A Universe of Wishes

by A Universe of Wishes (epub)

  Ann’s voice rings out over the tearoom. Every head turns to take in the sight of one of the theater’s rising stars threading her way toward us past the tables of curious gawkers and the baffled maître d’. Even Mr. Dwight is confused. He loosens his grip and I yank my hand away, out of his reach, and stand, arms open to receive Ann.

  “Dear Miss Bradshaw! What a delightful surprise. And how well you look!”

  “Oh, but, Miss Doyle, you are looking rather peaked! Did I not just hear that you are unwell?”

  “I’m afraid it’s true, Miss Bradshaw. I believe I should return to my residence at once.”

  Ann pats my hand. “Indeed you must. How fortunate that I’ve a hansom waiting at the curb. This way, if you please, dear Miss Doyle.”

  “You are most kind, Miss Bradshaw. Mr. Dwight, thank you for such an illuminating conversation,” I say, and deposit the note he showed me into my purse, closing the strings tightly. “I’ll look into the matter we discussed and send word. I’m so sorry we shan’t be seeing each other again for such a long, long, long time.”

  All Mr. Dwight can do is stand at attention, like a gentleman, and allow me to leave. Arm in arm, Ann and I stroll from the restaurant, leaving him furious and utterly at a loss, which pleases me no end.

  “What was that all about?” Ann asks as we hurry down the street, still arm in arm.

  I chance a look behind me. No one follows. “Someone’s mucking about in the realms.”

  “Isn’t someone always?” Ann says matter-of-factly.

  I look to the empty curb. “Where’s the hansom?”

  “I’m not paying for a hansom! Not on an actress’s wages.”

  I tell Ann about my conversation with the overly shiny Mr. Dwight as we walk along crowded New York streets abustle with activity that puts me in mind of the markets of Bombay, and for a moment I am homesick for India and the happy family I once had there—rather, the happy family I thought I had—and a life uncomplicated by magic and responsibility. Two boys race around us like floodwater toward a man selling ice cream from a cart. The ghastly heat has everyone lined up for it.

  “Do you think he’s telling the truth?” Ann asks once I’ve finished my tale. “The Rakshana are always looking for a way to take the power away from us. And it would be easy for him to add the bit about the Tree of All Souls in order to pull you in. After all, you’ve no idea who drew those hieroglyphics.”

  “A fair point. The only certainty is that two of the Rakshana have been murdered. By the way, you were marvelous in there. Truly.”

  “It’s good for you that our company happens to be playing New York this month. And that I received your note in time.”

  “Oh, Ann! I have missed you!” I clasp her hands in mine, not caring if it’s unseemly to do so on the street. At least in New York, unlike London, people frown less at such exuberance.

  Ann gives me a shy half smile. “You really do look well. New York suits you.”

  “You look radiant!” I say, and she blushes. I know that Ann does not consider herself a beauty. In truth, many would consider her plain. But when she sings, she commands a stage, and there is no one more beautiful. Even so, there’s a pinkness to her cheeks that is new and most becoming. She walks taller. Prouder. No longer looking down at the ground, undeserving. “You look…happy,” I add.

  “I am.” She breaks into an elated smile. “Mr. Smalls has asked me to marry him. This month. Whilst we’re in New York. Gemma, I’m engaged!” She removes her glove to show me the ring wrapped around her fourth finger—a golden snake much like our Queen Victoria’s engagement ring, with a tiny garnet for an eye.

  “Oh, Ann. It’s lovely!”

  “Will you be my maid of honor, Gemma?”

  “Of course.” I laugh. “Felicity will be green with envy, wherever she is. Paris. Rome. I can’t remember. You know Fee—she bores easily.”

  “She’s here. In New York. She arrived Tuesday.” Immediately, Ann’s face betrays her mistake. She’s a good actress but not enough to fool me. “Oh. Oh dear. I—I’m sure she meant to pay a call, Gemma….”

  And just like that, my chilling conversation with Mr. Dwight and my excitement over seeing Ann vanish like a magic trick, only to be replaced by a familiar irritation. Bloody Fee.

  “Where is she?” I demand.

