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“My cousin,” said Hope Sands, rising to her feet, “had no idea of anything but Levi Weeks. She thought to go to her bridal bed—and he drove her to her grave.”

Chapter Six

Question by Prisoner’s Counsel: Did not Levi pay as much attention to Hope Sands, as he did to Elma?

Answer: Yes, I think he did and more too.

—From the testimony of Margaret (Peggy) Clark at the trial of Levi Weeks

New York City

January 9, 1800

Hope stayed in the front room after the lawyer had left, staring at her own hands, empty and idle.

She should go back to the millinery. Peggy and three other girls were hard at work; Hope had left her own work half-finished. The millinery, like the boardinghouse, was Caty’s idea, and like everything Caty put her mind to, she had made a success of it. At their busiest times, they had as many as twenty women shaping straw, sewing on beads and blond lace, securing flowers and feathers.

Hope could sew on a feather so it stayed—but Elma had a genius for the work. She could take a bit of white crepe and shape it into a turban, or find an old black beaver hat, add a gold chain and a single feather, and turn it into the latest word from London.

Sometimes Elma would try them on, modeling her creations for the others—the same way when they were little she’d take a handful of flowers and weave them into crowns of bugleweeds and touch-me-nots, Turk’s-cap and tiger lilies. She’d woven Hope crowns too, in those long-ago days when they’d been girls together, escaping their chores in the fields outside the house in New Cornwall.

Hope’s mother had looked sadly at them, and spoken of the ways of the flesh and frippery. The confiscated crowns had frizzled on the grate, reduced to ash. Elma’s mother hadn’t said anything at all, only looked down and gone on sanding the floor, board by board.

After that Elma had kept her fripperies to herself.

Hope hadn’t told about Elma’s cache of discarded finery: ripped lace, stained silk, a broken comb, a fan and embroidered stomacher Granny Mercy had worn to local assemblies before Father had convinced them to turn Quaker and renounce such things. Hope had never told anyone about the purloined paper on which Elma sketched flowers and people and landscapes, some real, some fantastical, palaces and princes, and, over and over, a man in the dark blue coat of a Continental Army officer.

Hope had always kept her secrets for her.

Until Levi.

You mustn’t tell, Elma had said, that day in the millinery, just as if they were children again, and Elma enlisting Hope’s aid in something they both knew to be forbidden. Jumping in the creek; tearing blank pages from the back of one of Father’s books to draw on; borrowing Caty’s comb and then claiming she hadn’t.

If I mustn’t tell, then why tell me? Hope had demanded. She wasn’t in a mood to play confidante.

But Elma went on anyway, leaning close, her breath tickling Hope’s ear. Don’t tell Caty. I’m to be married on Sunday.

To Levi? Hope had blurted out, and then wished she hadn’t. Of course to Levi. It had always been Levi, ever since they’d come back from the country. Levi who had sat by Elma’s bed hour by hour when Elma had been taken ill, refusing Hope’s offer to take a turn tending her. Levi who had private jokes with Elma, ones Hope couldn’t follow.

Elma had only smiled in that dangerous way she had when they were little, when she was about to propose something truly dreadful, and held up the hat she was working on. What do you think? Do I look like a bride?

Thee looks like thee has three hats to trim and only an hour until the light wanes, Hope snapped back, and Elma leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

When I am married and have a home of my own, you will come to me, and wear silk and eat iced cakes.

A fine castle in the air thee has built thyself, Hope mocked, but she had to drop her eyes quickly over her hat to hide the pang the words had given her: Elma, married to Levi, in that fine house he always talked of building.

One day, he’d said shyly, as he and Hope had walked to the charity sermon together, one day he’d build a house to his own design, with a curving stair and a classical pediment. She didn’t think him foolish for it? His brother thought him foolish, told him to concentrate on his work and stop scribbling.

No, she didn’t think him foolish.

But it was Elma who would someday run up that curving stair, Elma’s children who would play in the fine, bright nursery Levi planned on his imaginary top floor. There had been a time—walking with Levi in the crisp December night, sitting down with him at his brother’s table, holding his niece on her knee—when Hope had imagined herself into that home. Not for the silks and iced cakes, but for Levi, for the light in his eyes when he smiled at her, the feel of his hand on her elbow helping her over a slick patch in the street, the endearing boyishness as he confided his dreams of designing homes like John McComb, but better.

That whole long week after Elma told Hope had been an agony, going through the motions of daily life, knowing that a week from now, five days from now, three days from now, Elma would be Mrs. Levi Weeks.

As they bent over their work, Elma would lean to Hope and murmur things like, Maybe I’ll commission you to make one like this for me when I’m married, and You haven’t told Caty, have you? and Hope would have to pretend not to hear.

Sidelong glances, murmured comments. A conspiracy of which Hope had no desire to be a part. Should I wear this for my wedding? I hope it will be fair weather Sunday night.