Chapter 1 In the Wings #2
his arm is pretty, dressed to the nines, if a little bit somber in her choice of deep blue velvet. Middle, possibly late twenties,
and appearing quite faint.
“Dear Duchess,” the man says, “perhaps some air might do you good?”
The blonde woman shakes her head, as if to clear it. “Just a bit taxed from all the excitement, is all,” she says in a harsh,
thick accent Cora can’t quite place.
Mrs. Witt slides between the pair, a superior tilt to her chin. “I cannot imagine the House of Württemberg throwing parties
like this, hmm? Allow yourself some respite, Duchess. In my sitting room. Ableton!” Mrs. Witt beckons one of her footmen standing
ready in the wings.
The bearded man nods in gratitude, steering his female companion out of the fray as a portly middle-aged woman and a mousy-looking
young lady sidle beside their hostess.
“Mrs. Witt, do you really think it proper for the duchess to retire alone with Mr. McAllister?” Frowning, the larger woman glances at her younger intimate—her daughter, Cora assumes.
The pair have the same dishwater-brown hair, the same narrow-set eyes.
“Arabella and I find it quite concerning that the duchess is without family or friends on these shores looking out for her well-being, and thus we consider it our duty—”
“You have no duties yet, Pearl.” Mrs. Witt rolls her eyes. “Now stop angling for the Württemberg crown and let me see to my
party.” She waves above the crowd, clearly annoyed. “Mr. Prospero? Mr. Prospero, come here!”
Mrs. Witt summons the performer forward, eyeing the man like a new toy she longs to break. “My ball cannot be complete unless
you share the methods behind your tricks. I command you to do so at once.”
“Ah, but what is magic if not the keeping of guarded secrets.” Prospero smiles grandly, deflecting. He drops his voice to
a stage whisper. “And if I may say, madame, I do believe you’re keeping secrets of your own.”
Prospero steps forward, trailing his fingers across Mrs. Witt’s monstrous headpiece. A moment later, a dove bursts forth from
the bloom of feathers and soars toward the chandeliers.
The surrounding partygoers gasp, erupting into another round of applause.
“I wish the whole dratted thing would fly away.” Mrs. Witt adjusts the piece with a groan. “We do what we must for la mode, but this headdress is a true cross to bear.”
A team of harried-looking footmen rush forward to assist.
From the edges of the gathered crowd, Cora watches as the servants remove Mrs. Witt’s dwarfing headpiece—carefully withdrawing, one by one, a series of ornate pins holding it in place. Four pins, to be precise. Each pin a shaped helix of at least two dozen diamonds.
One footman holds out a silver tray while the other lays the pins down in a perfect row.
Cora creeps through the crowd, angling for a better look. The pins are delicate, the bases sparkling silver, and the diamonds
are of a significant size—half a carat each, maybe more.
Good God, how much could one possibly fetch for a set like that?
She watches the footmen head down the hall with the headdress and tray, her mind fully racing now. Is this a gift from above,
a stroke of incredible luck, right when she needs it? She doesn’t have a professional’s eye for jewelry, admittedly—her family’s
treasures were of the cereal and corn variety—but she can appreciate the finer things, always has, and taken as a set, those
pins must be worth at least a few thousand. More than enough to walk away from the show forever, cash out, and finally take
back her family’s land.
All she has to do is follow those footmen, wait for the right time, and swipe the whole lot.
As Prospero pulls a deck of cards from inside his lapel for his next parlor trick, Cora inches farther backward. Ignoring
Maeve, who is also standing on the crowd’s fringes and currently giving Cora a very pointed, bug-eyed stare. Although Cora is just being paranoid—there is no way the older stagehand could possibly sense what
she is planning. Besides, Maeve has left her no other choice; without thieving on the road, Cora’s future is as empty as Prospero’s
trick box.
As the crowd shifts, closing in for a better view of Prospero, Cora seizes her moment, slipping away from the commotion, retracing the steps of the footmen.
Behind the scenes all night, and dressed in black herself, no one should mistake a young stagehand for anything but additional hired help for the evening’s festivities.
Cora rounds the hall into another narrow corridor.
A wrinkled woman in an apron stops her short.
“Ah, finally. My kingdom for a free hand!” The woman thrusts a heavy box into Cora’s chest. A sewing kit? “Run this to Adelaide, girl.”
