Chapter 10 Pepper’s Ghost
Pepper’s Ghost
Directly after breakfast, Alice calls to Béatrice, “Ready the velvet, once you have a moment, the one we’ve been saving. It’ll
go nicely with your new hat, Cora.”
Cora blinks blearily up from the needlepoint square she’s been struggling with. “Where are we going?”
“It’s Sunday.” Alice pauses in the doorway, wondering if the girl’s gotten quite enough sleep. “We’re going to church.”
“I . . . But . . . we haven’t been to church before.” Cora looks almost terrified. “I’ve hardly been to church before. Our congregation was tiny back home, and Lutheran, not . . .”
“Episcopalian,” Alice supplies wryly. “If you’re concerned that God’s wrath will descend upon you the instant you step into Grace Church, I can assure you, you’re perfectly safe.
Plenty of far worse sinners have filled those pews long before you or me, and stepped out just as hale and healthy as before.
Not to mention more securely sewn into the social fabric of New York City, which is what our aim is in attending, now that you’ve been properly introduced to fashionable high society. ”
“Fashionable by whose account?” Cora asks sardonically.
“Ward’s account, mainly.” Alice leans against the doorjamb with a smirk of her own. “As informed by his friend, the great
Mrs. Caroline Astor.”
“And when am I going to be meeting the great Mrs. Caroline Astor?” Cora looks more hopeful about that prospect than the one
facing them this Sunday morning.
Alice’s smile drops away. “If I can help it? Never.”
She turns and sweeps into her bedroom before Cora can pry any further.
Béatrice dresses them hastily, then readies herself in practical woolens and a thick winter cloak.
As she holds the door for them to step out of the brownstone, Alice glances sharply back at her. “Are you sure—”
Béa shakes her head, waving away her concern. “I will be fine. This is a task best accomplished alone.”
Alice nods, continuing down the icy steps with Cora, leaving her housemaid to attend to her even more crucial errand. In terms
of capability, she trusts Béa almost as much as herself.
She can’t think further than capability. It’s too dangerous to think of trust in more sentimental terms. As much as she might
hope for more . . .
Everyone leaves, Alice reminds herself, closing her eyes against the bright winter morning as Ward McAllister’s carriage crunches up the
road. Don’t be the fool who thinks otherwise.
“Why, a very happy Sunday to all! Your Grace, Miss Ritter,” Ward crows. “And is that a new hat I spy?”
“It was a Christmas gift,” Cora replies. “From my cousin.”
She nods to Alice. Ward’s eyebrows rise, wrinkling his brow.
“And nothing for me? I’d claim to be wounded, but then again, I didn’t get you ladies any gifts either, now did I?”
There’s a glint in the older man’s eye that makes Alice suspect he is, in truth, offended at the oversight. She’ll have to
watch to make sure that bit of irritation doesn’t grow into something bigger.
Once the carriage door is shut and they’re on their way downtown, Ward drops the small talk, lowering his voice into an octave
meant for business.
“Mrs. Astor will be in attendance today. Easy enough for me to make an introduction. Rather harder to avoid it, don’t you
know.”
“And yet I’ll find a way,” Alice demurs firmly. “I’d really rather not cross her path.”
“I’ve snuck you both onto the guest list for her ball,” he notes.
“And we’ve declined.”
Cora lets out a surprised squawk. Her eyes have been following the two of them like she’s in the crowd at a summer tennis
match.
Alice ignores her. Again. “The next engagement must be the Vandemeers’ dinner party. You know how James is—if he’s not first
in line, he’s not interested. In order to draw them in more deeply, they must be seen to be our preferred hosts, our preferred
everything.”
“Seen by all to be preferred. Including Mrs. Caroline Astor? Society will see your declining her invitation as a purposeful snub. Perhaps
even a scandalous one.”
“You never should have included us in the first place,” Alice puts in, more sharply. “Then we wouldn’t be in a position to cause scandal.”
Ward’s face reddens. “I’d thought it a strategic move. Clearly you disagree. But I assure you, I would not have taken the
risk of offending my Mystic Rose by intervening for anyone else.”
The risk. Of course. The reason he’s entered into this arrangement with the likes of Alice in the first place. To secure a
safety net beneath his ever-precarious social position. When one relies on the generosity of richer patrons, the kind who
savor nicknames like “Mystic Rose,” for goodness’ sake, one is forever at the mercy of their whims. But all of that is set
to change in only a few months’ time.
“I know how much you esteem her,” Alice offers.
