“Just a few things for the wedding party.”

“Does this mean…”

“Wait until we get upstairs,” Lola said under her breath.

They managed to get it all in the elevator by propping open the gate and piling the bags around them. Once the elevator had creaked and moaned them up to the fifth floor, they pushed out the bags and got everything down the hall to the Orchid Suite. Within five minutes, there was an explosion of pastel tissue paper, box lids, ribbons, and wrappers. Five garment bags weighed down the closet doors. Lola gave them each a quick squeeze, seemingly able to divine their contents by the way they scrunched.

“You signed it,” Scarlett said.

She pushed aside some of the packages to make enough room to sit down. All of these lovely things looked so strange in the Orchid Suite—strange and right. At some point in history, people who wore lovely things were here all the time. That’s why the hotel was filled with dressing tables with many secret drawers and large carved wardrobes and silk-cushioned chairs to sit on while you applied your makeup.

These were the things that came from the Sutcliffes—small tokens of their much vaster wealth. And all Lola had had to do to earn them was sign a piece of paper saying that she wasn’t really equal to them. Yesterday, Scarlett didn’t see what the big deal was, and if Lola wanted to sign, she should sign. But now, seeing this, she started to change her mind. Maybe…Chip was right. Maybe she should have held out, just ignored the Sutcliffes entirely.

Of course, she couldn’t say this to Lola now.

“But how did all of that party stuff get planned today?” Scarlett said, looking around at the mass of things piled around them.

“It didn’t,” Lola said. “I think they knew I was going to sign, so Mrs. Sutcliffe—Anna—hired someone earlier in the week to start setting things up on the sly. She has friends everywhere, and she does a lot of society and charity events, so she has the number of every good florist, caterer, bakery in town. She picked out the cake.” The word cake came out with the kind of inflection used for words like taxes or dumped.

“What’s wrong with the cake?”

“The cake,” Lola said slowly, “is shaped like an enormous boat. Specifically, their boat. I hate boats.”

“So why…”