Chapter Twenty-Five
In the main house, the fires were lit in the grates and rain slid down the windows in rivulets of lace.
Jack and Florence moved through the arched hallways, past the tapestries of wool and silk once owned by King Louis XIV.
Jack listened attentively as Florence described the choral stalls that had been shipped from Burgundy.
Set away from the revelry of the ballroom, the main house felt vast and quiet. Almost private.
He was growing frustrated at how often his mind kept drifting to Cora.
Florence was noticeably looser, away from the trappings of the party. Her gestures grew more animated, yet the smile she was giving him was almost shy, as if she were sharing an intimate piece of herself in the presence of a kindred spirit.
“I’ve touched every aspect of this house,” she said. “It’s like showing off a child. A large, overgrown, fastidiously decorated child.”
“You seem to work well together,” Jack observed. “You and Truman.”
They stopped in front of a fireplace that was so large, it could have hosted a small dinner party inside it.
“We argue mostly over the scale of things,” Florence said. “Width of stairs, the height of the plantings outside. The animals from his zoo trampled the seedbeds when we were first planting the gardens, proving the need for walls I had angled for from the beginning.”
“Never angle with an architect.”
“He has the vision. I bring the scale and proportion.” She paused. “He’s particular about every detail. The tiles couldn’t just be white, for instance,” she said. “They had to be Dutch white.”
Their steps echoed in the foyer, among the potted ferns and the hanging tapestries. “It’s like being in a cathedral,” Jack said.
“ ‘A cathedral to excess,’ I believe is what the rival newspapers call it,” Florence quoted.
“Yes, but … there’s something else, too,” Jack said.
It was ostentatious, to be sure. A display of wealth that was at times brash and almost garish.
But occasionally he also saw glimpses of something almost otherworldly.
The way the light hit the tiles. The orchestral music and the lapping fountains, the ocean salt and the perfumed flowers playing on the breeze.
Opposite in every way to Pelican Island.
He and Florence came to a stop in front of an enormous painting. It showed Mary, angels, and—his eye caught on it—a snow-white dove.
He thought of Cora, her lovely face flushed as she pointed to the nightingales on the door.
Her satin dress. The curving hint of her smile.
The candies he had bought for her at the diner, which he had decided at the last moment to leave in his room.
He thought of the secrets he had shared with her in the wine cellar and the bell tower, secrets that he had never breathed of to anyone else.
He realized he wasn’t even listening to Florence.
“The Annunciation,” Florence was saying, examining the painting in front of them.
“Painted by Spaniard Bartolomé Pérez de la Dehesa. He was appointed as a painter for King Charles II beginning in 1689. We planned entire rooms—sometimes even entire guest houses—around the art that Truman wanted to display.”
“Is he a collector of religious art?” Jack asked.
“He’s a collector of everything,” Florence said. “He never met a trinket he didn’t like.”
“What about you?”
“I prefer blueprints. Crisp, clean lines. Order.”
“Do you decorate your home with the plans of others, then?” he asked.
“I do,” she said resolutely. “My office is covered in exquisite blueprints, and they are no less art just because they’re functional.”
He had been so single-minded for so long.
A decade of deceit, even violence, to get there.
And now he was there, walking the house with its own architect, never dreaming he would get this close.
And all he could think about was the small scar between Cora’s eyebrows from a fall she’d gotten on the ferry as a girl; the way her fingers brushed along the curve of her lips.
What was wrong with him? He was going to give it all away for nothing.
“Speaking of blueprints,” Jack said, seamlessly shifting gears, “are there any places in this house that are … off-limits to the regular tour?” He turned to her with a conspiratorial grin.
“Any unusual collections of art or architecture, perhaps, just waiting for the right gentleman to appreciate them?”
She appraised him for a long moment.
“Truman isn’t known for his restraint when it comes to displays,” she said finally.
“There’s a basement storage area, beneath the wine cellar, that is not fit for guests to tour.
But if you had interest in a particular subset of works, I’m sure Truman would be happy to oblige.
You might have guessed that he enjoys a bit of preening. ”
So the basement storage area—the one that Jack had already explored from top to bottom—was a dead end; and, as far as Florence knew, there were no others. His heart sank.
