“Mr. Tschirky sent us for to draw bath on Miss Randolph,” the blonde—an older girl with light blue eyes and sturdy, Nordic bone structure—said. “It is through door there. All inside plumbing at Waldorf, miss. Water comes hot as summer day straight from pipes. We scrub back and wash hair.”
Phoebe groaned, though I saw her features lighten just a bit. “Thank you. But Miss Randolph won’t need you at the moment. Take a break. But please show the dressmaker up the moment she arrives, aye?”
The smaller, mousy one bobbed again and skirted out. The blonde nodded, though she cut an uneasy glance my way. “You are to be bathing the mistress yourself, then?”
“Aye. I’ll manage.” After practically closing the door in the girl’s face, my friend plopped down next to me.
“Aw, Phee,” I said. “That’s so sweet of you. I mean, a bath sounds awesome right about now.” I flashed a wicked smile. “Remember, I’m allergic to lavender. And hey, can I see a loofah menu before you bathe me?”
“You,” she shot back, fighting a grin, “can go bathe my fat butt.”
Doug gave a low whistle as he turned from the fire. “Now that is something I’d like to see.”
“Douglas Eugene Carlyle,” Mac snapped.
“Jesus, man,” Collum groaned. “That’s my sister.”
Doug and Phoebe locked eyes. Phoebe stood and marched over to him. For a moment, no one breathed.
Finally, she shook her head. “You just keep dreamin’, big boy,” she said, jumping up to wrap her arms around his neck, practically strangling him. “You just keep right on dreamin’.”
Behind the round wire-framed glasses Doug’s brown eyes closed as his arms came around her and held her close. His voice very quiet in the silence of the room, he said, “I never stop dreaming of you, mo chridhe.”
Collum’s tawny eyebrows shot up at the pair’s first real exchange in nearly a week. The back of my throat ached as I recalled Mac calling out the same Gaelic endearment to Moira in the cavern.
Mo chridhe. My heart.
Chapter 20
WE BENT THE RULES, OF COURSE. SHORTLY AFTER OSCAR’S DEPARTURE, men in red jackets had shown up to whisk away ten of the rosewood dining table’s twelve chairs, and to set two places with more crystal, china, and silver than I’d ever seen in my entire life. Collectively.
A stream of tuxedo-clad waiters wheeled in carts laden with trays. Wisps of steam escaped from the sides of their embellished silver domes, filing the air with a delicious mélange of scents. Bread and meat, fish and cream and berry-laden sauces. As the smells coalesced, my stomach gurgled. I thought the head waiter would blow a gasket when Mac bustled the whole lot of them out the door, insisting, “Thank you, but the lady and I prefer to serve ourselves.”
“I never,” we heard one of them mutter as Mac shut the door behind him. “Most irregular,” argued another.
We pulled up random chairs, split out the dishes and silver, and attacked. I bit into a roll, watching Collum slurp down a thin, brownish soup from a silver tureen.
“You, uh, know that’s turtle, right?”
He looked up, heavy spoon halfway to his mouth. “Pardon?”
My mouth curved up. “I just had no idea you were so into turtle soup. It’s one of this era’s most popular delicacies.”
Steam wreathed Collum’s broad face as he glanced down into the murky liquid. Bits of greenish meat floated to the surface. Phoebe snorted and Doug wiped his grin away with a napkin as Collum pushed the bowl aside.
I dug into a creamy, earthy mushroom soup, followed by tiny soft-shell crabs sautéed in drawn butter. We all oohed and aahed over beef tenderloins in a red wine sauce that disintegrated in our mouths. Phoebe was entranced by a cold, gel-like meat dish that quivered when she poked it with a fork. By the time delicate slices of almond cake went around, I could barely pick at it.
As Mac rang for the servants to clear, we disguised the evidence of our diverse dining group. In moments the scraps were scuttled away, and we had a new visitor.
Oscar was, at the least, a man of his word. And obviously influential. Soon I found myself standing on a low table in the elaborate, over-decorated Francis I bedroom that was the mistress’s chamber, being fitted for a new wardrobe. I longed to skip the whole dress thing, but thanks to the cattle, my only options were the tattered, filthy traveling gown I was currently wearing, or nothing.
