Chapter 6 Metamorphosis #2
ball gown after use in order to purchase another. My entire budget for the season is forty thousand, not a penny more, so
it is imperative we keep costs low. We’re not actually aristocrats, after all.”
“Of course not,” Cora murmurs.
Still, a second after Alice shuts the door, she hears Cora’s quiet squeal of delight.
And Alice allows herself a small smile of her own.
Lesson Fifty-One: French and German (Again) ~ December 12
“Es ist schones Wetter, nicht wahr?” Cora remarks. Her voice has quieted to a demure purr.
“And in French?” Béa prompts.
“Qu’il fait beau aujourd’hui,” Cora supplies, just as sweetly.
Alice, watching from the doorway, catches Béatrice’s questioning glance.
Alice offers a nod. She smiles minutely, disappearing before Cora can spot any sign of approval.
The girl must not grow complacent. Nothing can slip or this house of cards will tumble.
Lesson Fifty-Four: Street Comportment ~ December 19
Cora stands ready in her spring demi-toilette, day jacket buttoned up, hat pinned just so, and parasol in hand.
“The streets in the city are filthy,” Alice starts.
Cora snorts. “I’ve noticed. My room overlooks the alley where they shovel the horse manure.”
“Better it go there than on your skirts,” Alice says. “You’ll need to hold your hem out of range of spray from the carriages,
but not high enough to showcase even a hint of ankle. Like this.”
She demonstrates. And Cora repeats the movement.
Nothing above her boot shows, nothing drags, and she does not display any discomfiture whatsoever.
“Good,” Alice says.
Cora squints. “That’s it? No corrections?”
“I’m not asking you to perform an aria, merely a skirt hike,” Alice shoots back.
But she’s pleased. The gesture looked effortless. Elegance has crept into every aspect of Cora’s bearing. Gentility has become second nature to this scrap of a thing, who mere weeks ago moved like a hayseed queued up to audition for a chorus girl slot.
But the best thing Cora’s learned, for Alice’s purposes anyway, is to keep her face neutral. That mind of hers is constantly
whirring—Alice never would have brought her in otherwise—but she doesn’t show it anymore. That will be crucial.
“I shan’t be surprised if you suddenly insist I appear on stage at the Metropolitan,” Cora quips as her face remains perfectly,
prettily dim.
“You may want to work on some scales just in case,” Alice says dryly.
Cora winks—and in that split second looks like her old self again. “Be careful what you wish for.”
Lesson Sixty-Six: Street Comportment (Again) ~ December 23
The snowstorm begins with a few flurries, and then day after day of solid, silent precipitation, quieting the grind of the
city, replacing it with the hush of a world wrapped in cotton wool and the occasional peals of laughter from delighted children
on the street below. The plows come now in the morning, pulled by great bay horses, their tread rendered entirely invisible
within an hour.
When Alice notices Cora’s initial delight souring to sullen restiveness as she gazes out the window day after day, she sends Dagmar on an errand, passing the cook a few dollars extra from the ever-dwindling kitty.
The expense proves worthwhile if only to see the joy on Cora’s face when Dagmar returns hours later with thick woolen cloaks and fur-lined boots, perfect for tromping in the snow.
“Shall we attempt a lesson outdoors?” Alice offers.
The walk to Central Park that would have taken a mere thirty minutes under other conditions becomes an epic march northward
under continuous swirls of flurries.
Alice bears it stoically. Cora is downright exultant.
“It’s like we’re on an Arctic expedition,” she marvels, throwing her arms as wide as her tight cloak will allow. “Perhaps
we’ll find poor Greely and his men.”
Alice muses over that reference before remembering that Cora has recently taken to poring over each morning’s edition of The New York Herald, reading first all mentions of European politics, as Alice had instructed, then every other article of note she can lay her
eyes upon.
I shall have to remind her yet again not to sound too informed when we go out into society, Alice notes peevishly. That mind and mouth of hers will raise alarm bells if I’m not careful.
When they reach the park, a fringe of snow thickly caking the hems of their skirts and cloaks, they find a line of enterprising
fellows who have set up sleigh ride rentals. Alice finds the smallest, a little trap that will fit the two of them, pulled
by a single draft horse, and helps Cora to mount beside her.