“As for things of architectural interest, there are catacombs left beneath the West Terrace,” she said. “Truman tends to change his mind quite frequently; and, as the castle and grounds have evolved, the old structures were merely buried and covered over, rather than torn down.”
He made note of that.
And then he noticed that they were not alone.
There was someone there in the shadows. Jack stole a quick glance behind him.
The figure was ten paces away, and had stopped in the hallway, hands crossed over his hulking chest. Dallas Winston.
He tipped his cap at Jack, and Jack gave him a nod back.
Had he been keeping tabs on them? Trying to eavesdrop on their conversation?
Jack decided to change tack as he stooped to stroke his fingertips across the floor tiles.
“Tell me about these,” he said, feeling the head of security’s eyes still on him. “The detail in them is exquisite.”
It was then that he noticed. They were of ravens, bluebirds. Doves.
“I designed those myself,” Florence said, her small chin rising a fraction.
“There are bird themes woven throughout the house. Surely you’ve noticed.
” Jack decided not to feign ignorance. At his nod, she continued: “But there are additional layers there to find, if one has an exacting eye. Do you notice anything particular about those birds?” she asked.
“I don’t recognize this one,” he admitted. He pointed out a tile with a small brown bird on it. It looked like it was wearing a bandit’s mask on its face.
“A yellowthroat,” she said, and the way that she was watching him for a reaction made him look at the tiles again.
Raven, dove, bluebird, yellowthroat. In a repeating pattern. He stood, thinking back to the love letter Cora had found from Truman to Mabel. If he looked at the tiles in another way—
“They spell BYRD,” he said.
“Bravo,” she said. She gave him a sly look and moved on down the hallway. “Truman likes those hidden riddles, for those who pay attention and look close enough.”
The carillon bells rang out in the tower.
Jack stole a fleeting glance at Dallas Winston.
“Can I interest you in a dance?” he asked Florence.
She guffawed. “Absolutely not. But I’d like to tell Truman hello before I say goodbye.”
She offered him her arm, and Jack felt Dallas’s eyes follow them as he led her back to the ballroom.
Truman eyed Ronald Rutherford’s suit and tie over his tumbler.
“Rutherford,” he said, “you seem to have forgotten your costume.”
Rutherford pointed to his pocket square, where he had tucked a monocle. “People can make of it whatever they may,” he said. He leaned his elbows against the outer railing of the ballroom. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to strut around like a turkey.”
“Ah—but isn’t it fun to make you try.”
Truman leaned his weight next to his old friend Rutherford’s and clinked his glass. His vision was starting to swim. “You might have had the right idea,” Truman said, adjusting the golden laurel wreath. “This is worse than being strangled with a necktie.”
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” Ronald drawled as Truman reached up and pulled the metal into a more forgiving shape around his head.
“If only Clementine could be plied as easily,” Truman said.
Ronald snorted. Truman kept his eyes on Clementine.
She had strayed too far, and she knew it.
Yet she was gaily laughing with her friends.
The toga looked like it had been poured onto her.
There were gold circlets at her delicate wrists and around her waist. She had never been the simpering sort.
It was why Truman found her interesting.
Her spark was somewhere in between Mabel and his mother.
He was stalling. For once, he did not go to his office to mark up tomorrow’s news.
The photographer he had invited was there, flashing bulbs.
Truman himself would select which pictures would run.
He had yet to decide whether Clementine and Beau’s dance would be buried or splashed across the fronts of the tabloids as fodder.
Someone’s pain always served as the kindling to sell more papers. Sometimes even his own.
Beau whispered something in Clementine’s ear, and her eyes widened, and then she leaned her head back and laughed, exposing her beautiful neck. Rutherford kept keen eyes trained on them.
“Is Clem trying to—”
“Don’t,” Truman said, a warning note in his voice. He threw back another drink.
Ronald ordered him a coffee.
Truman was getting pissed, in all senses of the word. He watched as Beau led Clem back out onto the dance floor. He smiled, cold and small. If only Beau Remington knew what had happened to the last man who’d tried to flirt with the woman Truman had claimed as his own.
Mabel had been wearing a red dress that day, the same one she always wore when they went out for a highbrow activity, like the opera or a museum.
