Chapter 29 The Sting
The Sting
Arabella’s father stares at the embossed embassy card with an unimpressed squint that makes his mustache twitch.
Arabella finds herself holding her breath. Could it be he’s considering snubbing the invitation?
Not if her already red-faced mother has anything to do with it.
“Nothing here about financial dealings,” he grunts. “Anyone would think this was a social call.”
“Well, precisely!” Her mother flings herself beside him. “Her Grace can’t very well write down the true purpose of the meeting,
or any Tom, Dick, or Harry could lay eyes on this bit of paper and word would spread like wildfire, absolutely everyone wanting to worm their way in.”
“Nothing here about Arabella either,” he mutters with a droopy frown, his eyes lifting briefly to meet Arabella’s. “Doesn’t
seem appropriate for the wife-folk to attend a business meeting, let alone our impressionable young daughter.”
“It’s only because Miss Cora has to be there,” Arabella puts in. “She requires a friend close at hand or she’ll be terribly
bored. And if the bidding grows too heated, we’ll excuse ourselves.”
“Miss Ritter, eh? Maybe I’ll write a note to the duchess, suggesting she keep her ward at home as well.”
“You’ll do no such thing!” her mother snaps. “This is no mere business meeting, my darling; it is a matter of family. Think
of Arabella’s future. Our grandchildren—”
Arabella’s heart thuds wildly, as it always does when the two of them bicker. She retreats to the safety of her own bedroom,
her thoughts in a muddle. Perhaps it would be easier to stay home and avoid the argument. The idea of capitulating comes as
an instant relief.
It was odd, wasn’t it? The intensity with which Cora implored her to come.
Something seems amiss. She can’t quite put her finger on it.
But good heavens, if she cannot even brave a trip to the Württemberg embassy, how on earth will she manage to move to Württemberg
itself?
She buries her face in her pillow to soak up her tears.
“This is a first,” Iris Witt declares, racing through B. Altman with two shopgirls and a floor merchant tailing her. “What
does one wear to an embassy luncheon?”
“Perhaps something in the style of the country in question?” the merchant suggests.
Iris sneers at him. “I think emeralds would be a bit obvious, don’t you?”
“Or perhaps”—he frowns thoughtfully—“obvious is exactly what the occasion calls for?”
The shopgirls murmur between themselves.
Iris flings herself onto the closest settee. “Very well. Bring me everything you have in green. Quickly! Might as well collar a seamstress; the event is tomorrow.”
As they curtsy, bow, and turn, she calls again, “While you’re at it, show me some bags. Crocodile skin, large enough to hold
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash.”
The color drains from the merchant’s face.
Iris fans herself. “And if you breathe a word about anything I’ve said today, I’ll tell all my friends that B. Altman and
Company is infested with bedbugs. Now shoo!”
“Very good, madam,” the merchant says, and just as they round the corner, out of earshot, he tells the shopgirls, “Raise the
price of everything twenty percent.”
“Are you sure I oughtn’t accompany you tomorrow, my darling?” Priscilla reaches her vein-riddled hand across the table to
grasp her husband’s.
Revulsion ripples through Ogden, even as he smiles adoringly. “We’ve talked about this, Priscilla. It’s a business meeting.
You’d be bored to tears as we men talk of bonds and market share.”
Dinner is the only time she doesn’t wear her gloves. It’s a wonder he can eat at all.
“But it won’t just be men, will it?” Her hooded eyes narrow farther. “She’ll be there.”
“I’m not sure to whom you’re referring,” he says lightly, sipping his wine.
“Cora Ritter,” she hisses. “That girl couldn’t stop looking at you during their last visit. And that vulgar song she sang.
She has aims on you, I know it.”
“Now, darling, you know she’s engaged to—”
“Which makes it all the more disgusting, how she flirts with you.” Mrs. Ogden cuts into her steak with renewed vigor.
Does she? Ogden wonders. A secret smile plays over his lips. Perhaps he’ll have the duchess as a main and the girl for dessert. Preferably
before she’s been sullied by the marriage bed.
“You’ve nothing to worry about, dearest,” he breathes. “I am yours alone, body and soul. And the riches I bring home tomorrow
morning will be mere icing on the cake of our felicity.”
Priscilla lets out her broken-glass laugh. He guzzles his wine to dull the grate of it.
“Where is it?” James Vandemeer shouts, his cheeks reddening above his freshly trimmed beard. “I insisted it be ready by eight
this morning!”
“It is eight now, sir,” the valet says, handing him the heavy-laden folio case he requested.
“By eight,” Vandemeer repeats disdainfully. “Do they not speak English where you come from?”
“They speak French, sir.”
Far down the corridor, Olivia Vandemeer drifts like a ghost between rooms.