  * * *

  Of course, Felicity Worthington would take rooms at the venerated Fifth Avenue Hotel on Madison Square. Only a hotel dubbed “the Buckingham Palace of New York” would do for our Fee. When we arrive, she is finishing up with a milliner, making final choices from an array of hats, each one lovelier and more ornate than the last.

  “Ah! You’re here!” Fee says, as if she’s been expecting us all along. She has the audacity to be even more beautiful than the last time I saw her. She is dressed in the latest Parisian fashion, her blond hair, lightened by the sun, heaped upon her head in Gibson Girl voluptuousness. “Which do you think—the burgundy velvet or the deep green ostrich-plumed with veil?”

  “They’re both very pretty,” Ann says at the same time that I snap, “Why not wear them both at once? Be bold!”

  Fee’s eyes flash. “I believe I shall have both. What an excellent idea, Miss Doyle. Thank you, Miss Forman,” she says to the milliner, who, sensing storminess in the air, seems quite happy to take her leave.

  The suite is enormous. I think of my own modest room at the Ashfield. It would fit inside this suite twice over. I glance about at the half dozen flower arrangements. “Were you planning a funeral as well, Felicity? Is that why you need the proper hat?” I say, removing my gloves and dropping them beside a vase that I’m certain is more expensive than my tuition.

  “I meant to pay a call, Gemma. Honestly, I did. But none of my hats were suitable. My favorite blew off my head whilst I was boating across the Rhine. It was a tragedy. I tell you, a good hatpin is worth everything,” Felicity says blithely. She bites into a chocolate, makes a face, and returns its half-eaten carcass to the box. “Marzipan. Je déteste le massepain!”

  I exhale loudly. “Must you speak French?”

  “Oui. Je dois.”

  “I adore marzipan,” Ann says, playing peacekeeper.

  Felicity offers her the box and the half-eaten one.

  Ann’s lip curls in distaste. She picks around the mangled chocolate and takes a fresh one.

  “We are not here to discuss hats and sweets,” I say, dropping onto a fat, tufted ottoman. “It seems there’s a crop of women here in New York who want to become a new Order and rule the realms, if Mr. Dwight is to be believed.”

  “Who is Mr. Dwight?”

  “He’s an agent of the Rakshana,” Ann says around a mouthful of chocolate.

  Felicity looks to Ann, then to me, clearly upset that she is not in the know.

  I smile. “If you’d bothered to pay a call, perhaps you’d know more.”

  “The very nerve of those ladies! Well, they can’t be the Order. We are the Order,” Felicity sniffs, ignoring my jibe. It is such a Felicity Worthington answer, elitist and yet slightly funny.

  “Is it a coven, do you think? Witchcraft and blood rituals?” Ann asks. In addition to her beloved schoolgirl melodramas, she’s begun indulging her thirst for macabre tales by reading penny dreadfuls.

  “I’m sure it’s not a coven,” I say. “I’m not even sure it exists at all.”

  “It could be a coven. You don’t know everything,” Ann mutters.

  “What if this is another of the Rakshana’s attempts to wrest control of the realms from us and have it all—as if they don’t already have gentlemen’s clubs and cigars and brandy and the vote!” Fee protests.

  “That’s what I said!” Ann asserts once more, till I fear it shall become her patented line, like Lady Macbeth: All the perfumes of Arabia…

  With reluctance, I put as
ide my peevishness with Felicity for not calling on me as soon as she arrived and tell her of my meeting with Mr. Dwight. When I’ve finished, Fee claps her hands, eyes alight. “At last! A proper adventure!”

  “Two dead men and a missing Rakshana agent isn’t an ‘adventure,’ Fee. It’s trouble.”

  “Trouble is always an adventure. I say, Gemma, you’ve become a true bore now that you’re a university student!”

  “Miss Worthington, are we certain that your presence here in New York isn’t because you’ve been run out of every other city in the world for being a nuisance?”

  “Now that would be an adventure!”

  “You could have let me know you were here,” I bark. I’d meant to keep it inside but the cork has come loose.

  Felicity glares. “I was choosing a hat!”

