.
Cora promised herself that before she left the Hill, she would pass on a few of her father’s defense lessons to Daisy.
The men were heavy on the cologne, perspiring in their silk suits and hats.
Beau Remington sipped a mint julep, bantering with Governor Gilham, Albert Boyle, and Ronald Rutherford.
Truman anchored the other end with railway tycoon William Morton, banker John Hanson, and the British tennis phenom Simon Leit.
Jack was somewhere in the middle. Cora balanced the tray and watched Truman.
Could he possibly have known that the story he painted in his papers wasn’t true?
Could he have known that Jack and Leo were innocent, and framed them anyway?
She didn’t know which she found worse—that the world could be that cruel and unjust to two boys who were truly innocent—or that Jack was a liar, thief, and murderer who had taken her for a fool.
Clementine came to hold court in the center.
She wore a long, liquid blue satin dress that hugged her curves and flattened around her body in the wind.
It was half dress, half nightgown. Her voice was sultry, a laugh deep in her throat, and the men all laughed along with her.
She was sharp at impersonations, and people were always surprised to find out that she was actually funny.
“There’ll be dancing tomorrow night,” she was saying as Cora approached.
“Which of you fine lads is going to take a spin on the floor with me?” She gave a throaty chuckle when they all jostled and raised their hands.
Byrd sipped his drink quietly. “Off to the nest, now,” she cooed over her shoulder, batting her lashes and sauntering away. “Be good tonight, boys.”
The men broke out a round of cigars as two of the butlers brought card tables and a large bronze telescope out through the heavy front door and situated them beneath the bell towers.
“Does this thing help us to see the stars?” Hanson called to Byrd, directing the telescope toward the girls’ wing.
The men’s laughter was boisterous but seemed good-natured, without a sour undercurrent—but Cora listened for it, lurking there, waiting for the moment when it might turn.
They were dressed more casually than their tails from the past two nights.
Their dinner jackets were unbuttoned, their patterned ties either knotted loosely at their necks or removed entirely.
The palm fronds rustled in the breeze overhead.
The sun was burning red-hot over the ocean, turning the terra-cotta tiles crimson.
“Carry on without me, men,” Byrd announced, using his cigar to gesture toward his office. “I’ll be back after my last editing rounds.”
Byrd’s early rags had tied the Bastion murders to Jack and Leo with an almost unwavering insistence that would never pass muster in his current, more respectable brand of newspapers.
Perhaps that had been more than tabloid hysteria and an urge to sell papers, Cora thought.
Perhaps it was to cover for someone. Someone who had a lot of money, and was very powerful.
Someone who would fit right in with the men who were on the Hill that night.
Jack remained at the edges of the group, flipping through a deck of cards, nursing a drink.
He flayed out the cards and set a roulette wheel turning.
A metal ball ticked around the rotating wheel.
The edges of the tablecloths lifted in the breeze.
Knowing Jack, he would remain sober as anything. He needed to stay as sharp as Cora did.
Parts of her hated him, and yet it was also strangely comforting to see him.
He met her eyes and then looked away without a spark of recognition.
How could he be there, laughing and conversing and playing games with the man who supposedly had ruined his life?
He was the picture of calm indifference.
Leaning against the table, all ease and smoothness, while the sun set behind him in a burning, orange haze.
Jack noticed the gilded edges of the playing cards first, then the birds mapped onto their faces.
The backs of the cards had an outline of the Castle, its distinctive bell towers and needle-thin palm trees.
He flipped the cards through his hands, loosening their stiffness, the paper turning supple beneath his fingers.
He watched the maid who had interrupted him and Cora now make her way through the middle of the pack, parting the men.
Cora had called her Daisy. She looked graceful, the silver tray perfectly balanced, her apron crisp and starched, her chin up.
There was a pleasant smile on her face, but she seemed careful not to make eye contact.
She glided into their spaces without really being seen.
It wasn’t hard for Jack to tell who among them might be trouble.
Albert Boyle was tottering off-balance, his face flushed. His short fingers shuffled through the poker chips as though he were searching for sea glass.