Chapter 27 A Matter of Fairness
A Matter of Fairness
“What do you suppose will happen to the marks after they’re ruined?” Cora sits in her pauper’s gown—a sort of cobbled collection
of frayed rags sewn onto an evening gown frame, complete with a bunched cotton bustle—her face tilted upward, eyes closed,
so that Béatrice can apply charcoal to the area around her lashes.
It’s no easy feat to make someone look all the prettier for being filthy, but Béa has managed it, Alice admits—although she
did draw the line when Béa offered to do the same for her.
Bad enough to be mocking the poor in her burlap gown and stained gloves. Her face can be left alone, thank you.
“In what sense?” Alice eventually replies. “Emotionally? Practically?”
“Practically,” Cora says. “How long do you think it will be before they’re forced to leave their homes?”
Alice can answer that from experience, but she refrains, choosing instead to peer askance at her young protégée. “Why should you care?”
Cora averts her gaze.
Alice’s own gaze narrows. “I’d think you’d be more preoccupied with what happens to us.”
“Okay then.” Cora’s eyes dart back to Alice’s, brash now. “So what does happen? To us? Immediately following the successful
completion of the fraud?”
Béa steps back from Cora, her work complete, and turns to Alice, expectant. Alice swears she can sense Dagmar listening from
the kitchen too.
“Once we’re out, we go to a secure location to divide our shares of the takings.” Alice speaks slowly, as if to a simpleton.
“And then?” Cora asks.
Alice laughs in frustration. “And then I told you, that’s up to you. You can hardly expect me to sketch out the rest of your life for you, not after planning everything leading up to that moment.
Once your share is in your hands, it is yours to do with as you see fit.”
“I suppose I just thought that plan might have changed a bit, given that you two are so . . .” Cora glances worriedly at Béa.
“Are you suggesting we all go our separate ways, or just me?”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Alice says. “Merely stating a fact. When the job is done, we scatter. Nothing has changed,
Cora. Why would it? This was never meant to be forever.”
The room falls into a leaden silence, punctuated by the ticking of the mantel clock.
“And where will you be going, Alice?” Béa cuts in quietly, her eyes pained, unblinking.
Alice can’t answer. Not for the sake of secrecy but because she truly doesn’t know. Something in her mind has not allowed her to think that far.
There’s also the fact that, for all her bluster, the prospect of going her separate way from Béatrice is the most unthinkable
thought of all. She wonders if Béa had assumed the plan would change too, after all these months of growing ever closer. Béa,
dear Béa, who has been battered by life at every turn, is probably even more disappointed than sentimental Cora.
A rap sounds on the door. Béatrice turns away to answer it.
Cora glares at Alice accusingly.
“None of that now.” Alice stands, reflexively brushing off her deliberately filthy gown. “If you’re really that helpless,
I can secure you a coach ticket under a false name for that afternoon. We’ll need to be well out of the city by nightfall.
I know you’re going out west to buy back your farm—”
“So you did listen,” Cora mutters.
“Just tell me, whereabouts is it?” Alice smiles, the very picture of patient amiability.
“Near Topeka. Kansas.”
Alice winces in sympathy. “And you’re quite sure you want to go home to . . . Kansas?”
Cora’s cheeks redden with indignation. “Why shouldn’t I?
It’s beautiful there. Not to mention peaceful, especially compared to the city.
You can hear the birds sing in the morning and the evening, and you can look out on an actual horizon, not a man-made one.
You ask me, it’s the perfect place to go unnoticed for the rest of one’s days and not mind one little bit.
” She gives a flat laugh. “I’ll tell you one thing I’m looking forward to; it’s taking off this damned French corset and setting fire to it out in the field.
Never having to worry about which fork is which or how to make polite conversation with the likes of—”
“Mr. McAllister,” Béatrice announces from the entryway.
Alice blinks. She’d rather been enjoying that rant of Cora’s. “What?”
Béa glances behind her. “He’s arrived to collect you for the ball?”
Shaking her head, Alice hurries to fetch their invitations from her study, then follows Cora down the front stoop, past Béa,
who has trained her eyes firmly upon her own feet to avoid looking at Alice.
Alice’s heart pinches. She swallows away the sensation and lifts her chin.
On the street below, McAllister is waiting for them from inside the open door of his carriage.
Ward, dressed in a head-to-toe hobo costume, is waving some sort of large frond about.
“An olive branch!” he crows.
Alice laughs in sheer incredulity. The man went down to the flower markets to buy an actual olive branch to hold. Why do anything
subtly?
“Which I offer”—he bows deeply, branch extended—“to you.”
Cora glances between them. “Are we going or . . . ?”
“Yes, yes, come inside!” Ward shakes himself out of his seat, lending them each a hand into the carriage. “We hadn’t spoken
of it specifically, but as I tend to escort you two to these events . . .”
“Of course,” Alice says coolly. “Very gracious of you.”
When the door shuts, Ward raises an eyebrow, the branch still in his hand. Alice grudgingly takes it from him, sensing he’s not going to relent otherwise.
