Newport, Rhode Island
June 1899
Ellen walked through the chaos in the hall without seeing any of it.
She started, by habit, to head to the grand staircase and then checked, remembering. She wasn’t to be taking the main stairs while the guests were here. Mr. Sprague had been quite clear about that. She was to take the servants’ stairs, like the servant she was. The soon-to-be-unemployed servant she was.
The prince. She had sassed the prince.
Everything, everything Ellen had hoped for, planned for these past few weeks, was crumbling around her. There would be no trip to Italy, no position as Maybelle’s companion in her new life abroad. There would be no glowing letter of reference, no finding another job as a music teacher, tucked away into someone else’s household. Instead, she would have to sink back into the slums, trying to make a living as best she could, praying that her past wouldn’t find her.
She’d felt safe here, heaven help her. Too safe. How could she have been so colossally stupid?
But it wasn’t entirely her fault. As she let herself into her room, Ellen felt a tiny spark of anger burning through the cold panic. The prince wasn’t supposed to be lounging in the loggia. If he’d done what he was meant to do, arrived properly in a carriage with his coat of arms painted on the side, strode regally through the front door, instead of—Ellen grasped for the right word—instead of skulking like a ruffian, none of this would have happened.
What was she meant to think?
And he had enjoyed it, blast him. He had stood there and laughed at her. Laughed at poor Mr. Whitmarsh holding her hand and calling her a fugitive hope, as though they were the prince’s own private commedia dell’arte. Laughed at her confusion. Laughed at Mr. Sprague’s obvious embarrassment.
The only decent thing to have done would have been to declare himself at once and let her get on with curtsying and apologizing and showing him to where he was meant to be.
But what did it matter now? It didn’t matter what the prince ought to have done, only what he had done. He was a prince. He could get away with what he liked. But as for those lesser mortals so unlucky as to be in his path . . .
He would never know, never care, that he’d ruined a life with a casual flick of his cigarette.
Like Dermot. Safe in his fortress at the Hibernia. Ordering executions as another man might squash a fly.
They might occupy different worlds, Dermot and the prince, but they had the same lordly disregard for anyone else’s humanity.
What was she, after all? Just a bit of human flotsam, without family, without friends. Expendable.
I’m your family now, she could hear Dermot saying, as he put a hand on her shoulder at her father’s wake, a physical indication to all present that she was under his protection, untouchable. I’ll stand friend to you.
But at what cost? Only her soul.
Ellen gave a little shiver. “Stop being an idiot,” she told herself, and her voice sounded strange in the empty room, wobbly and uncertain, a little girl’s voice.
She grimaced at herself in the looking glass, making faces the way she used to for her little sisters, hideous faces, to make them laugh. Mr. Sprague might mean—clearly did mean—to give her notice at the first opportunity, but there was still tonight to get through. Ellen owed it to Maybelle to see her safely settled before Mr. Sprague booted Ellen out.
If a timid creature like Maybelle could be safely settled with a man such as the prince.
Ellen bit down her misgivings. Even if the man looked—and behaved—like a rogue, better a rogue who knew what he was doing than a clumsy bully like John Sprague. And wasn’t it true that in novels it was always the innocent girl who won the heart of the cynical old roué? Look at Jane and Mr. Rochester. Look at Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. Maybelle would adore being the heroine of one of her favorite novels. In fact, it would never occur to her that it might be otherwise. The books she read had only happy endings.
“Maybelle?” Ellen knocked gently at the door between their rooms, opening it without waiting for a response. “Maybelle, it’s Ellen.”
Maybelle rolled to her feet in an agitation of ruffles, stuffing a piece of paper into the treasure box that sat on the top of the bookshelf next to her chaise longue.
“Oh, Ellen! You surprised me! I was miles away, reading!” Maybelle grabbed at Jane Eyre, which had been lying abandoned on the chaise longue. She waved it in the air, looking anxiously at Ellen.
Maybelle had been reading something, but not Jane Eyre. Ellen wondered what it was that had been on that piece of paper she had shoved so hastily away.
It was on the tip of Ellen’s tongue to ask her about it, but Maybelle looked at her so pleadingly that Ellen said, instead, “I had thought you would be dressed already.”
Maybelle darted a glance at her treasure box. “I know, but it’s so hard once you’re immersed in a book. . . . And I had such a lovely long visit with Mrs. Schuyler. She’s very kind to me.”
