Behind the Scenes

by Jen Turano

  “You made an invitation to the Vanderbilt ball a condition of taking on the job to murder Asher?” Permilia asked, turning back to Mr. Sprague, who gave her a shrug before he blew out a breath.

  “It was the Vanderbilt ball. Everyone wanted to go, and since Mr. Tooker seemed incredibly keen to hire me on, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.” He winced when Mr. Tooker took a step toward him. “Who could have known he’d find a way to manage that practically impossible feat, or agree to pay me such a large sum that I felt comfortable incurring the debt to dress myself in style?”

  “You’re not really an assassin, are you, dear?” Cybil asked, turning her walking stick in Mr. Sprague’s direction, which had Permilia casting around her thoughts for a suitable distraction topic.

  “How do you know that Mr. Huxley killed your mother?” was the first distraction idea to pop to mind, an idea she immediately regretted when Cybil let out a hiss, twisted the handle of her walking stick, then placed the sharp point of the blade that had been revealed on the bottom of that stick directly over Permilia’s heart.

  “You’re very annoying, Miss Griswold, but somewhat clever as well. Because of that, I’ll tell you all about our sordid family history, and then . . . because that’s information we Huxley women don’t care to have bandied about, I’ll have to kill you.”

  Not allowing herself to so much as blink over what she knew was not an empty threat, Permilia waited as Cybil stared her down, until the woman finally removed the blade and stepped back, moving to take the chair Gertrude had once been sitting in.

  “My father, Mr. Frank Huxley, was not a pleasant man, nor was he a moral one,” Cybil began. “He married Mabel and Henrietta’s mother but then became annoyed with her when she wasn’t able to produce a son, only daughters. Instead of simply killing her off, as a normal man would have done, he sought out the affections of another woman, my mother, and married her without allowing her to know he had another wife and two daughters on the other side of town. When my mother gave birth to me, he was disappointed, of course, but his business was really beginning to grow, and not having any disposable time to search out another new wife, he contented himself for a while with increasing his fortune and knowing he would eventually produce a son.”

  “That never happened, though,” Miss Mabel said from her position on the fainting couch. “My mother suffered numerous miscarriages and even had a few stillborn children, two of whom were boys.”

  “My mother as well,” Cybil said.

  Miss Henrietta blew out a loud breath. “Father finally decided that he’d have to use his daughters to obtain a proper son, and wanting to attract just the right sort of son-in-law, he built this house and had my mother try to get us accepted into proper society.”

  Miss Mabel crossed her arms over her chest. “Society loathed us from the very beginning, some in that society even going so far as to remark on the way Father ate his peas with his knife whenever he was invited to dine at someone’s house. Of course he was only invited if that particular society gentleman had need of Father’s money.”

  “That’s why he wouldn’t allow my father, or any of the other gentlemen who desired your attention, to pay you proper court, wasn’t it?” Permilia asked, turning to Miss Mabel, who nodded.

  “Your father was ambitious but couldn’t provide the entrance into society Father had decided he wanted, so when Henrietta and I were unsuccessful getting accepted into society, he introduced us to”—Miss Mabel jerked her head toward Cybil—“Cybil.”

  “And that’s when he decided to build two more houses on either side of this one,” Cybil said, her eyes dark with temper. “One of them for me and my mother, and the other for the new wife he’d decided he was going to have to take if he stood any chance at all of having a son.” She shook her head. “He’d apparently grown tired of having to travel across the city to visit one wife or the other.”

  “His decision to corral his different families was the beginning of everything going bad,” Miss Henrietta whispered. “Mother died first, of a broken heart I’ve always thought.”

  Cybil let out a snort. “She didn’t die of a broken heart. My mother poisoned her.”

  “What?” Miss Henrietta and Miss Mabel demanded together.

  Lifting a shoulder in a dismissive manner, Cybil studied the carvings on the handle of her walking stick. “Mother had had no inkling about Frank’s other family, so when she saw this house—especially since it was far nicer than the small house across town that Frank had provided for her—and then learned that her so-called husband was finally willing to build her a mansion of her own, but one that would place her directly next to his legal wife, and a house away from what he hoped to be his third wife, well . . .” Cybil looked up. “I do believe it caused poor Mother to lose any little bit of sanity she’d retained after having her world turned upside down. She paid a visit to Frank’s first wife, taking her a gift of special tea, and when she left this house, the first wife was dead, clearing the way for my mother to take her rightful place.”

  “Until Grandfather killed her, having decided she was behind the murder of his first wife and not wanting to take a wait-and-see attitude to determine if he’d be the next person poisoned,” Mr. Tooker said.

  “This is going to make a fascinating book if I live to write it,” Mr. Sprague said, drawing everyone’s attention.

  Cybil stared at Mr. Sprague for a long moment, wrinkled her nose, and . . . laughed. “What a very interesting assassin you make, Mr. Sprague, but I do fear you won’t be writing any books.” She turned to her son. “After we leave here today, you and I will be having a chat about how you managed to bungle everything. If you would have simply listened to me from the very beginning, we would have done away with your aunts, and that would have been the end of it.”