“I realize,” Ward starts, squinting regretfully, “that I came on unnecessarily strong with my demands. There was no need for
all that . . . unpleasantness.”
“It’s fine,” Alice says, peering out the window. “We came to an arrangement.”
Cora’s big eyes flash between them with interest Alice has no time or energy to entertain. To the girl’s credit, she refrains
from inquiring.
“Yes, but I realized belatedly, I could’ve approached it with a bit more gentility. After all, we are old friends by now,
my dear, and if I’d only explained to you the why of it, I reckon you’d have offered to up my take without the need for bombast and bullyin’.”
Cora draws in a sharp breath, but a glare from Alice sends her looking in the other direction again.
“I don’t need to hear the why,” Alice says, knowing damn well he’s about to tell her anyway.
“For one thing, it’s a matter of fairness,” Ward plows on. “Who’s done what and so forth. You’re the brains of all this, no
doubt about it, but there would simply be no opportunity without a person such as myself by your side. Cora, did Alice ever
happen to tell you about the first time she and I met?”
Alice could slap the man for dragging Cora into this. She smiles vaguely instead and keeps looking out at the city scenes
filtering past her isinglass window.
“No, she hasn’t,” Cora says, a hint of rebellion in her voice. “Do tell, Mr. McAllister.”
“Why, it was a little more than a year ago, can you believe that, Alice?” Ward continues to use her real name, she notes.
Like a weapon. A bomb he could drop at any moment, should he choose to.
“I was down at the Union Square flower market, pickin’ out American Beauties for Mrs. Astor.
She likes for me to select her flowers personally, you see.
When along comes a woman in a lovely day dress—now, that was the first tell, right there.
Ladies of that apparent station would send their maids, don’t you know, not traipse down among the hoi polloi themselves.
But I smiled politely, didn’t I, Alice? Tipped my hat.
Now, here’s where the fun began. She was holding a vase, blue and white, in a Chinese style.
As I took a step forward to point to a rose, she positioned herself just so, allowing me to knock straight into her, at which point the vase fell from her hands and shattered on the flagstones. Tears
swirled in her eyes. The lady had brought it here to pair flowers with it, she told me. It was her mother’s, Ming dynasty,
priceless!”
Alice sighs. She knows the rest of this tale only too well.
“Now, at this point, any kindhearted gentleman of means would offer to pay for the damages,” Ward says, leaning back to rest
his hands on his “pauper’s” waistcoat, the buttons threatening to spring loose from their seams. “In fact, that’s exactly
what I did do several months prior, when another, far less genteel woman had pulled the exact same trick on me down at the Canal Street
flower market. Some luck you had, Alice, playin’ the same tired, old con—but in the end, I’d say it was good luck, not bad.”
He turns to Cora.
“Right then and there, I offered her my arm, and I said, ‘I’m not gonna give you money for that piece of junk. I’m gonna offer you something much more valuable.
’ Took her out to tea and imparted my wisdom to her.
‘You are clearly an elegant woman of fine breeding,’ I said, didn’t I, Alice?
‘You can do better than two-bit street tricks.’ And that was when she told me she spoke French.
And German. That she knew all about European current events.
And that she had a wild plan in that lovely head of hers. The rest, as the man says, is history.”
“And I am truly grateful,” Alice says placidly.
“Now that there is our history,” Ward says, adjusting himself on the bench. “A fine story, but my future is looking even finer.”
“Let me guess.” Cora cocks her head. “You’ll build the biggest mansion in New York, secure the best box seat at the Met, and
throw the first and best ball every season.”
“As enchanting as all of that sounds . . . no.” Ward waggles his bushy eyebrows. “I’m taking myself off to Paris. I shall
bid adieu to all of these pathetic, desperate, two-bit wannabe aristocrats and make friends with real ones. Oh yes, I’m going
to live out my days as a wealthy expatriate, fill my salon with the handsomest men and most entertaining women I can find,
and I will not spare a single thought for those I’ve left behind.”
The implication is clear: including Alice.
“What of your wife?” she asks. “I can’t quite picture her carousing in Parisian society.”
The carriage stops.
Ward widens his eyes. “Funny. I can’t picture that either.”
He grins.
A chill sends goose bumps rising all over Alice’s arms.
“Which brings me to my burning question,” Ward says, his tone featherlight as he raises a hand to keep them from exiting.
“Which additional marks shall we be adding into the mix tonight?”
Cora outright stares at Alice now but again has the good sense to stay quiet.
Alice shrugs one elegant shoulder. “None. But don’t you fret, Ward. I’ve figured out a way to manage the funds in a manner
that will suit us all to a T.”
“Me?” Ward points to himself, mouth agape. “Fret? Never!”
He raps Alice lightly on the knee with his cane. “I always knew you’d work it out.” He rises, waving for them to step down
from the carriage.
“One last celebration before the biggest one of all,” he announces grandly. “Now let’s go slum!”