It was the first snow of the season and I stood at the window, staring out at the elegant lawn and the falling pure white flakes. The fountain in the center of the round drive was frozen, the little cherub statues on either side spitting icicles into the goblet between them. The servants were hard at work constantly clearing the drive and a path from the drive to the door of newly fallen snow. Carriages were arriving, women in elaborate gowns and men in their best waistcoats emerging from them, entering the manor from the door directly beneath me. I heard them even from here, an entire floor and several closed doors away. I closed my eyes, letting my breath fog the glass in front of me.

"Have you seen Ada?"

I turned to Elena. She stood on a small pedestal, long white lace train trailing off of her and pooling in an elegant puddle on the floor to her right. She was a vision in her brand new, custom made wedding dress. The hired help had done an incredible job twisting her blonde waves into a beautiful updo with tendrils falling around her angelic face to touch her shoulders below. I could hardly stand to look at her for, every time I did, I threatened to tear up which was unacceptable because, as I had been told, that would smudge all of the hard work that the servants had done on my face. I smiled at her now, forcing steel into my nerves and putting on a brave face for the both of us.

"I can go and find her," I told her as I approached, reaching out and giving her arm a squeeze, "If it would make you feel better."

She thought for a moment, the concern and anxiety written plainly on her face. She bit her lip and was immediately scolded by a nearby aunt who rushed forward with a tube of lipstick to correct whatever error Elena had made. Finally, she nodded.

"Please," she said then and I could hear the nervousness in her voice as she took a shaky breath, "But don't disappear for long. I can't have you vanishing on me as well."

I nodded and left the room as quietly and demurely as I could so as not to exacerbate her anxiety further. I shut the door tightly behind me and then hefted my sage green dress up enough to make my way quickly down the hall. I had suspected that Ada would have avoided the bride's dressing room. All the primping and polishing and gushing about one another's gowns was far from her scene. But she also didn't know too much about the layout of Mr. and Mrs. Langley's estate, having only been here once before, so there were truly only two places she could be and I thought one of them far more likely than the other.

I was rewarded for my knowledge of my friend's behavior by the sight of her seated firmly at the bar, whiskey in hand, waving it around as she gestured wildly at whatever tale she was telling the poor uninterested barkeep. Her fiery red hair was piled into an updo which mimicked my own but hers was already beginning to escape from it's bounds. I sighed. Undoubtedly, her makeup would be smudged as well. I smiled politely as I made my way through the gathering crowd, and caught sight of the senior Mr. Langley long enough for him to shoot me a private gesture in the direction of Ada. I nodded to assure him I was handling it and continued to push my way through until I reached her. I tapped her on the shoulder and she turned, grinning widely as soon as she saw me standing beside her.

"Lottie!" She called me for the first time in her life, nearly falling right off of her stool in her effort to toss her arms around my neck, "There you are! I was just tellin' this gentleman about that conman we caught when we first got here! You 'member him? You and Alex got there first 'course but if we hadn't come-"

"Yes, Ada, I remember," I told her as I helped her off of the stool, taking her weight as I pulled her toward a familiar back door which led to the servant's halls. Once we were out of sight of the guests, I let her lean even more upon me as I followed the sound of clanking pots toward the kitchens. She continued to ramble along our journey but I was determined and we pushed through the swinging doors a few moments later. Servants were running about, passing us with cake, appetizers, bottles of liquor, and anything else a proper wedding might need. I plopped Ada down on a nearby stool and called out to no one in particular, "Can I get some coffee over here?"

A maid nearby nodded and ran off to fetch the requested drink. I grabbed a napkin from a pile on the counter and began dabbing at the black smudges under Ada's eye. She fought me at first but my vice grip on the back of her neck stilled her quickly enough.

"You should be ashamed of yourself, you know," I told Ada as I worked, "but there will be time for that later. Drink."

I pushed the mug of coffee into her hands and she did as she was told, though her face scrunched up at the bitterness upon her first sip.

"Elena is your friend, is she not?" I asked.

"She is," Ada grumbled.

"Then why would you allow yourself to get into such a state on her wedding day? When she's expecting you to stand up there with her as she makes the most important vow of her life."

Ada sighed as I tossed the napkin aside and went around to work on her hair. There weren't enough pins to catch all of her fly aways and I had to remove a few of the less necessary ones from my own hair to put them in hers.

"Oh yeah, she'll make that vow and then she'll go off and move in with him," Ada muttered. I paused and leaned over to get a look at her face. Was she... pouting?

"Ada," I started carefully, "Are you upset because you're going to miss her?"