Madame Belisle—forties, waspish, and supremely arrogant—glanced up from a kneeling position, a pained expression souring her narrow face.
“Non,” she spluttered, after forcing me to strip down to corset and bloomers. Wasting no time on pleasantries, she rounded on one of her cowed assistants. “You see? Thick through ze waist. And ze bosom is nonexistent. Tighten that corset at once!”
Thick through the . . . Oh, you can just bite me.
Phoebe snorted behind her hand. Of course, she’d had it easy. When I’d insisted that my lady’s maid would be accompanying me to every event, Madame Belisle had muttered in French and absolutely refused to have anything to do with the “peasantry.” The poor overburdened assistant had done a quick—and poke-free—job of taking Phoebe’s measurements, leaving me to glare at everyone and dream up ways to murder Madame Snarly.
Still no word from Bran, though I’d yanked on the bell pull marked CONCIERGE three times in the past hour. The last time, there was no mistaking the irritation in the bellhop’s breathless “And once again, miss. There are no messages.”
I was starting to worry. Bran had promised to meet up with us as soon as he could. At the very least, he would have arranged to leave a message at the front desk.
Where the hell are you?
I twitched as an image of Gabriella de Roca popped up in my head like an oil-slicked bubble from grimy bath water. I was promptly rewarded with a pin jab to the left thigh.
An hour later, the fashion nazi and her browbeaten team were being bundled out with an order for two more gowns to be delivered on the morrow. More than anything I wanted to give the hateful snob a swift kick in the rear on her way out. But the truth was, you couldn’t argue with results. Aside from the promised ball gown, underthings, and a variety of travel wear, I’d been left with a quick-fitted, velvet day gown in shades of teal, with muted silver piping that Phoebe couldn’t quit cooing over.
The last of the lunch crowd having filtered in and out downstairs, Collum rejoined us in the suite for one of his tiresome Just-because-Mac-is-here-doesn’t-mean-I’m-not-still-in-charge-of-you-two speeches. Scrubbing his face with a thick white towel, he laid down the orders.
“No sign of Carlyle or Tesla yet. Mac sent Doug to stake out the front of the hotel, since none of the people Celia would’ve sent know his face. He’ll watch from across the street, and keep an eye out for anyone suspicious looking. I’m joining Mac at the lab and from there, we’ll hit up a few more places the absent professor’s known to frequent. Phoebe, you should already be down in the servants’ area. If you two are done playing dress-up—”
“Dress-up?” Phoebe stormed up to her brother, hands on hips. “I’ll give you dress-up, you misogynistic prat!”
While the two raged at each other in what I could only assume was a prequel to double-sibling homicide, I snatched up the matching smoke-colored reticule Madame Belisle had left for me, and backed toward the door.
“So, yeah,” I called over the cursing. “I’ll just be down in Ladies’ Reception, trying to suss out info on that soiree Tesla attended. Attends . . . will attend . . . whatever.”
Phoebe, from her new spot atop the ironbound steamer trunk Oscar Tschirky had so thoughtfully provided, raged at her brother. “I’ll remind you I am not a child anymore, Collum Michael MacPherson! I’ve nearly as much experience as you, and . . .”
I let the door click shut behind me. When those two reached the point of calling each other by their full names, things tended to get a little dicey.
The inside of Ladies’ Reception looked as if som
eone had picked up a room in one of Marie Antoinette’s Versailles apartments and plunked it down smack in the middle of New York City.
Everything in the oval-shaped room was white, gold, or pink. An inset ceiling soothed in a pastel mural of chubby angels and fluffy lambs, uplit by crystal chandeliers. As I was escorted inside, I eyed pieces of dainty furniture that looked as though they might collapse under the weight of a chunky cat.
In small groupings around the room, upper-crust women in high-necked day gowns gossiped over tiny sandwiches and tea in paper-thin china. High hair on swan necks pivoted my way as I entered. Having decided I was no one of consequence, they returned to their shark smiles and polite verbal eviscerations.
“Look, Jemima,” I heard one croon as I passed by. “Carlotta is wearing that lovely rose gown of hers . . . yet again.”