  “He wouldn’t have done away with us, not after he had a peek at our will,” Miss Henrietta said.

  “You knew I saw your will?” Mr. Tooker asked.

  “We keep an eye on you whenever you come to visit,” Miss Henrietta said. “And a few months back, when you excused yourself to use the washroom, we followed you and watched through a hidey-hole in the wall as you went not to the washroom but to my office.” She smiled. “I left the will on top of the desk on purpose.” Her smile faded. “But I never imagined that having you read it would put these events into motion. I simply believed that if you learned you and your mother were cut off without a dime if anything of a suspicious nature happened to us, that you’d do your utmost to keep us alive.”

  “Is that true, Jasper?” Cybil demanded.

  “Why do you think I was trying to win my way into their good graces by taking on such debt in order to provide them with their own tea shop?” Mr. Tooker spat. “Even if they didn’t die a suspicious death, they weren’t leaving us the bulk of their fortune, so I had to do something to convince them otherwise, and paving the way for them to finally be able to realize their dream of a tea shop was the best I could come up with.”

  “That was a ridiculous idea,” Asher said, speaking up. “You don’t plan to murder a complete stranger simply to win your way into someone’s good graces.”

  When Mr. Tooker raised the hand he was still holding the pistol in and aimed it directly at Asher, Permilia decided she’d had quite enough. Rising to her feet, she stuck her hand in her pocket, but before she could retrieve her pistol, Cybil was on her feet, her walking stick at the ready. Tossing her pistol to her son, she advanced Permilia’s way.

  “How sweet, Miss Griswold, to discover you’re willing to take a bullet for your love, but . . . are you willing to take a blade to your throat?”

  Not hesitating for a single second, Permilia whirled around, jumped over the settee, and grabbed what turned out to be an umbrella from an old milk canister that was home to a variety of different objects.

  “Ah, a fight to the death, then, is it?” Cybil said before she let out a laugh that had chills running up Permilia’s spine before she rushed P
ermilia’s way right as her son charged at Asher.

  Being quite used to dueling, given her rather unusual youth, Permilia soon found herself battling a crazed woman wielding what was certainly a very sharp blade. The sharpness of that blade was proven without a shadow of a doubt when Permilia slipped and ended up getting her arm sliced open before she could recover.

  Fending off Cybil with an umbrella that wasn’t meant to withstand such abuse, she soon found herself being backed into a corner and could only pray in that moment that the end would either be swift or God would hear her prayers and send her some much-needed help.

  The sound of a pistol blasting on the other side of the room gave her immediate hope, and when Cybil turned and let out an enraged shriek, evidently taking note of her son falling ever so slowly to the ground, Permilia saw her chance and raised her umbrella one last time. Bringing it down on Cybil’s head, she saw the umbrella split in two and feared the worst when Cybil spun around to face her again.

  But then, as Cybil’s eyes rolled back in her head and the woman plummeted to the floor, Permilia breathed a silent prayer of thanks right before she saw Asher rushing across the room, a smoking pistol in his hands and something indescribable in his eyes.

  Catching her up in his arms, he buried his head into the crook of her neck and held her tight. He pulled back a moment later, looked in her eyes, and smiled. “You, Miss Permilia Griswold, are quite the extraordinary woman, and—”

  She drew in a breath. “You’re not going to propose courtship again, are you, not with me in such a sorry state and bleeding all over you?” She blew out the breath. “It’s hardly a romantic setting.”

  Asher blinked, dug out a spare necktie he just happened to have in his pocket, and bound it around her arm, which had begun to bleed rather profusely as well as sting.

  “For your information, I was not going to propose courtship, but something I believe you’ll find even more appealing.”

  Lifting her head, she caught his eye. “What could you propose that would be more appealing than courting me?”

  He smiled. “Since again, this is apparently not the time to talk of courtship, although I do find it encouraging that you seemingly find that idea rather more appealing than you once did, what I was going to propose is this.”

  He put a finger under her chin and leaned in toward her. “Miss Permilia Griswold, I have never in my life been more frightened than when I thought I was going to watch you die, but since we’re not dead, I’ve decided to do something I never thought I would.”

  He drew in a deep breath. “I’ve been beyond impressed with all the suggestions you’ve given me of late, ones that have seen me hire on innovative stylists and procure goods for a better price than even I’d be able to manage. Because of your incredible instincts, and your heart and mind of a true merchant, I’d like to offer you a position with Rutherford & Company, a position that comes with its very own title.”

  Even though she’d been expecting something of a romantic nature, his offer was more romantic than anything she’d ever imagined being given.

  Staunchly refusing to give in to the urge to declare herself falling a bit in love with the man she’d just been bleeding all over, because in her heart she knew this was not exactly the right moment for that, she permitted herself the luxury of a grin instead.

  When he grinned in return, she reached for him, standing on tiptoe in order to be able to whisper into his ear.

  “I would love nothing more than to accept your offer of a position in your store, but do know that I’ll not go easy on you while negotiating my salary just because we almost died together.”

  “I would expect nothing less.”

