Chapter 3 Loose Ends
Loose Ends
Compared to the grandeur of the Witt home on Madison Avenue, Ward McAllister’s residence is modest, a narrow, three-floor
townhome on Thirty-First Street, although Cora supposes there is a certain unmistakable care and pride in its keeping, the
set of rosebushes encased inside the wrought iron fence, the potted plants lining the stoop.
She steels herself with a fortifying breath, watching the home from a ways down the block. She can see movement through its
front window. A maid, perhaps, or butler. Given that she followed Alice and Ward here by carriage—having spent the bulk of
Alice’s measly five-dollar payoff on this trip—she knows they’re inside too. Scheming, no doubt.
Cora understood why the fake duchess shooed her away a few hours ago, concluding “no harm done,” or however she’d put it.
Meaning no harm done to her. There was loads of harm done on Cora’s end.
Her score was foiled, and now with Dinah on her scent, her days are numbered with the show—unless Cora keeps her word to Maeve and stops her side hustle, but that means Long Creek Farm is as good as gone.
There’s also the undeniable fact that Cora will never again meet a fake duchess, or rather, a woman so astute at playing a fake duchess that she had a party of hundreds fooled.
This woman might prove a bigger score than thousands of sneak-and-grab jobs, as she called them. And Cora cannot let her slip
away.
Before losing her nerve, Cora approaches the house, passing a well-dressed couple stepping out from another carriage on the
corner, laughing, cheeks flushing in the cold November night, Manhattan showing no signs of slowing down, although it must
be nearly five a.m. by now, the sun threatening to rise over the distant glimmering East River. There is something intriguing
about city life, Cora will admit. The frenetic pace, bustling hustle, high society and all their elaborate social rituals.
And yet she’s made an oath to herself, signed her name in blood: Long Creek Farm will be hers again. It fully consumes her,
nearly all she can think about, since Ross he wasn’t about to start kowtowing to her hang-ups now.
With the loans from Ross & Calhoun, Da purchased three John Doe plows, reapers, and that share in the grain elevator, all
with his own farmland pledged as collateral.
In a matter of months, it all went up in smoke, Cora watching like a patron at a magic show—shocked, disbelieving, powerless
to do anything to stop the spectacle. Despite the new machinery, they couldn’t keep up with the larger Topeka competitors
and fell behind on payments. Da defaulted on the first, then the second and third loans, until Ross & Calhoun Loans swept
in and seized their home straight out from under them.
Out of money, no land, Da became a tenant farmer, bringing Cora along to help with grunt work in the stables and kitchens.
She watched him grow smaller and smaller all winter, ground down by labor and despair, until he eventually succumbed to whooping
cough that following spring.
“Can’t trust no one anymore.” Da’s dying words. “Whole country’s full of cheats.”
From Cora’s vantage, though, that wasn’t wholly true.
There were confidence men and their marks, weren’t there?
Schemers and dupes, the whole country polarized right down the middle.
There were people like Da, the over-trustful, hapless fools with targets on their backs, and then there were people out on the hunt to make theirs: bankmen, railroad magnates, folks like those crooked politicians in Tammany Hall.
The fancy set, too, like Mrs. Witt at the party, wealth wielded as a weapon, determined to take down whoever, pay whatever, in order to preserve their reign.
It had seemed like fate when Prospero rolled into town last June, one of the many traveling vaudeville acts at the local Shawnee
Circus & Fair. Cora had watched the magician’s show of fire, lights, and illusions, rapt. Prospero was a professional grifter
of the highest order. A man who could stand onstage and fool scores of patrons every show. Cora had already started thieving
alone on the streets of Topeka, a purse here, a pocket watch there, hoping to cobble together enough to buy back her land—come
out on top after all—but she had so much to learn and so far to go. Here was someone who could help her. She approached Maeve
and the backstage crew after the performance, gushing with compliments, and they introduced her to Prospero. Cora left with
the troupe for Lincoln, Nebraska, the very next morning.
But Prospero, the show, the road, it’s all a dead end now, what with Cora stuck backstage making three crummy dollars a week
and Dinah threatening to have her sacked if she tries crooking more.
This fake duchess, however, could very well be Cora’s solution.
Her ticket to greener pastures, in more ways than one.
With new resolve, Cora taps the bronze knocker against Mr. McAllister’s door. She knows it’s far past the appropriate time
to call, but Cora can’t afford to wait. It’s right now or joining the troupe on their way to Providence, Rhode Island—first
stop on a lifetime journey to Nowhere Fast.
She knocks again.
A bone-weary-looking housekeeper finally answers.
“Yes, miss?”
“I’m here to see the duchess . . .” Cora blanks, trying to recall if she actually heard the sham name of the woman in the
library, landing on “Duchess Lady Alice.”
An arched eyebrow tells Cora she guessed wrong. “Is the duchess expecting you?”
Cora smiles. “In her own way, most likely.”
The housekeeper gives a curt nod and retreats into the house, not inviting her in. Cora resists the urge to bite her nails,
resting her gaze on the McAllisters’ small but lovely fenced garden beside the stoop.
“Grand Duchess Marie Charlotte Gabriella of Württemberg will be with you in a moment,” the housekeeper announces behind her
with a barely contained sigh.