“Hoods up,” she says. She’s already noted several society faces in the surrounding parklands, some with children building
snowmen, others in their own sleighs, waving to those of their acquaintance. She turns to Cora, adjusting the fur-lined hood
of her cloak back a little. She secures it in place with a pin drawn from her glove so that it displays just enough of Cora’s
face that she’ll be remarked upon, with an air of demure mystery remaining.
It does the trick. As they clip-clop through the smoothed snowy paths of the park, curious heads turn. Men’s white-dusted caps are tipped. Women in broad woolen
hats whisper to one another.
Alice knows that Ward has been making the pre-Christmas social rounds all month, speaking warmly of his friend the duchess
and the debutante cousin who’s come to join her from abroad. This enticing little peek at the two Württembergian ladies will
add one breath of air to the spark of society’s interest, feeding the flame without blowing it out entirely.
“Thank you so much for that, Alice,” Cora murmurs, in her American voice, as they tromp back around the corner to their brownstone
building.
“Consider it your Christmas present,” Alice says quickly, Württembergian accent in place, hoping to quell any further displays
of sentimentality.
No Lessons ~ Christmas Day
There is, in fact, a parcel waiting for Cora beneath their modest, nearly bare Douglas fir. One for Dagmar too, and Béatrice.
Alice’s heart beats strangely quickly, her mouth growing dry, as she waits for them to unwrap their gifts. Perhaps it was
foolish for her to buy them. Perhaps they’ll hate them, lose respect for her. Perhaps—
Cora claps in delight, taking in her new hat with its feathered brim.
“For you to keep,” Alice blurts, her voice awkward to her own ears. “We won’t sell it on.”
The other parcels are rapturously opened.
Dancing shoes for Dagmar, in just the right hard-to-find (enormous) size. She wastes no time in trying them on—then trying a few dance moves that shake the floor beneath them.
Béa cradles her glass bottle, filled with hand lotion scented in lavender. A memory of where she grew up.
“You did not need to,” Béatrice says, her eyes downcast, lips pulling into a smile.
“Of course I didn’t,” Alice says. “If I did, it would be payment, while this is a gift.”
Her eyes sting a little when they meet Béa’s. She likes it. She’s putting it on her hands already.
Relief akin to joy floods warm through Alice’s body.
But she still startles when a parcel falls onto her own lap.
Alice looks up to see Cora standing like a triumphant child, hands on hips.
“Merry Christmas, Duchess. Go on, open it.”
It is a book, leather bound. But when Alice opens the cover, she finds only blank pages inside.
“You’re always keeping so many plans and ideas in your head,” Cora says. “I thought maybe you’d like a place to write them
down.”
The last thing Alice would ever do is keep a record of her plans, providing concrete evidence of wrongdoing to anyone who
happens to lay eyes upon it. She has jotted notes but immediately burned them in her study’s stove.
Any other day she might have admonished as much, provided another key lesson to this upstart fraud in her charge.
But something about the hope in Cora’s blue eyes makes her press the book to her heart instead.
“This is ever so thoughtful, Cora. Thank you.”
She’ll find some use for it. Perhaps as a ledger.
Lesson Ninety-Nine: Street Comportment (Yet Again) . . . and Key Information ~ January 19
Cora perches beside the frost-fogged window in the dining room, reading The New York Herald, an activity that has started to feel illicit, given Alice’s glare every time she catches her.
When footsteps approach briskly, Cora is prepared to fold away the news headlines she was reading—political trouble in Egypt,
an alderman convicted of embezzlement, the dispute over ownership of a new coal mine, a forgery plot foiled, murders galore
right here in this very city.
Perhaps she’s afraid all this reality will send me running for the hills, Cora thinks, but then Alice appears in the corridor, dressed for an outing.
“Béa’s laid out clothes for you and will set your hair,” Alice announces, perfunctory as ever. “We’re going for a stroll.”
Cora is thrilled—but leashed like a puppy, she realizes, as once out in the brisk city air, Alice dictates a strict path of
no more than a two-block radius for their little outing.
