Masquerade (55 page)

Lottie’s mind had moved on. “And we simply must discuss that hideous dress you were wearing last night. It looked like you had two funeral wreaths on your hips. I thought you had better taste.”

“
I
didn’t pick it out. Mrs. Tremaine had it made for me and … What are you going to tell your parents about all this?”

Lottie gave a determined nod, as if the issue was clearly settled. “The truth. It will be a shock, but they’ll accept it—eventually. Mother will know why I did it … she’ll understand I wanted to marry for love. She’ll be happy that I’m happy and cared for.”

“And your father?”

“I hope he’ll learn to be happy for me.”

“Will they be happy to know they have a grandson?”

Lottie’s attention turned to her son, sitting in Sven’s lap, playing with his pocket watch. “The presence of Fitz will take some explaining, but in the end I predict Mother will want to dress him in a fancy suit.”

“A suit with a sailor collar and—”

Nanny interrupted the conversation by standing. “Well then. Coffee anyone? I know these two. It’s going to be awhile.”

A long while. There was so much to tell Lottie, so much to hear from her. Yet before they continued, there was one thing Dora had to do.

She relinquished Edmund’s arm, crossed the room, and took Lottie’s hands, urging her to stand. “I have missed you so much.”

Dora looked into Lottie’s eyes and saw the girl she’d played with, the young woman she’d served, and the wiser woman Lottie had become in her absence. She saw a person who was on the threshold of finding her own strength, her own purpose, and her own place in the world.

And Dora felt different too. She wasn’t Lottie’s maid anymore. Out on her own she’d become a lady, and with the help of all in the room— and God—she would continue to grow in that respect as Edmund’s wife.

“Yes?” Lottie said.

Dora smiled at Lottie’s impatience. Maybe she hadn’t changed
that
much.

Without another word, Dora pulled Lottie into a full embrace. She relished the contact and within moments felt Lottie submit and hug her back. It was a contact Dora would never have initiated before.

But now, such affection was acceptable. Now it was essential. Now it was a blessing.

For no longer were they maid and mistress.

A world away from where they had started, they were finally what God had intended all along.

True sisters for all time.

Dear Reader

I have never had so much fun writing a book as I did writing
Masquerade.
The girls’ switch, the unimaginable wealth of the Gilded Age, the amazing fashion, and the inspiring tenacity of the immigrants coming to America for a new beginning … It was like combining
The Prince and the Pauper, Titanic, The Age of Innocence,
and
Far and Away
all in one. In fact, I openly admit that the dance scene on Mulberry Street was in honor of my favorite scene in
Titanic
when Rose goes belowdecks and has some real fun dancing to the immigrants’ music.

This story also touched me because of my own immigrant roots. I stand in awe of the first English immigrant on my father’s side, who entered America in 1638 at what became Newport, Rhode Island, and the Swedish immigrants on my mother’s side who homesteaded in Minnesota in the late 1800s. Talk about taking a chance, moving forward in faith. I would not have the life I live now without their courage.

Masquerade
begs the question of who we are and who we are expected to be. It’s all about roles. A society girl and her maid. The rich and the poor. The good and the bad. Sometimes God takes us out of our comfort zones in order to make us see there is more to us than we imagine. The station in life that we happen to be born into does not form the boundaries of our purpose; it’s just a jumping-off point. The finish line can be reached via a myriad of roads. Life is not the process of discovering who we are but of discovering who we are supposed to be.

Some thank-yous … I must thank Dr. MaryAnn Diorio for going through all my pitiful Italian and making it real. By the way, I purposely left a lot of Italian untranslated because I wanted you, the reader, to feel as befuddled as Lottie did. I hope you didn’t mind too much. I also want to thank my editor, Helen Motter, and readers Stephanie Whitson, Julie Klassen, and Crys Mach for helping me see the better book hidden within the chaos.

Another reason this book was such a joy to write was that the characters completely took over. Fitz came out of nowhere, as did the handkerchief. And Dr. Greenfield? On the ship he wasn’t a doctor. But one day, as I was writing the scene where Charlotte is at the Tremaines’ with a headache, and a doctor comes into her room … the door opened and suddenly I thought,
The doctor can be the man on the ship! They could truly fall in love!
Honestly, until that point I had her marrying Conrad.

And I never planned on having Lottie pose as a maid at the Tremaines’. She just ended up at the servants’ entrance of their house, the door opened, and suddenly a servant asked her if she wanted a job. Uh … sure. Again, up until that point I had not planned for her to truly trade places with Dora. I should have planned for such a thing, but didn’t. These characters can be troublemakers. But they can also be oh so wise. Two opened doors, two plot changes. I think I’ll keep that in mind in future books. If I’m ever stuck, I’ll just arrange to have someone be at the door.

That’s what I love about writing novels. The unpredictability of it all. With one word, one glance, one knock on the door, everything can change.

Sounds a bit like life, doesn’t it?

So here’s to you, dear reader. Knock on some doors, risk new roles, and step out in faith to find your true purpose.

Nancy Moser

Fact or Fiction in
Masquerade

Lottie and Dora lived near Lacock, in Wiltshire, England. Lacock has been preserved by the National Trust and was used to film the miniseries
Cranford.
The Abbey there, where William Fox Talbot lived (the inventor of the photographic negative), was used as a set for some of the Harry Potter movies.

In Chapter 5, Lottie and Dora board the steamship
Etruria.
This was a real ship that traveled between Liverpool and New York. One of its passengers during my characters’ voyage was Bram Stoker, the author of
Dracula.
Nine years after
Masquerade
takes place, twenty-year-old Winston Churchill took this ship to New York City, his first visit to the birthplace of his mother. He did not enjoy himself. “There are no nice people on board to speak of, certainly none to write of … There is to be a concert on board tonight at which all the stupid people among the passengers intend to perform and the stupider ones applaud.”

The Statue of Liberty was unveiled and dedicated on October 28, 1886, by President Grover Cleveland, soon after Lottie and Dora sail past.

Castle Garden: In the early 1800s, Castle Clinton, as it is now known, was created as a fortification to protect the city. In peacetime, during the 1820s, it assumed a resortlike purpose with a theater and restaurant. People would stroll around the walls of Battery Park, take warm seawater baths, read newspapers from around the world, and drink mint juleps. Many inventions were first demonstrated there: the submarine, the telegraph, and the steam-fired engine. In the mid-1800s, a huge domed roof was erected over the fort, and the Swedish opera star Jenny Lind gave her first U.S. concert there. In the 1840s, because of the Irish potato famine, hundreds of thousands of immigrants came to America. Castle Garden was appropriated to deal with the influx. Once Ellis Island opened to handle the immigrants in 1892, Castle Garden was turned into the New York Aquarium.

The apple woman at Castle Garden in Chapter 8 was Jane Noonan. For decades she sold her apples, first at Castle Garden, and later at Ellis Island.

The Tremaine home in Chapter 9 is based on the home of A. T. Stewart and his wife, Cornelia. It sat on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and West Thirty-fourth Street. It took five hundred workers five years to build, and cost $1.5 million (about $37.5 million today). It had 55 rooms, yet only two people lived in the house, and the Stewarts shunned society. They did have an extensive art collection in their home gallery. Across the street lived the Astors, in a far simpler brownstone. The house was demolished in 1901. The Empire State Building was built across the street on the site of the Astor home. Like the Tremaines, A. T. Stewart had a department store and got his start selling lace. His store was eventually bought by Wanamaker’s.