Chapter 28 Rotgut and Vittles
Rotgut and Vittles
If the Night of Illusions ball had been the overture to Cora’s New York social season, it is perhaps fitting that Mrs. Witt’s latest private banquet
will be her final act.
The Witt estate has gone through its own extraordinary transformation in the interim, Cora notes as they arrive on Madison
and Fifty-First Street, although one might more accurately call it a debasement. Mrs. Witt’s careful landscaping of ivy, rosebushes, and potted topiaries is now covered in ratty, tattered blankets. Her
dozens of stained glass windows besmirched with dirt. A collection of buckets and dusters has been arranged into a sculpture
at the soot-stained, Baroque-style entrance, with a handwritten beggar’s sign atop the pile, gleefully misspelled in accordance
with the invitation posted weeks ago:
Welckom to the Poverty Balle!
488 Madison Aveneu, New Yerk
Ward offers Cora a hand down from the cab, looking around with a smirk as he adjusts his pageboy cap. “My, my, better than I could’ve expected. Iris Witt may be many things, but understated ain’t one of them.”
They open the door themselves, in keeping with the theme, Cora supposes, not a butler in sight, other than the costumed guests
themselves.
Inside Mrs. Witt’s grand hall, the party is already in full swing, hundreds of partygoers in custom rag gowns and footman
uniforms mingling about under the Witts’ crystal three-tiered chandeliers, which are bespeckled at present by dirty mopheads.
The parlor on the right—the one that was repurposed as the troupe’s backstage space during the Night of Illusions, if Cora remembers the house correctly—has been arranged like a clapboard tenement, complete with cots
on the floor and laundry lines ribboned like a spiderweb across the ceiling. On the left, the dining room chairs have been
replaced by wooden boxes, and folded newspaper-napkins decorate the table.
The lump in Cora’s throat grows into a ball as she follows Alice deeper into the manse, the overwhelming tastelessness of
tonight very nearly derailing her intended mission. How on earth did she ever envy these wretched people, ever see them as
the shiny American victors?
“I spy the Vandemeers,” Ward murmurs, gesturing ahead to a refreshments table, which has been arranged like a food line in
a lodging house. “Shall we make the rounds? Start handing out our coveted invitations?”
Alice nods, threading her arm through Ward’s.
Cora shakes her head, following them. She’s not sure she’ll ever understand their relationship, which seems all the murkier after Ward’s little walk down memory lane.
Currently, he and Alice seem as tight as ever, though Cora can’t help but worry that whatever “arrangement” they’ve come to likely doesn’t bode well for the rest of them.
“Duchess,” Mrs. Vandemeer says vacantly, lifting her glass as they approach, her silver bodice cascading into tiered bustles
of rags. “Perhaps it’s premature to celebrate our company . . . but ha, let us drink all the same.”
Mrs. Vandemeer must have dipped into her snuff quite early tonight, Cora notes—the woman nearly knocks down the pyramid of
bowls displayed on the table with her intended toast.
The rest of said company ignores her faux pas, Ward merely smiling coyly. “Perhaps not so premature.”
He glances at Alice, then pulls a thick cream envelope from his hobo vest with enough dramatic flourish to rival Prospero.
Mr. Vandemeer takes the invitation as one would accept a Communion wafer, hands outstretched, face twisted with rapture. “Is
this . . . what I think it is?”
Mr. McAllister winks. “You’ll have to wait and see when you open it.”
“Yours has been delivered first, naturally,” Alice adds demurely.
“How many?” Vandemeer presses. “How many have you—”
“Only five,” Alice says. “Including yours.”
“You ask me, competition is the spice of life,” Ward crows, helping himself to a glass of rotgut punch. “I myself keep urgin’
our dear duchess to open trading on the exchange down on Wall Street, but her little heart is set on the embassy and the company
of friends only . . .”
Cora drifts down the table, watching her mentors work with resigned remorse. This she will miss. Not Mr. McAllister, obviously, nor her mounting crises of conscience, but the team. The notion of being part
of something bigger than the sum of its parts.
Alice’s crew has become . . . well, her sanctuary, she supposes, a family she has made for herself.
A family that will disband mere days from now, Cora realizes soberly, given Alice’s unwavering vision.
Despite what Alice had insisted upon, time and again throughout the season, Cora honestly believed her mentor’s mind would change somewhere along the way.
She feels like such a dupe even thinking it, but the emerald con seems far less valuable a score when Cora imagines herself alone at its end.
She laughs bitterly into her glass. Oh, the irony. To finally get Long Creek Farm, have the last laugh, only to realize that
who she’s with matters a far sight more than where she’s going.