Cora pastes on a manic smile. “Right. Adelaide.” She nods across the corridor. “Saw her go that way—”
The servant thrusts her chin in the direction from which Cora came. “Thataway! Guest has a tear, yes, yes. It’s a parade of
fashion emergencies. Out you go—”
“To Mrs. Witt’s quarters?”
“Ha, are you mad? They’ll be in the guest room upstairs.” The woman all but shoves Cora back into the hall.
All right, Cora, reset. Time for a new plan.
She returns to the marble hallway, then stealthily crosses over into the empty theater. Once inside the space, she spies a
luxurious velvet shawl discarded on a seat. Perfect. She nabs the piece and heads backstage for Dinah’s dressing room.
After closing the door, Cora hastily exchanges her black shirtwaist and skirt for one of the assistant’s gaudy, floor-length
gowns. As a final embellishment, Cora opens the sewing kit she’s been saddled with and, with a few swift stitches, secures
one of Prospero’s black silk scarves into a waistband that matches the shawl.
Next, she helps herself to Dinah’s mess of rouges and powders stacked on an end table, then tugs down her hair and, with a
couple of deft moves, retwists it into a piled tousle of curls.
Cora studies herself in the room’s opulent mirror.
“Not quite Madison Avenue. But it’ll do.”
She hurries onto the stage, stopping for a moment to look out at the empty theater, imagining, for just a moment, those elusive
spotlights finally shining on her.
In another life, perhaps. In this one, Cora is running out of time.
After leaving the theater via the far entrance, she enters the main hall on its opposite end. From there, she walks swiftly
into the Witts’ grand foyer, holding her head high, as if she owns the place. Disregarding the quizzical tone of a butler
asking if she’s lost.
“Just taking a break from the festivities,” Cora says airily. “These events can be so demanding, do you not agree?”
“Yes, madame, but if I could—”
Ignoring him, she glides headlong past, rounding another hall peppered with marble busts and tapestries. Mrs. Witt’s dressing
rooms must be somewhere in this expansive maze.
The hall soon dead-ends, and Cora makes the swift decision to turn left, and . . . Voilà. She’s rewarded with the sight of the two footmen and a lady’s maid now holding the feathered headpiece and tray of pins,
the lot of them idling and chatting down the other end.
Cora tucks herself into an alcove, waiting, watching as the servants share a quiet joke. The footmen finally disappear into
a doorway on the right as the maid takes the bounty, passing two rooms before turning into the third door on the left.
Cora hangs back for one heartbeat, two . . . and then sneaks in behind her.
Mrs. Witt’s private quarters.
The room is dark, but Cora can still see enough that pure envy closes around her, stifling, like a spell box. Such luxury, extravagance. Excess. A canopy bed, damask-patterned walls, a sitting room, a moonlit vanity, and an elevated dressing stage.
She retreats into the shadows, feeling even more determined now.
The lady’s maid carefully lifts each diamond pin from the tray and places them one by one inside a jewelry box on the vanity,
then crosses the room and lays the feathered headpiece down like a sleepy child into a long velvet box at the foot of the
bed.
Finally, the maid returns to the hall, shutting the door with a satisfying click.
Showtime.
Cora hurries toward the vanity and opens the box, lifting one of the pins for inspection. The delicate, intricate piece glimmers
like a promise under the tall casement window’s swath of moonlight. Twenty-four beautiful diamonds.
She swallows a triumphant squeal. No more waking up in one city and falling asleep the following night on the way to the next.
No more toiling away in the shadows for her weekly pittance or slinking through the vaudeville crowds, always on the prowl
like a famished hyena.
Cora conjures the image of her old clapboard farmhouse, the endless stretch of wheat, the way the sun glints off the winding
creek at sunrise. Then, even more satisfying, she pictures the stunned, defeated faces of those avaricious lenders when she
walks into their offices and slaps a stack of bills on the table.
Coraline O’Malley, victorious. Nobody’s fool.
Invigorated by her fantasies, she affixes the pins inside her skirts.
When she attempts the door, however, she finds it locked. Good God, nothing is ever easy.
Slightly panicking, Cora surveys the whole of the room, her gaze soon falling on a second door—this one narrow and latched—on
the adjacent wall beyond the sitting room.
Her body wilts in relief. Another way out.
It’s hard to tell where the pocket door leads as Cora inches it open, given that the adjoining room is dimly lit. Another
sitting room, perhaps? A parlor? Regardless, Cora slides through, emerging in a narrow space between two tall bookshelves.
But just as she’s about to make her exit . . .
She realizes she is not alone.
“I’d say that was a success, dear Duchess,” a male voice quietly crows. “If a brief one.”