“Respect is a better word,” Ward says wryly. “In the way that an explorer respects the grizzly bear he encounters in the wild.”
“You see?” Alice cocks her head. “You’ve put it better than I could. Mrs. Astor is no mere chorus member in this production
of ours. How could she be, when everything in this world turns upon a word from her? Better just to leave her out of it. She
needn’t know we were even invited.”
“Oh, she knows already.” Ward sighs. “At least she will as soon as she receives your regrets.”
Alice softens. Presses her hand into his, her form of an apology.
He squeezes, accepting it.
“I’ll send a further letter of explanation,” she says. “Cora’s brother died yesterday. Shot by Hungarians as he attempted
to stop them from entering the mines. We are both in mourning for the next several weeks.”
“How shocking.” Ward tips his hat to Cora. “My sincerest condolences.”
Cora smirks, but her face drops as the carriage slows behind the train of others arriving at Grace Church’s Gothic Broadway
entrance. “Oh hell, I’ll need to look tragic, then.”
“Indeed,” Alice says dryly. “And you may consider watching your language while inside a public place of worship. It might
be different for Lutherans, but this is—”
“Episcopalian,” Cora grumbles. “Let’s get this over with.”
As they parade inside the building, leaving Ward behind at the doorway to attend Mrs. Astor’s arrival, Alice recalls past
services here as if from the other side of a dream.
She was much smaller then. The pew backs much taller, the windows and ceiling endlessly high. Filing in along the stiff-faced
clerics, exchanging dry, wordless greetings with everyone already seated in their carefully negotiated pews. Squirming in
her scratchy lace-collared dress, her governess pinching her to make her sit still, her mother’s sweet voice rising as they
began the hymns. Her father heartily shaking hands with well-wishers and business associates.
With Robert Ames. With Witt and Vandemeer and Ogden and—
“Are you all right?” Cora whispers in her correct accent as they take a seat in a pew toward the middle of the church.
“Yes, obviously,” Alice mutters back, in case anyone is listening. “Only praying for your dear brother’s soul.”
Taking the cue, Cora lowers her head, eyes closed in silent prayer of her own. A murmur rises among the more cheerful parishioners,
signaling a new and notable arrival.
Alice averts her eyes, only glancingly seeing Ward glide past, his arm on loan to a stately older woman dressed in deep cranberry.
“There she is,” Cora whispers breathlessly. “The Mrs. Astor.”
Her sister-in-law might take issue with that declaration, Alice thinks, but she can’t quite get the quip out, even to whisper it. Her breath is growing tight.
As the service begins, Alice feels her heart pounding forcefully within her. She can barely hear the words of the reverend
leading them in prayer, through the readings.
It takes her a moment to realize everyone is standing for the first hymn. Cora’s voice rises with “The Son of God Goes Forth
to War.” It is a triumphant, restoring sound.
Alice could swear it is her mother who is now restored, standing beside her, peering down at her daughter with a smile. Mother
always loved the singing best, but Alice finds she cannot bear it, the sound of these hymns, let alone force a tune through
her own dry throat.
Her eyes spill over in a flash too quick for her to possibly quell.
With a gasp, she lurches for the end of the pew.
From above, Christ and all his saints watch her flee for the exit, the safety of the sidewalk—and they’re not the only ones.
All of New York society watches her run from her mother’s ghost out of Grace Church, tears streaming down her foolish cheeks.
Cora finds her out in the cold a moment later, shivering, holding both of their cloaks. “What happened back there? What’s
the matter?”
“This was a mistake,” Alice sputters in a whisper, barely clinging to her accent. She snatches her cloak from Cora, then starts quickly away, up north. They won’t wait for Ward; they’ll walk.
Cora struggles to keep up. “But it was your idea! I don’t understand.”
“I thought it would help secure our respectability, to become a regular part of the congregation. I didn’t calculate . . .”
She shakes her head, willing her breath to steady again.
To her credit, Cora has learned not to press, only walks quietly beside her for a good half mile, a silent sentinel, both
of them listening to the cacophony of sounds filtering out of the buildings around them, families spending the day of rest
in their own ways from city block to city block.
“That was your church, wasn’t it?” Cora finally ventures. “When you were a child.”
Alice stops and fixes her with a sharp glare.
It doesn’t dissuade the girl from placing a light hand on her shoulder before they continue walking.
A headache has set in by the time they reach their own corner, but Alice has mulled a solution to this small debacle along
the way. She’ll write to Mrs. Ames, apologize that their hasty departure prevented a proper hello, explain that they were