“Why, Letitia, dear,” said another between sips of tea. “That extra weight you’re carrying fills your face out so nicely.”
“Here you are, miss.” The maid spoke up, directing me to a seat next to a marble pillar. “I’ll see to it that tea is brought right away.”
As I perched on the edge of the tapestried chair, the corset dug into my rib cage. My spleen or pancreas or some other solid organ shifted into a space it was decidedly not meant to enter.
Least I don’t have to worry about slumping.
When the maid, bowing, brought my tea tray, I tried my best to appear haughty and bored, not nauseated and sweaty. The glances I kept getting from the little gossip groups, however, suggested that my attempt to fit in wasn’t working all that well. Or maybe they did that to every newcomer.
While I pretended to ignore the whispered conjectures about who on earth I was supposed to be, and where I’d gotten my “most interesting” gown, the middle-aged woman seated next to me resumed her hushed conversation with the pretty young girl seated stiffly on her other side.
“Don’t you dare swallow that.” The older woman thrust out a large linen napkin. “You know what Mr. Fletcher says. ‘Chew each bite one hundred times, and then spit it out. Never swallow.’”
“But.” The girl’s light eyes skittered around the room. “It’s only that I am so very hungry, Mother.”
“I see,” the mother said. “Well, if you wish for your ingratitude and disobedience to cause me another arrhythmia . . . If you want me to take to my bed again . . . Or . . .” Her plain features gone cunning, she looked straight at the girl. “Or perhaps you prefer to send me straight to my grave, Consuelo . . .”
The woman—whose features bore an uncanny resemblance to a potato, and whose sturdy proportions beneath her expensive, pea-soup velvet suggested more than a few bites had made their way down her esophagus—clutched at her heart. The girl’s face went white. “No, Mother. Oh, please, Mother, forgive me.”
As the stricken girl fluttered around her mom, the name pinged something in my memory files. Consuelo.
“How is it,” Phoebe had asked me once, around a mouthful of Moira’s famous jam sandwiches we’d carried out to the stables, “that you aren’t completely nutters?”
She didn’t elaborate, but I knew what she meant. Feet shuffling across the straw-strewn floor, I’d breathed in the homey scents. Hay and horse. Leather and wet stone and mud. Before following my best friend up the wooden ladder to the hayloft, I removed an apple from my pocket, held it to my nose. When my mare, Ethel, whuffed an impatient horsy breath into my hair, I let my forehead rest against her homely face. “I know,” I whispered. “I miss him too.”
In a liquid twilight, with the rain pounding outside, the cozy stable at Christopher Manor had felt like peace. Like safety and solidity. Protected by the overhang, Phoebe and I had settled in the hayloft door to peer out past silver sheets of rain that drained off the slanted slate roof. Far below, lambs cavorted across the Highland valley, bleating and getting very, very wet. Our feet dangled, heels kicking weathered stone.
Phoebe plucked a piece of straw from her mouth and let it drop to the churned-up mud below. “I mean, I can barely hold enough in this barmy noggin . . .” Tapping a fingertip to her forehead, she left behind a sticky red dot, a strawberry jam version of an Indian bindi. “To make it through exams. And once they’re done, I just let it go. But you. To think of all that’s rolling around beneath those gorgeous black curls of yours. It’s pure amazing. But I don’t get how your head doesn’t simply explode.”
Sometimes it felt like that. An explosion. When the vast information contained inside the flesh and blood and neurons of my brain expanded too quickly. When I lost control of it. When—instead of teasing out one or two tidy threads—a whole skein of it blew out at once in a massive, knotted tangle. Those were bad days.
Not this time, though. Fortunately for me, I’d never developed the same fascination with American history as I had with British or European. My mother taught me plenty about the land where we lived, of course.
But this was manageable. Green-tinged portraits of wealthy young girls with elaborate hair and gorgeous gowns flickered by. My fingers twitched as my mind flew through the data I’d collected on the notable people of New York City in the late eighteen hundreds.
Too old. Too young. Wart.
An image slowed, cleared. My eyes snapped open. I smiled into my teacup.
Gotcha.