"Of course I am!" She tossed her hands into the air, "I'm going to miss her and you. Everything's changing. Once we get on that ship tomorrow-"

"There you are!" Another voice called. Ada and I looked up to see Mrs. Langley entering the kitchen. She looked more frazzled than I had ever seen her. It was quite the contrast from her usual elegantly put together self. She eyed the activity of the kitchen as she approached us. "I've been looking all over for you. Would you mind telling me why my daughter's two bridesmaids and so-called closest friends are drinking coffee in the kitchen while she's upstairs near to tears with nerves?"

Mrs. Langley crossed her arms in annoyance and, despite our differences, I couldn't fault her for it at that moment. She was right. We had a place and it wasn't here. Though perhaps, on any other day of the year, she would have gladly agreed that my place was in the kitchen along with the other servants. Elena had made it very clear, when wedding planning had gotten underway in earnest three months ago, that Ada and I were her closest friends and were to be at her side on the most important day of her life and, if her mother disagreed, she could forget attending herself. After that dramatic stand, Mrs. Langley had been shockingly cordial to the both of us though, as I was certain that kindness was set to expire the moment Elena uttered her vows, I wasn't in any hurry to see this wedding ended.

"You're right, Mrs. Langley," I spoke hurriedly. "We were just on our way up. I just wanted to stop and fix Ada's hair again. I didn't want Elena to see it and have something else to worry about."

"Hm," Mrs. Langley nodded but the way she quirked a brow at the swaying Ada seemed to say she wasn't entirely certain that was the whole reason we had stopped at the kitchen.

Before she could make her accusations, I gave Ada a shove and she stood, rather ungracefully, to her feet. Mrs. Langley spun on her heel and stomped toward the exit and Ada and I followed, praying that coffee would sober her up sooner rather than later as I went. As we ascended the stairs, we passed Jake on his way down. He only nodded his head in greeting but the look in his eyes said that he would have said more if Mrs. Langley weren't present. I made a note of that as I led Ada back into the bride's dressing rooms.

Mrs. Langley's demeanor shifted the moment the door was opened and her voice rose several octaves as she called out greetings to the few female family members who had made their way upstairs to assist Elena in dressing. It took Mrs. Langley a few moments to notice the person standing in the middle of the room, whispering into his sister's ear, the person whom I had noticed the moment the door was opened. Alexander separated from Elena as we entered and I tried to focus on steering Ada in the right direction but could not help but notice the way his eyes travelled over me in my dress and the way his lips parted into a smile so genuine it strangled my heart.

"Alexander!" Mrs. Langley cried happily, having noticed her son for the first time, as I lowered Ada into a chair by the door and instructed her in a whisper not to move until she felt that the floor was still beneath her. He hugged his mother but watched me over her shoulder. I did my best to ignore his gaze as I crossed the room, right by him, to Elena.

"I think it might be time to put on the jewelry," I told her and she nodded and waited patiently as I headed to a nearby desk and opened the drawers, carefully extricating the beautiful velvet boxes from within. I took my time, arranging every bracelet on Elena's wrist, fastening her necklace to the perfect length, and assisting her with her earrings, while Mrs. Langley boasted loudly of Alexander's most recent accomplishments. I knew them well.

I had managed to steer Alexander away from any case involving the gambling dens in the East End or that could possibly lead us anywhere near George Keene. We had worked a few robberies and one arson. None of them had been all that exciting, most of them had been the result of insurance fraud. I had also managed, with the assistance of his father, to turn his attention more toward his business investments. Mr. Harrison had wanted to get his affairs in order before the wedding so that he could enjoy the time he would have off for his honeymoon and I had managed to convince Alexander to offer to help his friend which had resulted in our spending about a month locked in his office going through the most horrendously boring ledgers.

But at least it was safe.

Jake and I had agreed that it was nonnegotiable that Alexander should attend his sister's wedding but that, immediately after, we would get him off to America as soon as possible. Ada had managed to find a ship leaving the very next day and had regretted it ever since. Jake had never spoken of such reservations. He had played his part, thus far, perfectly. He had written to Hubbard who had responded with news far greater than we had expected. There was a notorious outlaw by the name of Wicked Willy Larson terrorizing the area that the Americans were calling Oklahoma. Hubbard's men had been unable to catch him thus far and it was just the sort of excitement to draw Alexander out and keep him distracted long enough for me to handle business here.