“Hardly kind to keep you from your toilette on such a night as this.” Before Maybelle could launch into a slew of excuses for her friend, Ellen added, “I met your prince.”
“You did?” Maybelle looked at Ellen wide-eyed. “Not that he’s mine. He’s not mine, really. John just thinks . . . well, you know. Did he seem . . . pleasant?”
Her voice cracked a little on the last word, and Ellen felt her chest contract with pity. Strange to pity Maybelle, the heiress, but . . . it was Maybelle. Some heiresses might stomach a marriage of convenience, might even connive at one. But that wasn’t Maybelle. She wasn’t the simpleton her brother had claimed, but she was a romantic, a dreamer. To some a prince was a goal. For Maybelle, it was a terrifying thing to be sold in marriage to a stranger, shipped abroad for the sake of her stepbrother’s social aspirations.
You would be surprised at my price, mia bella.
Ellen could see the twist of his lip as he said it, hear his voice. That beautiful, mocking voice. A voice fit for the stage, flexible, clear, conveying all sorts of unholy insinuations and innuendoes. It was a voice one could lose oneself in as one would a dark wood full of promise and terror and dangerous pleasures.
Maybelle was more a sunlit garden sort of creature.
Ellen had accounted herself worldly after her years in the Hibernia, but she had been aware, immediately, that the prince inhabited a level of sophistication and privilege beyond anything she had known—a world in which a man might be so jaded that he could find pleasure in playing with the feelings of a servant.
The thought left a nasty taste in her mouth. If he would toy with a nobody, what might he do to poor Maybelle, so helpless, so easily led?
But it was her duty to promote this marriage, her duty to see Maybelle wed to a prince. If she didn’t, Sprague’s repercussions—not to her, to his sister—would be swift and terrible.
It wasn’t a case of the tiger or the lady. In this case, both doors concealed tigers. It was simply a question of which tiger was the more dreadful.
“The prince went out of his way to pay notice to a mere music teacher,” said Ellen, hating herself a bit for lying in spirit, if not in fact. It was all true as far as it went, but his attitude had been less noblesse oblige and more cat with mouse.
“That was kind, wasn’t it?” Maybelle looked beseechingly at Ellen, all her fears and doubts written on her face. “It says something, how people treat servants. Not that you’re a servant! You’re really more one of the family. Not a servant at all! I’m sure that if people saw us together, they would take us for sisters! Don’t you think we look alike?”
No, she didn’t. They were of similar height and both had fair hair and light eyes, but that was where any resemblance ended. Even there, Ellen’s hair was straight where Maybelle’s curled, her eyes grayish-green to Maybelle’s blue. And their features were nothing alike at all. Maybelle’s face still boasted the roundness of youth, where Ellen’s had been whittled to sharpness by grief and care. They were both female and fair, but that was the extent of it.
But Ellen knew why Maybelle had said it, even if it was palpably untrue. It was to make up for calling Ellen a servant.
And so she smiled, feeling like Judas, and said only, “Would you like to rehearse one last time before your performance tonight?”
Maybelle ducked her head. “Do you think I might perform tomorrow instead? You have such a way of putting things. If you spoke to my brother—”
“No,” said Ellen a little too abruptly. Softening her voice, she added, “Your brother wishes you to make a strong impression upon the prince. I don’t think anything short of a volcanic eruption would make him change his mind, and possibly not even that.”
Maybelle clutched the cameo at her throat. “Yes, but to be in front of all those people . . . when I haven’t even met most of them yet . . .”
Maybelle wasn’t to sing after dinner, in the gentle confines of the drawing room, when other women might also take their turn at the piano and dilute her triumph. Oh no. She was to wait until the whole party had been assembled and seated at the great table in the dining room. Alone, Maybelle was to make her grand entrance between the double doors of the dining room, contrary to all protocol, to all tradition. She would wait until all eyes were upon her and then . . . sing.
It was the worst possible way to introduce Maybelle to the company. But that was John Sprague for you. He wasn’t one for subtlety. Instead of realizing that his sister had the sort of gentle charm that showed best gradually, in a domestic setting, he was intent on flinging her onstage to show her wares, as if she were Hildie doing high kicks at the Hibernia.