  And then, as Pinkerton agents swarmed into the library and Harrison, with Gertrude in tow, burst out of the storage room, Asher took Permilia’s face between his hands, lowered his head, and . . . kissed her.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Six

  ONE MONTH LATER

  Jostling her way through the early-morning crowd that was bustling down the sidewalk adjacent to Broadway, Permilia clutched to her chest the large box filled with a variety of samples she’d procured at numerous out-of-the-way shops.

  Glancing to her left, she smiled at Mr. Samuel Sprague, who was hurrying right beside her, clutching another box filled with samples and looking rather grumpy since he was not a gentleman well suited to morning excursions.

  “I don’t understand why we had to travel to the Lower East Side at such a ridiculous hour,” he said, proving her grumpy theory since there was a definite surly tone to his protest. “That cobbler would have still been there after lunch, which means I could still be sleeping right now.”

  Biting back a smile as she watched Mr. Sprague stomp his way down the sidewalk, Permilia couldn’t help but think for what felt like the millionth time that it was still curious to her that Asher had hired Mr. Sprague, of all people—as her personal assistant, no less.

  She hadn’t exactly thought she needed an assistant. However, when Asher had realized that she sought out new talent in designers, cobblers, and seamstresses in some of the seedier parts of the city, as in Five Points—his awareness brought to him directly from Mrs. Davenport—he’d gotten a little . . . testy.

  What Mrs. Davenport had been doing in Five Points was anyone’s guess, but Asher had not been keen on pondering that particular matter, preferring to dwell instead on exactly what had possessed Permilia to travel to Five Points on her own, and what could be done to make certain she didn’t travel there on her own ever again.

  Since she’d not been willing to put her quest to seek out fresh and different talent aside, or limit that quest to only the safest parts of the city, especially since she knew full well that sometimes the best talent was created out of necessity to put food on a table, Asher had decided a compromise was in order.

  He had not, to her delight, tried to coddle her or treat her like a fragile creature, choosing instead to provide her with an assistant who could travel with her, allowing her to continue doing her job while guarding her back as she did that job.

  When Mr. Sprague had turned up the very next day, knocking on the office door Asher had provided her, Permilia had been somewhat surprised to learn he was going to be her assistant, until he’d explained exactly what that position was going to entail.

  While it had certainly been proven that Mr. Sprague had been an abject failure as a pretend assassin-for-hire, he had turned out to be rather accurate with a pistol, proving that accuracy that horrible day at the Huxley house when Cybil had regained consciousness right as the Pinkerton agents had been ready to cart her away.

  Not expecting a woman who’d been rendered senseless to suddenly spring to her feet, Agent McParland had found his firearm grabbed away from him. Cybil had then aimed the firearm directly at Permilia but had been thwarted in her attempt to murder Permilia when Mr. Sprague stepped forward and shot the firearm right out of Cybil’s hand.

  That impressive bit of marksmanship, aided by Mr. Sprague’s disclosure that he’d missed shooting Asher on purpose that day in Central Park, was exactly why Asher had chosen him to accompany Permilia around the city as her assistant. Mr. Sprague was in desperate need of funds, since he had given the Huxley sisters what remained of the money Mr. Tooker had given him to kill Asher, and he found that his new position afforded him the funds he needed while giving him a flexible schedule. That flexibility allowed him time to polish up his first novel, which Permilia had the sneaking suspicion was going to be a riveting read.

  “We really should abandon excursions that are so early, Miss Griswold, because I do believe getting out of bed before the sun is fully risen is certainly a sad, sad circumstance.”

  Permilia sent a shake of her head Mr. Sprague’s way. “We couldn’t have done that, because Miss Betsy Miller needed the shoes we just picked up from her cobbler friend. She needs these shoes to take to a sales meeting later this morning in order to convince Mr. Rutherford that this particul
ar cobbler would be a great addition to the store.”

  Mr. Sprague cheered up immediately. “You have a meeting with Miss Miller, you say?”

  “Indeed, and I might very well need the two of you, after the meeting is over, to put all the samples together so that the presentation I am making later on this week to the other buyers will go well.”

  “I’ll go get started on some of that organizing straightaway, and . . . I’ll take that box for you.”

  Marveling just a bit at how interesting life could turn, Permilia placed her box on top of Mr. Sprague’s and allowed her lips to curve just a touch as he bustled through the door that Mr. Cushing, the Rutherford & Company doorman, was holding open.

  The very idea that Mr. Sprague had first become acquainted with Miss Miller while he’d been searching out Permilia’s identity and was now romantically drawn to Miss Miller, and Miss Miller to him, lent credence to the idea that Reverend Perry had been right all along. God did open new paths for His children to take, and He often opened those paths in the most unusual of ways.

  Her path, she was beginning to realize, had seen God sending her to Miss Snook’s School for the Improvement of Feminine Minds, then off to the New York Sun in order to secure the funds needed to keep the school up and running, and then . . . using what she’d learned at the New York Sun to further help Asher grow his business.

  She’d been thrilled when Asher had suggested she put her talent for spotting new fashions to use in his advertising department creating copy for ads. But he hadn’t stopped there, encouraging her to learn all aspects of his store, and using her contacts within the city to bring his store the best talent around, even if that talent was found in unexpected places.