Cora presses her back against the wall. There are two people here, in fact—the bearded man with the cane and the pretty European
noblewoman with ice-blonde hair.
Damn it all. Maybe Cora won’t be noticed, wedged between these high shelves. Safer here, in any case, than utterly exposed in the middle
of the hostess’s bedroom.
She’ll simply have to wait them out.
From her shielded vantage, Cora watches the man stride, cane-assisted, across the room. He makes himself right at home with
the drinks cabinet, where a decanted bottle of sherry waits to be poured.
“I’m not taking unnecessary risks, Ward,” the woman answers in a low, flat American accent—a very different elocution than
she had used earlier during the party, Cora notes.
“Time’s a’ticking,” says the man—Ward? “We don’t set this in motion soon and we might forfeit half the season.”
He hands his companion a glass of sherry.
The woman swirls it before sipping, scowling a little, as if in deep thought, while Ward sits back down with a contented sigh.
“And we can’t risk letting this play into the summer, Alice,” Ward says. “Only so long before word gets out about secret mines.”
Cora’s heart ticks like a metronome. Forfeit the season? Secret mines?
How . . . fascinating.
Also . . . none of her concern!
She’s hiding on her person a collection of stolen, hopefully exorbitantly expensive diamond pins. Whoever these people are,
if they catch her, they’ll no doubt rat her out to Mrs. Witt. She’ll not only lose the score, but she’ll also lose the farm
and likely her job, low-paying as it is. Perhaps she could even wind up in jail.
Cora focuses her entire being on willing their departure. Leave, you wretched interlopers!
“An excellent point,” says the duchess—or Alice, as this Ward fellow just called her. “And four of the five families are now
at play, thanks to this social outing, so you were right about that as well.”
“As to the fifth . . .” Ward strokes his impressively pointed beard. “Are you dead set on Peyton? We could—”
“Peyton is nonnegotiable.” The tall woman’s voice has gone stiff. “He’s the worst of them.”
“As well as the most intractable,” Ward mutters.
“I laid the groundwork with his business manager, but no dice. Silas posed the proposition, told him about the mines. Peyton shut him right down: ‘Not interested.’ I fear he’ll need a more subtle form of persuasion, but I’m unsure as to how to achieve that without an actual tête-à-tête.
And like I said, Alice, the man’s a veritable hermit.
No one other than Silas—and I mean no one—has seen him for years. ”
“We’ll simply have to find a way to draw him out.” Alice sits up straighter, eyes sharpening. “Perhaps we could approach him
at his ch—”
“Church? What church?” Ward laughs. “The man’s the devil himself, as you said. What use has he got for God? He hardly lets his own son see the
light of day anymore.”
“His son. There—that’s an angle. The son has got to be, what? Twenty-three by now?” Alice paces the room, thinking.
Cora feels her own heart pounding.
“Twenty-two, I believe,” Ward answers quickly. “Now, what are you pondering, Alice? That the younger Peyton might be lured
into—”
“Forget it. It won’t work.” The woman sighs. “He’s too young.”
“You are very beautiful.” On the bearded man’s lips, it feels more like a clinical observation than a flirtation. “And twenty-eight
is hardly elderly.”
“How kind,” Alice says with a sardonic glint in her eye. “But I’m afraid you have more faith in my charms than I do. Twenty-eight
may not be elderly, but it is decidedly spinsterish, not exactly the prime attraction for a young man. Even if it were, playing
him off Ogden would risk losing them both.” The woman waves her hand, exasperated. “It’s not worth muddling over tonight.
I’ll find a way to drag Peyton out of his house and into our trap. Within months, he’ll be left without a rag to wipe his
forehead.”
Cora flattens herself against the shelves.
A magic trick would really prove opportune right now.
She’s learned quite a bit about deception from watching Prospero’s acts, but an escape stunt remains far outside her current capabilities.
Her mind free-falls through increasingly outlandish possibilities: Could she fold herself in half, stuff herself between the books?
“And we’ll be filthy too,” Ward chuckles. “Filthy rich!”
“Precisely.” Alice nods in a way that suggests punctuating the end of the conversation. “The plan is in place. The through
line of it, at least. All that’s left are mere details.”
Cora closes her eyes, shifts her legs, which are starting to turn numb from remaining in place so long. Praying for reprieve,
until finally, finally, those prayers are answered.
She hears the door to the main sitting room open and close. They’ve left.
Cora bursts toward the door.
And collides straight into the waiting duchess.