“’Allo, ’allo! It eez zee time to make you magnifique, mamzelle!” Maybelle’s maid breezed into the room, holding Maybelle’s jewelry case in both hands. As far as Ellen could tell, Delphine came from Paris by way of Schenectady, but she did a lovely job with Maybelle’s fine, light hair. “I ’ave zee gown glorieuse pressed parfaitment and zee jewelry to make mamzelle shine.”
Maybelle clutched the cameo at her breast. “I’d like to wear my mother’s cameo tonight.”
“That little thing? Er, I mean, zat petite nothing?” Delphine thrust the jewelry box at her mistress. “Monsieur Sprague, ’ee wishes that you wear zee diamond spray.”
Maybelle looked like a cornered mouse, hunched into her reading nook, darting anxious glances back and forth from Delphine to Ellen. “Yes, but it’s not his debut. I don’t like the diamond spray.”
“Eet eez made of zee diamonds.” Delphine waggled the bauble at Maybelle.
“But it wasn’t my mother’s.” Maybelle’s eyes misted with tears. “If my mother were still alive . . . if my mother were here . . . when I wear it, I can almost imagine—”
“Wear the cameo,” said Ellen abruptly. She could only lose her job once, and she’d already done that, hadn’t she? She might as well give Maybelle what comfort she could in the hours remaining to her.
Delphine was staring at her as though she’d gone mad. “But Monsieur Sprague . . .”
Ellen ignored her. “You’ll sing better if you feel comfortable with yourself. Wear the cameo.”
“Do you mean it? Really?” Maybelle stared up at Ellen as though she’d just given her the moon. Never mind that Maybelle was the mistress of the house and her money paid for Ellen and everything in it. Her brother had her convinced she was nothing, deserved nothing.
“There’s no need for you to be tarted up like a prize pony,” Ellen said, and Maybelle gave a watery giggle. Delphine gave Ellen a look of outrage. Sidestepping the maid, Ellen gave Maybelle’s hand a gentle squeeze. “I’ll be in my room if you need me.”
Back in her own room, Ellen wondered vaguely if she ought to pack. She should, she knew. It was best to be prepared. The thought made her very, very tired. She’d come to like this strange, opulent room in this strange, opulent house, and the thought of leaving again, of going out into the unknown, made her weary down to her toes, with the sort of dragging exhaustion that blunted movement and muffled thought.
Later. She would pack later. First there was Maybelle’s performance to get through.
Slowly, Ellen removed her new dress from the wardrobe, a simple, high-collared affair of gray so dark it was nearly black, the perfect clothing for someone blending into the background.
Maybelle had insisted that Ellen be there when she sang, but there was, as far as Mr. Sprague was concerned, no need for Ellen to actually be visible. In this, as in everything else, Mr. Sprague had been quite explicit in his instructions. She wasn’t to stay for dinner, not in such exalted company. Instead, she was to accompany Maybelle downstairs, cue the musicians, offer such aid and support as Maybelle needed, and then disappear.
Which suited Ellen just as well. Back to a tray in her room—possibly her last tray in this room, her last night in this room.
Well, she’d always known it couldn’t last forever, hadn’t she?
When Ellen met her charge to bring her downstairs, Maybelle had been cinched into a gown of pale pink satin. Satin flowers edged the deep neckline, and at the center of each winked a diamond, or a very good facsimile thereof. A ruffle of antique lace bristled out beneath the flowers and gathered at the shoulders to provide the briefest of sleeves.
Maybelle’s mother’s cameo, Ellen saw, had been placed at the center of her décolletage, in the place where the diamond spray was meant to be.
The woman in the cameo had a worn, comforting sort of face. A motherly face.
Ellen held out a hand to Maybelle. “Nervous? You shouldn’t be. You know this too well to worry.”
Maybelle looked a bit green beneath an elaborate confection of golden curls, crowned with a small ostrich feather held by a diamond comb. “I feel like I can’t remember a word. I’ll open my mouth and nothing will come out.”
“If you forget, I’ll be there next to you whispering it all to you. And the musicians will be accompanying you, so you haven’t a chance of forgetting the tune.” In livery. The livery she had threatened to make the prince wear.
The thought made Ellen’s cheeks burn.
“Come. Let’s get this over with,” she said, more curtly than she intended. Maybelle looked stricken. Ellen softened her voice. “I mean, it’s not so bad as all that. Think of the actresses who go onstage every day! With footlights.”