“Had it from Mrs. Paget herself,” potato mama was saying, the napkin’s scalloped edges still dangling from her outstretched fingers. “The duke abhors plumpness in women. Several of his set will be in attendance. And what will His Grace say when he learns you appeared at your own mother’s soiree looking like a stuffed Christmas goose? We shall all be shamed.”
The exquisite girl blinked, one hand reaching to touch her insanely tiny waist. I could all but see the wheels spinning beneath the poof of brown hair, anchored in place by a pale pink ribbon that matched the lacy layers of her day gown.
She sighed and took the proffered fabric. She brought it to her lips, balled it up, then set it on a silver tray at her side. “Yes, Mother.”
I wanted to scream. Stand up to her! Don’t let her treat you that way!
Then a thought hit me. Who am I to give that kind of advice? Hadn’t I been just like this girl until very recently? My mother had always been kind, of course. But she had regimented each and every moment of my day. She’d kept me apart. Alone. I understood her reasoning now, but back then, I never argued. Never once said, “Enough. This is my life, not yours.”
Seated next to me in the ladies’ salon were none other than Alva and Consuelo Vanderbilt. Wife and only daughter of the astronomically wealthy William K. Vanderbilt. Details tried to flood in, but I tamped them down to a bare minimum. March 11 of 1895. Okay, so Alva would—later this month, actually—send shock waves through her upper-crust society when she divorced her cheating tycoon hubby. And in November, Consuelo would marry the ninth Duke of Marlborough.
Old chubby hater himself. Ick.
The admittedly shallow research I’d filed away on Consuelo Vanderbilt threaded up. And it made me want to cry. At eighteen, Consuelo was in love with (and secretly engaged to) another man. She’d initially refused to marry the duke. But Alva Vanderbilt was intent on the match, and she ruled her daughter with an iron fist. After months of unsuccessful coercion, Alva had used psychological warfare. She convinced her daughter of her own impending death, saying her last wish was that Consuelo marry the duke. Of course, Mama made a remarkable recovery after Consuelo eventually acquiesced. She and the duke were married for twenty-six years. And though she would produce two sons—the requisite “heir and a spare,” a phrase she is credited with having coined—husband and wife would live most of those years apart. There would be rumors of affairs on both sides, until they finally divorced in 1921.
As Consuelo Vanderbilt’s entire life flashed through my mind, my stomach ached. She was sitting right here, and yet, there was nothing I could do to help her.
I swallowed hard. Stick to the mission, W
alton. That’s what matters. You can’t go fixing everyone, so just stop.
One thing and one thing only was important right now. Alva Vanderbilt was throwing the party that Tesla would attend. If we couldn’t get to the physicist any other way, the soiree, at least, was a sure thing. My duty was clear. Fingers crossed . . . she would be our way in.
Chapter 21
“MOTHER, MIGHT WE NOT AT LEAST DISCUSS—?”
“No.” Alva cut her daughter off. “Do you have any notion of how difficult this marriage was to arrange? And I hear Mrs. Astor herself is impressed with the match. So much so,” she said, leaning closer, “that she is practically green with envy.”
Consuelo ducked her head. “It is only that I shall hate to leave your side. And, well, England is so very far away.”
Alva harrumphed, her face softening only a little as she looked at her only daughter. When she snapped pudgy fingers for a hovering maid to refill her teacup, I saw Consuelo’s eyes flash with momentary triumph.
Ooh . . . she’s smart! Pandering to Mama’s soft spot. It’s a good strategy. But now I need to talk to her. Alone. So how to get rid of Mommy Dearest?
Ideas flickered on the edge of my vision. An accidental tripping and falling into Alva’s stout lap. Or, hey, keep it simple with a hearty slap on the rump. “Did someone say soiree?”
At the very thought, my hands and feet went cold. Of course, I ought to be totally used to embarrassing myself by now. Yet the thought of all those haughty eyes turned my way . . .
Rescue came in the guise of a petite ginger that skimmed through the room toward me.
Phoebe bobbed a low curtsy, whispering, “I got nothing from the servant’s quarter on Jonathan or Nikola. Any luck here?”
“Maybe.” I slanted a sideways look toward the sour-faced Alva. “If I could talk to the daughter. Alone.”
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