“Did you make a last-minute change?” The question startles her.
Cora turns to see Arabella standing before her, a faint blush across her cheeks. She gestures down toward Cora’s dress. “I
recall you were planning to come as a scullery maid.”
Ah yes, the little white lie in Lord & Taylor. Cora glances over at Ward, who still stands gossiping, now a ways down the
drawing room.
“He fired her,” she says simply. “I had to pivot.”
“Well,” Arabella says brightly, “you are the loveliest pauper I ever saw.” The girl winces, cringing at herself. Perhaps realizing
she sounds like her obsequious mother? “I’m a bit out of sorts. Again, sorry. And this party is overwhelming. Hardly helping
the matter.”
Cora smiles, looking around pointedly, venturing, “Mrs. Witt has really outdone herself.”
“It is all . . . a bit off-putting, is it not?”
“Ghastly.”
“In terrible taste!”
Both girls burst into relieved laughter. For a moment, Cora conjures another reality, one where she and Arabella are actual
debutantes, true friends.
“I want to apologize for the other day, Cora,” Arabella says. “I really am very eager to marry your cousin—”
“You do not have to explain yourself to me.”
“I just . . . I struggle to picture my future life abroad. When I try to imagine my home in Württemberg, with Prince Wilhelm,
or the wedding, or even the gardens the duchess speaks so fondly of, I . . . well, I find I cannot conjure anything. It is
as if my future is merely . . . blank.”
Perhaps Arabella is more intuitive than Cora ever gave her credit for.
If ever there was an opening for her planned conversation . . .
“Something has been weighing on my mind too,” Cora confesses. “I was hoping we might have a private word?”
Arabella’s thin brows pinch, but still, she nods gamely. “Of course, dear friend. Lead the way.”
The pair navigate through the crowd, Arabella trailing, with Cora bound for the one space she knows intimately in the Witts’
grand home. On their way to the private theater, they pass a sprawling dice game spilling out of the adjacent parlor.
“Cora! Bella!” Harry leaps up, looking goggle-eyed between them. “Are you enjoying the party?”
He begins swaying. Is he tippled? Cora leans closer, catching a gag-inducing whiff of whiskey. Oh, most certainly.
“The game of craps is ever so much fun.” Harry guffaws. “There seems a surprising inverse correlation between frivolity and
affluence—”
“Do win one for Württemberg, won’t you, darling?” Cora says kindly. “We’ll join you shortly.”
As soon as they reach the theater, Cora ushers Arabella inside and closes the wide double doors behind them. The large space
is mercifully free of partygoers, as she anticipated, empty but for the long rows of wooden chairs, the majestic walls spangled
in woodwork, and the wide, red-curtained stage. A room primed for her own performance.
“So grand,” Arabella marvels.
Cora nods. “I thought it a fitting place to talk.”
“Have you been here before?” Arabella says curiously.
Cora’s breath catches.
“You were still in Württemberg, were you not, for Mrs. Witt’s Night of Illusions? Though perhaps you came for lunch or tea?”
“I asked one of Mrs. Witt’s servants for a quiet place, is all,” Cora says breezily. Focus, Cora. No need for any contradictions, not when we are so close. “Please. Come sit.”
Arabella slides beside Cora onto one of the nearby chairs.
“I know you are anxious about your future, Arabella,” Cora starts. “But I assure you, Württemberg is a truly breathtaking
place. Green pastures as far as the eye can see. Rolling mountain ranges. The Black Forest, with its shining lakes. Around
every corner, there are treasures to rival even the mines themselves.”
Arabella nods absently, studying her lap. “So I’ve heard.”
“And yet I know all these things can feel so very . . . abstract,” Cora continues. “Only painted in your mind’s eye through
Wilhem’s letters, which can be unnerving.” She steals a breath. “Which is why I think you should join us at the embassy next
week.”
Arabella looks up. “The embassy?”
“Mr. McAllister will be handing your parents an invitation at some point tonight,” Cora explains. She takes Arabella’s hand.
“Despite to whom the card is specifically addressed, as your friend, I beseech you to be there as well. Württemberg is your
future home, after all, and you should be fully informed about the mines and your company. How the new investment structure impacts your future.”
Arabella lets out a soft laugh. “I’m not sure my parents would agree. One of our housekeepers was once dismissed just for
allowing me a glimpse of a grocery bill. They prefer me to keep my mind . . . unpolluted.”
“I don’t believe a solid grounding in finance to be anything but useful,” Cora retorts. “Do you think so, truly?”
“I would always prefer to know more rather than less,” Arabella admits, rather shyly—though the girl’s answer comes as no