“Yes, but they’re trained for it.” Maybelle accompanied her with dragging steps down the stairs, although that might have been partially the effect of the short train she had forgotten to loop up.
Ellen leaned down, retrieved the trailing fabric, and tucked the loop securely around Maybelle’s wrist. “You’ve trained for this. Every day for the past month. Don’t worry, you’ll be brilliant.”
But even Ellen balked as they approached the dining room, where the guests had already been seated. This wasn’t the simple scene she had imagined. The dining room by day, empty, was a very different thing from the dining room by night, lit with thousands of branches of candles, crammed with guests in all their finery.
Maybelle checked, staring wide-eyed at the assemblage. Ellen didn’t blame her. The walls were painted with hunting scenes, and the images that, in the day, had been merely flat paint, leapt out at her with alarming clarity: a hunter driving his spear into the breast of a struggling boar, a pack of dogs ripping into the body of a fallen doe, the saliva glistening on their pointed teeth.
The guests took on a nightmare quality; Ellen could smell the strong reek of the women’s French perfume, the pomade the men used to slick down their hair. Their voices were too loud, their jewels too bright, and as they opened their mouths to shout social niceties at each other, Ellen thought she could see the glinting fangs of the dogs between their painted lips.
At the head of that glittering, terrible company sat the prince.
In evening dress, with orders thick upon his breast, he was a different man from the creature smoking his cigarette in the loggia.
Or maybe not. As he lifted his eyes and noted them, Maybelle in her pink, shivering in the doorway, Ellen in the shadows behind her, urging her on, Ellen could have sworn she saw the same lazy amusement in his eyes.
John Sprague rose to his feet, clinking his crystal goblet with a gold-plated fork to gain the attention of the company. One by one, the chattering voices died out and the curled and feathered, bejeweled, and pomaded heads turned to look at their host.
The silence was, if anything, even more terrifying than their chatter had been.
Ellen had a fanciful image of Maybelle as the doe, shoved into the enclosure to run and die for their entertainment. She’d never had a chance of getting away, had she? The hunters had already closed around, ready to prod her into place.
John Sprague bounced on the balls of his feet, lifting himself as high as he could go without actually standing on a chair. “Your Excellency. Ladies and gentlemen. It is my great pleasure to introduce to you my sister.”
Maybelle clutched Ellen’s sleeve. “I—I can’t.”
“Shh,” murmured Ellen, grateful that Mr. Sprague was busy expounding on the virtues of a Maybelle so unlike the original as to be entirely fictional, drawing attention away from the ashen-faced girl in the doorway. “Of course, you can. You’ve sung it a thousand times—and beautifully, too.”
“I’m going to be sick.”
“No you’re not. Not in that dress.” The dress, as Mr. Sprague was fond of reminding everyone, was a genuine Worth and had cost more than Ellen earned in a year. Possibly two years.
Ellen put a hand beneath Maybelle’s elbow, helping her up onto the dais that had been brought in to give her extra height for her performance. The dais, however, was little more than a footstool, dwarfed by Maybelle’s skirts. Ellen devoutly hoped she wouldn’t fall off midstanza.
John Sprague waved a hand at the trembling girl. “I give you my sister, Maybelle!”
“Don’t. Don’t think of them,” whispered Ellen. “Just think of the music. The music is your friend.”
Stepping back, she nodded to the musicians concealed behind a painted screen. The formal, mannered notes of the eighteenth century sounded in the vast room, tinny against the crimson and velvet, the gilt and crystal.
Maybelle drew in a deep breath, or as deep a breath as she could with her waist cinched to nothingness. “Where’er you walk,” her voice wobbled on the words, “cool gales shall fan the shade.”
She cast Ellen a look of pure panic. It had been meant to be “glade,” not “shade.”
Ellen nodded as reassuringly as she could. “Trees where you sit,” she mouthed.
Maybelle looked helplessly out at the prince across the long, vast table and sang, “Trees where you sit, shall crowd into a shade.”
John Sprague was glaring at Ellen, his expression pure hatred and thwarted rage. If there hadn’t been other people here, he would have been across the room by now, sticking out his chest and haranguing her. But he couldn’t, not here, not with his guests all around him.