They’d usually had to go on the crowded, free-entry days, because they’d been flat broke back then.
But they loved to walk through corridors filled with embroidered costumes, tapestries, and sculptures, and pretend for a moment that they were home.
Now he’d made one for himself. Built it on all the hopes and dreams he’d had as a man standing amidst treasures with worn soles, beans in his stomach, and not even enough money to pay the entry fee.
And the man who had once tried to cop a feel from Mabel in front of him—well. Without that ill-fated decision, perhaps Truman wouldn’t be where he was today.
Truman brightened imperceptibly at that thought and at the sight of Florence, making her way toward him on Everett Conner’s arm.
“Florence! In a costume!” Truman crowed. “What, ho! Is it hailing in hell?”
“You’ll have to tell us when you get there,” she said.
“Oh, come. Have a sandwich shaped like a pineapple.”
“You know how I hate foods shaped like other foods. I’ve come to bid you adieu.”
Truman sloshed a bit of his drink out of the glass. “You’ve only just arrived!”
“I’ve been here for longer than I intended. I was giving him a tour.” She nodded at Everett Conner. “Very interested in art and architecture, this one.”
“Well, why should it end?” Truman asked.
“I’m not feeling particularly in the party spirit tonight myself.
Let’s go to the billiards room, shall we?
” His eye twitched. He knocked back another drink.
“Come now, Conner. Rutherford. I’m in the mood to shoot something,” he said darkly. “It might as well be pool.”
Jack could tell that Truman Byrd was drunker than he’d ever seen him.
It was unusual. Byrd was often buttoned up without a hair out of place. Clementine and Beau must have really gotten to him. Exactly as Cora had hoped.
Jack gestured to a maid for a new drink. Grabbed a bite of salmon and caviar puff pastry.
But it was Cora who appeared with the tray. Jack was careful not to meet her eyes as he took one of Byrd’s signature drinks from her.
“Can I get you anything, Mr. Byrd?” she asked.
“No,” Truman said curtly.
“I’ll take a cupcake,” Florence said.
Cora nodded; and as she turned, she gave Jack the signal.
This was it. He was meant to tell Truman that Clem had a message for him.
That she wanted to meet him in the bedroom at the top of the stairs.
He watched Clem beginning to climb toward the second floor.
Cora followed, heading for the secret corridor in the next bedroom, where she would get into position.
Cora stole one last, expectant glance at him.
He met her eyes. He could still smell the scent of her hair.
He felt a sharp tug in his gut.
Why was he there, after all? he asked himself sharply. Had he lost sight of it so quickly?
He thought about the way Leo always blamed himself for the way they had gotten onto the Island—and how much Jack blamed himself for the way they had gotten off of it.
He thought of his only brother drowning alone.
Labeled a criminal. Left to rot without even a tombstone or a good name left to put on it.
How much he missed him.
“Come, Conner. I’ll show you the best part of my collection,” Byrd wheedled.
“Things you haven’t shown anyone?” Jack asked coyly.
“Perhaps.”
Truman’s eyes were bloodshot. Watching him.
Jack steeled himself. He hadn’t spent a decade on the run to throw away a chance like this one.
He was letting unbidden feelings for Cora get in the way of his entire purpose.
And for what? This arrangement between them only worked for as long as they both needed something.
What would she do once she had what she had come for?
What would he be left with once he wasn’t of use to her anymore?
He threw back his drink. Turned away from the rest of the party, from Clementine and Cora waiting upstairs, and said: “Well, then, I’m game.”
Cora still remembered the sick feeling she’d had when she ran out of the house the morning after Jack and Leo escaped, and watched as Rusty’s body was covered with a white sheet and carried to the ferry. Her mother had believed that Cora was crying for Rusty; and she had been.
But it was the realization that settled in her stomach like the darkness of night falling. She had been fooled.
She had been a fool.
She felt it again as she turned from the top of the balcony and watched as Jack led Truman away from her, diverting him from their plan and from where Clementine stood waiting. The feeling dawned again. A stone dropping, finding new depths within her.
She curled her hand around the banister as though she could splinter it, and the feeling of betrayal shifted to make room for something else.
Fury.