“Shh,” Moira said. “Come on, now. You’re wasting daylight.”
Unable to sit in the horrible garment, I watched Doug and Collum study the enormous computer screen that filled the entire back wall. A dozen computers calculated the complicated and ever-shifting spider web of green and red. While hundreds of feet below us, the ley lines the display represented buzzed and hummed with their own strange power.
Though I wanted to burn the corset, I knew they were a necessary evil for us to pass as nineteenth-century ladies. All the Viators’ costumes were era-appropriate, down to the last thread.
I should know. Since arriving home from the Highland games, Aunt Lucinda had ordered me to bone up on all things related to the late-Victorian world of 1895 New York.
“Hey, Hope,” Phoebe said. “Why again—?do they call it—?the Gilded Age?” Puffs of air punctuated her speech as Moira yanked ever harder on the strings.
“Mark Twain actually coined the phrase,” I told them, as the black and white text marched across my vision. “He and Charles Dudley Warner wrote a book called The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, first published in 1873. It was a series of allegorical tales about the terrible social problems of the time that were covered over by a thin veneer of gold.”
I recited Twain’s words without conscious thought. “‘The external glitter of wealth conceals a corrupt political core that reflects the growing gap between the very few rich and the very many poor.’”
I went on for a while, trailing off only when I noticed them all looking at me. From one blink to the next, a memory—?cold as a shard of lethal ice—?stabbed into me.
“You.”
My paternal grandmother, Beatrice “Mother Bea” Walton, feared . . . or worshiped . . . by everyone in our tiny town, had pointed a manicured finger down at the skittish six-year-old me, as I knelt on her living room floor.
Confused by her acrid tone, I tried to smile.
Around my new cousins and me, the carpet was littered with the detritus of a Christmas morning frenzy. Shiny, crumpled paper. Ripped cardboard. Twinkling lights. Christmas music played from hidden speakers, mixed with the comforting murmur of adults around the dining table. Cinnamon cider and roasting turkey wafted from the kitchen of Mother Bea’s stately house. I’d been so excited to attend my very first Christmas with my new American family, I’d barely been able to sleep.
It should have been glorious. But then my twelve-year-old cousin, RJ, had unwrapped a book on dinosaurs. When he’d scoffed and tossed it aside, I’d picked it up to thumb through. A girl cousin had snatched it away, calling me a baby and claiming I’d rip the pages. To prove her wrong, I began to recite every word I’d read in the short hardcover.
They called me a liar. Said I memorized it beforehand to impress them. RJ’s face reddened with fury as he tried to follow along, one finger running across the pages. Standing, he’d shrieked at me and in a tantrum, tossed the book into the nearby fireplace.
Mother Bea had witnessed the whole event. She snatched me up by the arm, fury in her expression as she spat the words. “Oddities like you should not exist in God’s world. I told your father, but would he listen? No. But I say you have no business being among decent Christian folk.” She shook me until my head snapped back. “Go outside until I call you. I won’t have you ruining Christmas for any more of these precious children.”
The memory slunk back where I’d hidden it. Head bowed, I listened to the heavy silence from the room around me and I felt my skin shrink. My shoulders tried to curl in, but the accursed corset held them erect.
“That,” Phoebe said, “was bloody amazing, Hope!”
My head shot up as she started clapping. Moira beamed at me. “You’re a treasure, girl, and no mistake.”
Doug, standing near the door now, called out, “Hey, I’ve got to run upstairs for a bit. But when I get back, will you tell us about the expansion of the railroads? I’ve always been fascinated by the American West.”
I locked eyes with Collum. He nodded. “We’ll need all that and more where we’re going,” he said. “Keep up the good work, aye?”
A warm flush rolled through me as I cast off that six-year-old’s shame. I didn’t have to hide my abilities anymore. These people genuinely cared about me. They valued me. They . . . they needed me.
After Moira deftly fastened the endless buttons that roved up the back of the tailored wool traveling gown, I hustled to the mirror. Phoebe scooched in to stand beside me.
Weeks of Moira’s sumptuous cooking had filled in most of the hollow spaces in my own figure, areas carved off during the eight months I’d mourned my “dead” mother. I no longer looked quite as ghoulish as when I’d arrived, and I realized I kind of liked the new curves.
Phoebe flounced off to plop down in the chair left empty by Doug. I watched Moira in the mirror as, pins in her mouth, she fussed with my hem. Above the plump cheeks, her small gray eyes looked unusually worried.
“What’s wrong, Moira?”
She glanced up, her eyes meeting mine in the glass. “I don’t like it,” she muttered after a few seconds. “Feels off to me. Like something . . .”
Lips pinched, she shook her head. Hating the stricken look on her face, I tried to joke.
“Personally I’d bet on my spleen. Of course, it could be my liver. Either way, one of them will definitely explode if we don’t loosen these laces. Maybe—”
“Hold your water, lass.” Moira twitched the folds of fine wool. “That’s no’ what I meant and well ye know it. It’s just that it’s all so rushed.” She took a breath and quoted, “‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.’”
“Ben Franklin?”
“Aye.” She nodded. “Though I first heard it said by Oprah.”
A laugh bubbled out. “Oprah?”
“What can I say? The woman is wise.” She winked, sighing. “Ah. Go on w’ ye then and try on the silk. And don’t worry about me, ’tis nothing I’m sure. Just nerves.”
Moira seemed better as she finished the final touches to the delectable ball gown in a shade Phoebe called Sea Storm Blue.
Afterward, Moira ordered me to select matching accessories. “Anything within the fourth through the sixth doors should do.”
The tall, climate-controlled cabinet that housed the Viators’ costume collection hissed as I pressed in the frosted glass to release the magnetic latch. Inside each compartment, historically accurate costumes were labeled with three-by-five cards pinned to the sleeves.
Beneath the gowns and suits, sectioned bins held shoes, accessories, and currency for each time period. After burrowing a bit, I found a gorgeous pair of ankle boots in a creamy ivory leather.
While I tried to figure out how to work the conveniently provided buttonhook, Moira briskly secured Phoebe into a black gown with frilly white apron and cap.