He had wanted Maybelle to sing in Italian, as a compliment to the prince. But singing in Italian had only made Maybelle more nervous, and the simple, well-known aria had seemed to suit both the occasion and Maybelle’s high, sweet voice.
Ellen had thought it would give her confidence, would make it easier. And it had. During rehearsal.
Not here, not now, where what had been simple sounded strained. The music had been designed for an earlier era, a less excessive era, the age of reason, of classicism, not this mad abundance, where brilliant colors warred and flashed and one’s eyes were dazzled with rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, great chunks of precious stones, flaunted with barbaric extravagance.
Maybelle stood frozen with panic as the musicians played a stanza, her breast rising and falling rapidly under her mother’s cameo. Her eyes looked like glassy blue marbles in the candlelight.
It was all Ellen could do not to pull her down and bustle her away to the safety of her own rose-strewn boudoir. This was cruel; it was horrible. And it was her fault, at least some of it. She ought to have known that an eighteenth-century air wouldn’t do for the dining room. For the drawing room, yes, as an after-dinner piece, but not this, not John Sprague’s big performance, Maybelle’s introduction to the company, her grand entrance.
She had thought it was a kindness, picking a piece suited to Maybelle’s voice, her personality, trying to display the girl’s innate goodness, to show the prince what she was, what a prize she was in herself behind the ruffles and lace.
But it was all wrong here. Ellen could see that Maybelle knew it, knew she was failing, could see her closing in on herself, frozen in fear of her brother’s disapproval. They had lost the guests already. They had begun to turn to each other, to whisper and chatter again.
“Where’er you walk,” Ellen whispered to Maybelle, hoping Maybelle wouldn’t notice how her hands had twisted into claws at her sides, how close she was to despair. Maybelle always had trouble with that first high F after the intermezzo, even on a good day.
But she hit it perfectly, and Ellen could see the delight and relief show on her face, the way her hands loosened at her sides. Maybelle soared easily through the first set of trills, her voice rising and building in a way that almost made her earlier hesitation sound planned.
Ellen was so relieved she could have cried.
The guests were listening again, their rouged and powdered faces lifted to Maybelle, their conversations stilled.
“Where’er you walk, the blushing flowers shall rise!” There was a becoming flush on Maybelle’s pale cheeks as she lifted her head and sang to the prince. Ellen could see the way his chin jerked up as Maybelle hit the F-sharp perfectly, how he looked at her as though he were first seeing her.
Growing in confidence, Maybelle spread her hands out in front of her, like a minor deity conferring blessing. “And all things flourish, and all things flourish, where’er you turn your eyes.”
The prince’s eyes were turned to Maybelle, regarding her with a sort of casual speculation. And Maybelle was certainly flourishing. There was an animation to her face and her voice that hadn’t been there before as she sang the reprise, “Where’er you turn your eyes, where’er you turn your eyes.”
The final note faded. Maybelle stood on her dais, pink-cheeked, triumphant, her chest rising and falling as she looked to Ellen for approval.
A clatter of spontaneous applause rose from the crowd. People were pushing back chairs, standing up, raising their glasses, turning to one another to exclaim over the performance, how wonderful, how surprising, how refreshing.
Ellen let out the breath she’d been holding, giddy with the relief of it. This was exactly what she’d wanted, exactly what she’d hoped for: Maybelle showing the very best of herself. Not the imaginary Maybelle her brother had so desperately attempted to conjure, but the real Maybelle, the girl who loved to surround herself with flowers and kindness, who wanted nothing more than for everyone to be happy and comfortable.
Prunella Schuyler’s voice rose piercingly above everyone else’s. “Of course, I would have handled those trills better, but it really wasn’t at all bad for an amateur. With a great deal of practice, she might be nearly as good as I am someday, don’t you think, Frank? It was really quite pretty.”
“Er, yes, quite,” said the man next to her, who appeared to be not entirely sober. He was very handsome in a chocolate box sort of way, with slicked back blond hair and a fresh complexion. Maybelle beamed at his words, glowing as though he had praised her in the most extravagant of terms.
The prince stood.
He didn’t have to clink a glass to draw attention. He didn’t have to utter a word. All he had to do was stand, and the company magically fell silent, obedient to his unspoken whim. It wasn’t the medals that glittered on his breast. There were other guests who boasted more. It was the sheer magnetism of his personality. He commanded the room simply by being in it.
