The Cabinet of Dr. Leng by Douglas Preston

Author:Douglas Preston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2023-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

40

December 12, 1880

Wednesday

SO—CAN WE COUNT on the pleasure of your company, then, Your Grace?”

Mrs. Cabot-Flint sat on the edge of her chair—or as much as her girth permitted while retaining the necessary dignity—both chins quivering ever so slightly in anticipation of the reply.

Constance inclined her head. “You are most kind. I have no fixed engagements on that evening. I should be delighted.”

The lady of the mansion clasped her hands together, bejeweled fingers creating a coruscation of parti-colored light. “Excellent! Excellent!” She relaxed in her chair. “Now, may I ask Henrietta to pour you another cup of tea?”

“Please.” The Duchess of Ironclaw took a final, fastidious sip from her cup, then replaced it in its china saucer.

As she watched the maid rush over to refill the cup, Constance thought with private amusement what a change the last few days had wrought. She had stuffed poor Murphy into a splendid coachman’s livery and directed him to nearly crash into the older woman’s carriage with her own on Fifth Avenue. It was perhaps a rather crude way of making someone’s acquaintance, but she felt sure that, once the matron realized that Constance was the mysterious new noblewoman everyone in town was suddenly speculating about, she would be putty in her hands. And she was. First came the exchange of cards, followed by notes, and then by an invitation for morning tea at Mrs. Cabot-Flint’s Brobdingnagian and philistinish donjon a few blocks north along the avenue.

“I’m so relieved,” Constance’s hostess replied. “I mean, you’re so obviously a woman of taste despite your tender years, and also…not that I mean to inquire…but I understand New York is your second home, and your title is of European origin?”

What a transparent, ridiculous woman. Of course she meant to inquire. And where would a noble title come from, if not Europe? Perhaps she was thought to be the Duchess of Pittsburgh? But Constance, keeping these thoughts to herself, merely inclined her head with the proper amount of gravitas.

Another sparkly clasping of hands. “It’s like a gift from heaven! You saw, Your Grace, our ballroom: one of the largest on the avenue, and perfect for my ball the Saturday after next.”

“A most delightful and impressive space.” It was rather impressive; Lincoln Center would be envious of the sheer cubic footage. Delightful, however, it was not. Like the rest of the mansion, the ballroom was decorated in a mélange of styles, accreted to impress with bulk and cost rather than taste.

Before accepting the tea invitation, Constance had done some research on Carlotta Cabot-Flint and her husband, the industrialist Vandermere Flint. Flint, whom she had yet to meet, was a robber baron of the most villainous sort: he’d amassed his fortune over the past two decades from a series of foundries strung across western Pennsylvania, after shrewdly acquiring an American monopoly on a new crucible process, developed in England, for casting steel in a more mechanized manner. This had led to layoffs and attempted strikes, and he’d put down the labor unrest swiftly and brutally.

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