  “Ladies, please,” Ann pleads, and it’s hard to know if she’s exasperated with us or jealous of the way Fee and I can fall into argument so easily, our strange little dance of friendship that leaves her on the outside.

  “I suppose you’ve made all new friends here in New York,” Felicity says whilst fluffing her skirt to show that she doesn’t care, when, in fact, she does. It is tempting to say, Why, yes, I’ve made simply heaps of new friends! Why, I scarcely remembered your name. But that would be a lie. I’ve made precisely two friends in the time I’ve been in New York: Juliet Stevens, a suffragette who arrived at Barnard last year and lives on my floor in the Ashfield Residence. And Samuel Henson, who works at the morgue and offers occasional instruction in vivisection at Barnard.

  “No one like the two of you,” I say.

  “Because there is no one like us,” Fee asserts.

  “Thank heavens for that,” I snipe.

  And then, for no reason I can name, we are immediately convulsed in laughter. We come together in one fierce embrace, and just like that, it’s as if I’ve been wandering for ages and have finally seen the light of home.

  “What do you make of these symbols?” Felicity asks, looking over the note I took from Mr. Dwight. “Egyptian?”

  “Some of them seem to be, yes. Not all.” I trace the outline of the Tree of All Souls.

  “It could be a forgery,” Ann says.

  “What if it’s not? What if…What if he’s in trouble?” I say.

  “Or someone wants you to believe that he is,” Ann says gently.

  “There is a way to find out,” Fee says. “We could go in.”

  “Not yet,” I say. How can I tell my friends I’ve become afraid to enter that world? That when I think of it, my palms sweat and my heart races so desperately that I fear I am dying? What I feel when I think of going back is pure, terrifying panic. “There was something about that note that jarred my memory. Do you remember Wilhelmina Wyatt’s book on secret societies? Let’s see if Miss Wyatt’s book can shed some light on any ‘coven’ that might be using these symbols.”

  “But we don’t have that book with us,” Ann says.

  “True. But the New York Public Library might.”

  Felicity crumples onto the chaise in dramatic fashion. “No. Please not that old fossil, the library, Gemma.”

  “No need for melodrama, Fee. Ann is the actress, not you. Cheer up! Perhaps they’ll have a book on hats,” I say, grabbing my purse and gloves. “Let’s go.”

  “I’ve just remembered that I sometimes hate you, Gemma,” Felicity grumbles, and I can’t help but laugh, completely overjoyed to see her again.

  * * *

  The New York Public Library is anything but a fossil. It is a living, vibrant thing, like being inside some time-traveling ship that is also a sea creature. A helpful librarian directs us to the proper room, and after perusing the card catalog, we find what we’re looking for. Except that Miss Wyatt’s book isn’t on the shelf where it’s supposed to be.

  “Excuse me,” I whisper, troubling the librarian again. “I can’t seem to find this book.”

  She sorts through a stack of library cards and selects one, tapping it with her finger. “It’s out.”

  “Out?” Who could possibly want to read such an obscure title?

  She smiles, raises an eyebrow. “Yes. Borrowed. That’s how the library functions. You’re in luck, though. Looks as if it’s due tomorrow. Come back then. I’ll set it aside for you.”

  “But who borrowed it?” I blurt out.

  She stops smiling. “I’m afraid that’s not allowed. We protect the privacy of our patrons. I’m sure you would want the same. Come back tomorrow.”

  The next morning, bright and early when the library opens, Felicity, Ann, and I are there, seated at the table nearest the circulation desk, waiting to see just who will be returning Miss Wilhelmina Wyatt’s exposé on secret societies, which the now-wary librarian has promised to hand over to us straightaway. “My. It must be very important,” she says quietly, giving us a narrow-eyed once-over as she stamps cards with the date.

  “Very,” I whisper. “Why, our Kappa Kappa Gamma garden party will be simply ruined without it.”

  “I must leave for the theater by six o’clock,” Ann reminds us as we wait.

  “This is so terribly dull,” Felicity complains in a loud whisper.

  “It’s only been twenty minutes, Felicity,” I singsong under my breath.

  “There is nothing to do here!”