“Goodbye, my darling!” James shouts, hoisting the bag. “I’ll be the first outside the embassy door. Position in the room is
everything, you know. Let’s get going. Time is money, and I mean to gain an obscene amount of it today!”
“Get me my cane!” Harold Peyton Sr. shouts.
Harry cringes. “I don’t suggest rising from your chair, Father. Not without first performing a few calisthenics to strengthen
the muscles—”
“It’s not for walking, it’s for beating people! Like my idiot son! Thinks he can tell me anything. Medical or otherwise.”
Harold Senior’s voice falls into an incoherent grumble. Harry feels his own spine beginning to weaken once again under his
father’s glare. “You think you’re a big boy now, don’t you, Harry, with your fiancée and her emeralds, but I’ll tell you something.
They’re going to be my emeralds soon. You are coming with me in order to roll my chair. Nothing more! You got it? I don’t want to hear a damn peep
out of you while the men are talking.”
Harry sniffs, picturing the long Bow Bridge in Central Park. A stroll with his dear old dad. A feigned misstep, a hoist of
the chair, his father tumbling straight into the lake . . .
“What was that?” Harold shouts.
“Nothing, sir,” Harry says. “Didn’t make a peep.”
“Test it once more,” Alice says.
Béatrice sits before the telegraph machine and begins to type.
“And can you hear me through the wall?”
Silence. Then, on the ticker tape, the typed word: “Yes.”
Alice laughs as she opens the door to the “ambassador’s” office.
“Good,” she breathes, leaning against the desk, close to Béa. She nods up to the wall, where a large clock is displayed. “If for whatever reason you can’t hear the announcement through the door, you’ll stick to the timings regardless.”
“Announcement of lunch by ten fifteen, out the window before half past.” Béa reaches for her hand. “It will all be splendid,
Alice. No more arranging, no more planning. We are ready.”
Alice lets her fingers curl into Béa’s for a few blessed seconds before letting go and striding to the door.
“It’s a quarter to nine,” Béa says softly. “I suppose you should go out into the salon now. I’ll . . . well, I suppose I’ll
see you at the meeting place.”
Alice’s hand lingers on the doorknob.
“For all your grand plans and brilliant schemes, you are the most idiotic person I know if you walk away from Béa.”
Alice swallows around a vise-tight throat, then turns around. “As a matter of fact, there is one more matter to be arranged.”
“Oh?” Béa frowns.
Alice glances over her shoulder, at the closed door leading to the reception room, and then joins Béa once again.
“I . . . well, you see, I’ve bought a set of coach tickets, heading west. First to Albany.” Her feet fidget upon the floor.
Lord’s sake, she’s more nervous about this conversation than she’s been about any aspect of this plan thus far. “I thought
we might lodge for the night there before we board a train to . . . perhaps somewhere in the Midwest?”
Good grief, where did that idea come from? Another influence of Cora’s, no doubt.
Although, my goodness, she’s surprisingly grateful for that influence now.
“We could go farther,” she blurts. “All the way to the Pacific coast. Or even abroad, if you’d prefer?”
Béa slowly smiles. “I’m still puzzling over that ‘we.’”
“I’m rather hoping you’ll come with me,” Alice says. “Stay with me. In fact . . . I’m desperate for it.”
Béa stays very still. She closes her eyes, as if pained.
I’m too late, Alice thinks. She’s written me off as a poor investment.
“I’ve been closed off,” Alice says. “I know it. It was a struggle, often, and I fought to maintain that . . . distance. Which
hasn’t been fair to you. Not to Cora either—Dagmar I don’t suppose cares either way.”
Béa lets out a breathy laugh of acknowledgment. Her eyes still don’t rise to Alice’s.
“I pretended it was about the plan, keeping a steady heart and a cool head.” Alice’s voice comes out a little broken. She
draws a heavy breath and forges ahead regardless. “But it was more than that. You have to understand, Béatrice, everyone . . .”
A sob chokes at Alice’s throat. She whispers around it.
“Everyone has left me.” Tears flood her eyes. She draws a stinging gasp. “My father. My baby sister. Cal, off to seek his
own fortune. My mother, the way she hid inside herself and gave up and didn’t spare a thought for . . .”
She can’t say it. Her hands are shaking, her eyes streaming. This is the worst possible time to confess all of this, the most
unstrategic display of raw emotion, and yet, what other time will there be?
“If you left too, Béa—”
And then Béa is there, rising from the desk in a blur, pressing her hands to Alice’s cheeks, wiping the tears away with the tips of her fingers. “I will stay by your side, Alice. If you will have me, mon Dieu, je resterai, pour toujours et toujours.”
What could I possibly want apart from this? Alice thinks as she takes in humble, kind, brilliant Béa.