He lifted his glass in the direction of the doorway, his beautiful tenor voice carrying even more clearly than Maybelle’s. “To the so-lovely Miss Sprague, who sings so sweetly.”
But he wasn’t looking at Maybelle. He was looking at Ellen. As she watched, he tipped his glass to her with a twist of the lips that in a lesser personage might have been termed a grin.
It was too hot, too bright; Ellen’s high collar was too tight. She had the strangest urge to dive under the nearest piece of furniture, to flee.
She wasn’t here. She wasn’t meant to be here.
Maybelle didn’t need her anymore. Maybelle, blushing, was being escorted to her seat beside the prince by a phalanx of admirers, all of them extravagantly complimenting her singing. The prince, meanwhile, simply sat there in his chair and waited for his bride to be brought to him. And all the while his eyes were on Ellen, as though there were something secret shared between them, something private and personal.
Ellen turned abruptly and blundered into one of the pillars that weren’t meant to be there, one of the pillars made of wood painted to look like marble.
They’d had a hypnotist perform once at the Hibernia. He was nothing to the prince.
Perhaps it was a good thing, Ellen told herself. Perhaps he would so mesmerize Maybelle that she would go joyfully to Italy, grateful for her good fortune, rather than as a captive bride in a loveless marriage.
Not that Ellen would be here to see it.
As she changed out of the gray dress into her nightdress, listening to the sounds of revelry from the floors below, Ellen wondered dimly just how long it would take Sprague to get around to dismissing her.
Not long, it turned out. He found her just after breakfast, when she ventured downstairs to the music room to collect such personal belongings as she might have left there.
Sprague grabbed her by the arm as she walked inside, kicking the door shut behind him. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Ellen retreated a few paces, to the safety of the piano. He would dismiss her, but he would humiliate her first. Politely, she said, “I am always at your service, sir.”
Sprague seemed distracted, glancing over his shoulder, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Ha! At my service, is it? I told you I wanted Maybelle to sing in Italian. What was that, last night? That wasn’t Italian.”
Ellen looked at him in surprise. She’d expected to be sacked straight out for her rudeness to the prince, not taken to task for the smaller of her infractions. “The prince hears Italian all the time at home, sir. This was his welcome to an American household.” Never mind that the music had been written more than a hundred years ago by a German living in England. “Miss Sprague’s Italian pronunciation, while proficient, is not yet as polished as one might like. It seemed safer to have her sing in English, rather than blundering into mistakes that might prejudice the prince’s opinion of her.”
“Hmm.” Sprague’s brows drew together. He jutted his chin at her. “And why isn’t it that polished? It’s your business to polish it.”
She had never promised proficiency in Italian. Not that John Sprague would ever admit that. Ellen dipped her head, wishing he would just get it over with. “My apologies, sir. I believed Miss Sprague would be more confident in her performance if she were singing in her own tongue.”
Sprague cleared his throat. Ellen couldn’t understand why he seemed so jittery; he wasn’t the one about to be tossed out without a reference. “She’ll need a better song for the next one. A proper song. An Italian song.”
Ellen lifted her head, thoroughly confused. “The next one?”
“Didn’t I say? The prince has requested a musical evening.” Sprague regarded Ellen with mingled dislike and jubilation. “He specifically complimented your tutelage.”
“That was—that was very kind of him.” Ellen’s stomach twisted uneasily. She should be grateful, but . . . she remembered that toast last night, his expression as he looked at her. He was playing with her, she was sure of it. A diversion for the jaded.
He would tire of it. It was only that she’d been rude to him; that was the novelty of it. And in the meantime, she was saved from the streets. For the duration of the prince’s visit, at least.
“The credit is all Maybelle’s—I mean, Miss Sprague’s,” Ellen said unsteadily, trying not to think of the prince, of that cynical, clever face, that beautiful, cruel voice.
“So I told the prince, but he seemed to think you had something to do with it,” grumbled Sprague. He pointed a finger sharply at Ellen. “You have one week to put together a program of performance.”
“Sir,” said Ellen, already turning over possibilities in her head, trying to think what might suit Maybelle. What might appeal to a prince.
In Italian.
“No more surprises. You follow instructions. Exactly.” A flicker of something that might have been fear crossed Sprague’s face. “You get this right, do you understand? There’s more riding on this than someone like you could ever imagine.”