  I glance pointedly at the beautiful room whose shelves teem with books on every subject under the sun. “I’m sure they have a book on Parisian fashion or poisoning your enemies. Perhaps there’s even one on both.”

  “You only pretend to be nice,” Felicity sniffs. “No one knows your wicked heart like I do.”

  “That may be the truest thing you’ve ever said.”

  I select Middlemarch by George Eliot, but I can scarcely pay attention to its prose. I keep glancing at the desk in hopes of seeing our mystery reader. The hours tick by. The room is hot and still. Drowsiness sets in. My eyelids flutter. And then I am dreaming of the realms and the Tree of All Souls. That bargain of peace. That terrible sacrifice. I hear the gate to the Winterlands asking its eternal question: What is your heart’s desire?

  I snap awake, heart pounding. “What time is it?”

  “Half past four,” Ann says with a yawn. “They’ll be closing soon.”

  “Thank heavens,” Felicity grumbles.

  “What if the borrower doesn’t return it after all of this?” Ann asks.

  “We murder Gemma and you and I go to Delmonico’s for dinner,” Felicity says.

  And then, suddenly, a woman sweeps through on her way to the desk. She walks with quiet confidence. Her black hair is pinned beneath a pale yellow straw hat adorned with feathers, which pairs well with her bold black-and-white striped dress. Draped across her arm is a red cloak. Her beauty could best be described as handsome—there’s a sharp, nearly masculine quality to her face and manner. Felicity sits up straight and does her best to look disinterested, though, from her frequent sideways glances, she most decidedly is.

  “I should like to renew this book,” the woman says softly to the librarian, setting the book on the desk. Her accent is hard for me to place—faintly British but not quite.

  The librarian gestures to me. “I’m afraid this woman has been waiting for it all day, miss.”

  The dark-haired woman whips around. Her brown eyes widen and her mouth opens in shocked surprise. Without another word, she hurries from the room. Felicity, Ann, and I give chase. From behind me, I hear the librarian breaking the hush of the room: “Miss Doyle! Don’t you want the book?”

  The woman in the yellow hat scurries down the marble staircase. She is quick. Blast!

  “Please don’t force me to chase you in this hideous corset. I can…scarcely…breathe,” I plead from the top of the staircase.

  To my surprise, she turns to face me, allowing us time to
descend. “Who are you with? Are you one of them? Where is my sister?” she demands. There is both fury and fear in her tone.

  “I’m sorry. I—I don’t know what you mean,” I say.

  “Where is my sister?”

  “Your…your sister?”

  “Yes! Where are you keeping Noor? Noor Hassan!”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. My name is Gemma Doyle—”

  Her eyes widen further at this. She gasps, and then something hard, hidden by the red cloak, pokes into my side. “If you scream or run, I will shoot. Now. Come with me.”

  It has been some time since I’ve had guns or knives drawn on me. In the past twenty-four hours, I’ve been threatened twice. But where Mr. Dwight and his Rakshana failed, Miss Hassan, if that is indeed her name, is winning. She marches us onto an omnibus and all the way to Central Park, where she leads us to the reservoir beneath Belvedere Castle. It would be hard for her to kill us here amongst so many people. But I must also consider that Miss Hassan doesn’t care if she has an audience. The end of the pistol peeks out from under the cloak.

  “Can you shoot it?” Fee asks with a gleam in her eye.

  “Yes, I can,” Miss Hassan answers.

  “Before you shoot us,” I entreat, “could you at least tell us who you are?”

  “Miss Sameera Hassan.”

  Felicity introduces herself, giving her full name in the most excruciatingly Kensington debutante tone she can muster. Even with a loaded pistol pointed at her, Fee is a snob, through and through.

  “I would say it’s good to meet you, Miss Hassan, but the pistol makes that rather difficult. Could you please tell us what all of this is about?” I say.

  Sameera at last lowers the pistol. She retrieves a photograph from her purse and hands it to me. It is a picture of a beautiful woman. Her face is longer and thinner than Sameera’s, but the deep brown eyes and thick black brows are the same. “My sister, Noor,” she says, a new tenderness in her voice. “She came here to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”