She leads Cora into a modest parlor with a striped settee, matching armchairs, and a crackling fireplace. “Please. Make yourself
comfortable.”
Comfortable. What a tall order. Cora settles for perching on the edge of a chair.
“What on earth are you doing here?”
Cora leaps to her feet at that voice, then internally curses herself for her jumpiness.
She spins to take her first long look in the light at her mark, who must have been lurking in here all along.
The Grand Duchess Marie or Alice or whoever she truly is has perhaps ten years on her.
She really is a beautiful woman, although hard-looking, with a long, straight nose and that severe, pale hair—although, who knows, her entire face might soften when she smiles.
Cora has yet to see a smile and cannot quite imagine one, but she can see how the woman can get away with claiming nobility.
There’s a timelessness to her appearance, a weariness too, as if she carries the weight of many generations.
“I’m here to talk to you,” Cora says. “I didn’t feel we were quite done with our earlier discussion.”
“We most certainly were,” Alice says.
Cora spies the home’s owner, Mr. Ward McAllister, lingering in the hall, now dressed rather informally in a maroon smoking
jacket and slippers. “Your, ah, Grace? If I may—”
“You may not,” the fake duchess says. “I’ll handle this myself, Mr. McAllister.”
The man gives a ceremonious bow, then brightens as he spots the decanted wine.
“In that case, I shall take my nightcap in the study.”
He plods languidly between them, swirls the rust-red wine inside the crystal decanter, then with one more smirk, glides out
of sight.
“Nice place he’s got here,” Cora says wistfully once his slippered footsteps have retreated.
“Yes. But again, why are you in it?”
“I remember what you said.” Cora sweeps forward. “And I understand that we could let sleeping dogs lie or whatever.”
“It seems you don’t remember what I—”
“The thing is,” Cora charges onward, “I believe we can help each other.”
Her Fake Grace lets out a thunderclap of a laugh.
Cora persists. “I think I could learn quite a bit from you. You see, a turn of unfortunate circumstances led me to Prospero’s employ in the first place, and try as I might to flourish under his tutelage, I feel stymied, stuck rather, and I don’t necessarily see a way out .
. . which is why I had found myself in Mrs. Witt’s chambers in the first place.
But then when I fell upon you, I just . .
. I truly feel like fate had a reason for bringing us together. ”
The duchess’s face remains blank, carved of stone.
Cora feels dizzy but refuses to relent. “I only mean to say that I have plans to . . . well, I suppose I have lofty goals,
but there’s a divide between what I know and what I need to know in order to make them happen, which is why I could really
stand to benefit from a mentor. A real one. Prospero the Great hardly qualified, and I think—”
“I think it’s past time for you to go.”
But Cora isn’t stopping now, not after practicing her speech at least ten times on the carriage ride here. Obviously she was
prepared for friction. She knew this woman was not just going to throw open her arms and say, Yes, of course, I’ve always desired a mangy mutt as a protégé.
Cora has to go all in or else it’s all for naught.
She takes a step closer, drops her voice. “See, the thing is, I believe I can do far more damage with the information I gleaned
tonight than you can with the hypothetical crime you claim you saw committed. And anyway, I’m a puff of smoke, a nonentity.
Prospero doesn’t even know my real name. Besides, no one cares about a sly act from the likes of some nobody like me. Not
a princess or duchess or . . . whatever you’re pretending to be. And I have a feeling whatever prize is at the end of this,
it’s a big one. One you’re not about to jeopardize.”
Only Alice’s brow betrays her. One crinkle between the eyes.
“Prospero’s troupe leaves for Providence soon.
Another private show, of which I’m sure he’ll pocket all the proceeds, but this time I very much hope I won’t be part of the act.
” Cora hands the woman the calling card she’s prepared by hand.
“I go by Cora Mack. I’m staying with the troupe at the Hopper House, near the river.
We’re scheduled to depart at five o’clock sharp this evening.
You can send a servant or a messenger or come yourself, however you like.
But if I don’t hear from you by the time I’m expected to load up and out, I’ll assume I need to resort to my contingency plan. ”
The duchess arches an eyebrow. “And what is that?”
“I’ll be forced to alert Mrs. Witt that she was not hosting royalty but rather an outright fraud.”
The woman laughs again. “Who in their right mind would believe a magician’s stagehand over Ward McAllister?”
“I’m not sure Iris Witt is entirely in her right mind,” Cora notes.
A glimmer of a smile sparks in Alice’s eyes. Enough to give Cora hope that this might possibly work and keep going.
“From what I’ve experienced of your world, its access feels quite . . . tenuous. All it might take is a shadow of doubt. A
wrinkle ruins an entire dress, as they say. Just think about it.” Cora smooths her own skirt, partly to avoid the reaction
on Alice’s face, then nods curtly. “I can see myself out.”
It’s only when she’s stepped out into the rising sun, emerging to pierce the brisk New York morning, that she gasps, residual
fear seeping out of her as she hurries down the McAllisters’ steps, a rogue tear running down her cheek.
Oh yes, she could learn loads from that woman. An entire trade. Enough to get her farm back and maybe a brand-new life to
boot.
Here’s hoping she gets the chance.