I still wasn't sure how Jake had managed to convince him to go. For two weeks, Alexander had refused. Even when Jake showed him the pleading letters from Hubbard, even when he read the newspapers claiming Wicked Willy had killed another three men in a shootout, even when Ada had made a halfhearted attempt to claim homesickness. Alexander hadn't budged, saying he had more important things to attend to here, but then one day Jake had calmly requested to speak with him privately and Alexander had emerged with the announcement that he would be headed to America in two months' time. I did not know what Jake said to him in his office, only that he hadn't told him our plan. He'd promised me that wasn't it.

So now the day had come. Elena's wedding was the signal we had all been waiting for to turn our plans into a reality. As long as the three of them boarded that ship in the morning, Jake would have held up his end of the bargain and it would be time for me to do the same. But I hadn't been spending the last three months lying in wait. I had been making arrangements myself. Sure, I had spent my days with Alexander, working with him in his investigations and his business, but my evenings had been entirely my own and they had been used in preparation.

I had remained living with Victoria and Benjamin these last three months. Alexander and I had never discussed that conversation which had occurred between us on the night that Edwin Jacobson was arrested. I had told him that Victoria needed my assistance at home given her advancing pregnancy and he had understood. I knew he suspected there was more to my decision but he did not question it, giving me the freedom he always did to make my own choices. So I never asked him what he meant wasn't working out as Jake had advised me to do because, in truth, it didn't matter. Not anymore. Not now that he was shipping off to America for an indeterminate amount of time in the morning and I had a suspicion he would want nothing to do with me when he returned.

"Ouch!" Elena hissed. I blinked back to the present and muttered a curse as I placed the earring in my hand onto the desk and reached for a tissue. I dabbed at the small dot of red blooming against her cartilage.

"I'm so sorry," I told her. "I must have missed."

"I'd say," she answered, taking the tissue from me and putting the pressure on herself. She turned to look at me over her wrist and her eyes were all concern. "Are you okay, Charlotte? You seem... distant."

"I'm fine!" I forced a smile in an effort to convince her. It didn't work. It never did with Elena.

She cast a glance over her shoulder to ensure that no one was listening to us but found the women of her family captivated by her mother's tales of her brother and Ada sound asleep in her chair by the door.

"Is it because he's leaving?" she asked. I blinked at her.

"Who-"

"Alexander," she whispered, rolling her eyes as though I should have known. "He'll come back. He always does. I know that last time he was gone for three years but that's because he didn't have you to come back to."

She winked but I didn't smile back.

"I just meant that you two have a bond," she said but then her shoulders dropped. "No. That isn't what I meant. Look, I think I've earned the right for a bit of honesty on my wedding day. We're all just waiting for you and Alexander to see what lies between you the way that we see it. There. Okay? I said it. Hate me if you must."

We saw it. We had seen it since the moment we met eyes in Mr. Patrick Welford the attorney's office months ago. But it did not matter what was there. It could never be. But I didn't say that, I didn't say any of that. Instead, I gave her a genuine smile and said, "I could never hate you."

She smiled back, "He won't be gone for long. But it's wonderful that father is going to hire you to manage his account while he's gone. After all, who knows more about it than you and Nathaniel?"

She turned back to reinsert her earring now that the bleeding had stopped and my smile faltered the moment she was no longer looking my way. Edward Langley. Jake and I had seen no way around it but to involve him. We knew that Alexander would never leave the country without appointing someone to handle his responsibilities and, as he considered his two most important responsibilities to be me and his father's business, it only made sense to solve one problem with the other. But, to do that, we would need Mr. Langley to agree to work with myself and Mr. Harrison on the business. He did so gladly enough when Jake and I explained that we were doing what we were doing to keep his son safe. I knew that Edward Langley would agree, he valued the lives and happiness of his children over anything else, but I never imagined he would agree so quickly. If my son trusts you, Miss Porter, so do I. I wouldn't forget the words. Not for as long as I lived. They meant far more to me than Edward Langley would ever know.

"Though Nathaniel was shocked when father told him you would be taking over the account," Elena chuckled at the memory as she closed the earring and turned her head to admire her work. "I think he's happy for it, though. You're far easier to work with than Edward Langley, Charlotte."

I chuckled along with her as I bent to straighten her train. I was fluffing the lace when I noticed another pair of hands doing the same on the other side. I looked up to see Alexander bent over his sister's gown, helping me. When our eyes met, my heart stoppe, and I felt as if I was drowning in that ocean that was Alexander Langley's eyes. I wondered if that feeling would ever subside.

"Everyone," someone called loudly as they entered the room. I looked over to where Edward Langley was standing in the doorway, beaming at all of us, "It's time."