“So we’re not overheard,” Alice says lightly. “I want to go over the marks again. And every time someone notes us as we pass,
with a nod or a tip of the hat, we will switch to German, or close enough. Understood?”
“Verstanden,” Cora answers, not a little smug.
“Have you ever been fishing?”
That question confuses the smirk right off Cora’s face. “I . . . Yes.”
“Good. Then you’ll understand this analogy. My overall strategy is to hook all five families in tandem, but to then reel them
in one by one. Carefully. And in a bespoke fashion.”
As Alice outlines the backgrounds and foibles of all the marks, she keeps her voice light and sweet as a tea biscuit.
A few times, when passing men tap their canes to their bowler hats, they switch quickly to Germanic nonsense, with an accented “good morning,” and then continue their conversation where it’s left off.
It feels like no time at all has passed when they draw up outside Alice’s steps once again.
The moment they step into the blessedly toasty interior, Alice removing her gloves and coat, she fixes her eyes stonily upon
Cora and says, “Let’s see what you’ve retained. Ames.”
“Robert and Pearl. First-generation wealth, which has kept them excluded from places like the Academy of Music. Their daughter,
Arabella, believes herself to be in correspondence with your brother, the prince.”
“Your angle?”
“They want a royal title in the family. A pedigree. Make Arabella believe an engagement is possible.”
“Vandemeer,” Alice goes on.
“Old money. James and wife, Olivia. Daughter . . .” This takes her a moment. “Marion, known as Mimi. My angle is to flatter,
while dropping subtle hints that others may offer competition.”
“Witt.”
“Iris.” Cora smiles, recalling the widow’s ridiculous headdress at her Night of Illusions ball. “Son, Beau; daughter, Bonnie.
With them, I must offer entertainment. Render myself ridiculous.”
If she’s half hoping Alice will correct her on that last point, she’s quickly disappointed.
“Ogden.” Alice’s face tightens at this one.
“Brett. Wife, Priscilla. Endear myself to the wife. Steer entirely clear of the other.”
“And Peyton.”
Cora glances back to see Béatrice laying out tea for them in the sitting room.
Alice snaps her fingers. “Focus. Peyton.”
“Harold Senior, a recluse,” Cora answers hastily, longing for nothing more than that hot tea. “Harold Junior, also rarely
seen these past few years. I am to . . . entice him.”
“You are to make him fall headlong in love with you. Let’s not dance around it,” Alice snaps. Her voice softens, however,
when she adds, “I’ll be doing the same with Ogden, so you needn’t feel martyred. It’s the oldest con there is, and perhaps
the easiest to pull off.”
“How do you know so much about these people?” Cora asks once they’re situated for tea. “From Mr. McAllister?”
“Only partly.” Alice raises her eyebrows. “Although I’m sure he’d gladly claim full credit. No, certain details I remember
from my childhood, the gossip I used to hear around the sitting room and in the downstairs quarters. The servants have always
been the ones who actually hold the city’s secrets.”
From the kitchen, Dagmar grunts in agreement.
“But . . .” Cora shakes her head. “What kind of society gossip could you have heard growing up in Poughkeepsie?”
“Ah.” Alice’s eyes twinkle like a cat that’s cornered a mouse. “I told you I arrived here from a boardinghouse in Poughkeepsie. Not that I grew up there. I suppose your last lesson is this: Pay as much mind
to what people don’t say as what they do.”
It takes Cora a moment to read between the lines of even this statement. Then hope crests upon her in a swell.
“Did I hear you right? Did you say last lesson?”
“Last formal one. And not a moment too soon.” Alice rises from the table—a move that Cora knows by now is designed to keep
her from seeing any sign of approval or, God forbid, warmth. “The first event of the season is approaching quickly.”
“The Patriarch’s Ball,” Cora dutifully recites, catching up.
“And Ward’s been true to his word. As founder of the Patriarchs, he’s secured us both invitations.” Alice fixes Cora with
a discerning squint. “I do believe you’re ready. Please don’t prove me wrong.”
Cora struggles to conjure the appropriate response—a promise or a thank-you or a smart reply?—before landing on an obtuse
nod, and a silent prayer for good measure.
This is it. The show begins.
All she can do now is hope to God that Alice is right.