When Will ’ s own mother had died, he ’ d fervently wished for something-anything-to bring her back. Will absently rubbed his stomach, anger burning over this performance, that she would take advantage of someone ’ s grief in such a profoundly fraudulent way. The man onstage asked simple questions for the next fifteen minutes, with Madam Zolikoff “interpreting” the dead mother ’ s answers. An accomplice, no doubt, yet the audience gasped. “ I hear her!” A steady rapping reverberated around the room. If he were dead, those lips alone might bring him back. Still, her pale blond hair showed off her striking light brown eyes. She was attractive, he supposed, if one preferred liars and cheats, which he most definitely did not. But every pair of eyes was trained on the young woman working the stage. No diamond tiaras or ostrich feathers here, just derby hats and plain bonnets. About twenty men and women, all average-looking, a far cry from the extravagant crowd he usually associated with. Shifting in his uncomfortable seat, he took in the meager audience. “ Ah! I think we are close!” she announced loudly in an appalling Russian accent. The electric lights overhead flickered, and the audience tittered. The man across from her, one she ’ d pulled up onstage, stared, enthralled, as Madam attempted to speak to his dead mother. The woman was the worst actress he ’ d ever seen-and Will had seen plenty.Įyes closed, she swayed and waved her hands, all while chanting. The mystifying medium who could commune with spirits and perform extraordinary feats. Yet here he sat, inside a ramshackle theater in the Tenderloin district, watching this audacious spectacle. Hell, he didn ’ t even believe there was a spirit world. William Sloane did not believe in the ability to commune with the spirit world. The charlatan is certain she can seduce the handsome millionaire into keeping her secret and using her skills for his campaign-unless he’s the one who’s already put a spell on her. ![]() But her carefully crafted persona is nearly destroyed when Will Sloane walks into her life-and lays bare her latest scheme. As “Madame Zolikoff,” she hoodwinks gullible audiences into believing she can communicate with the spirit world. ![]() Īva Jones has eked out a living the only way she knows how. Nothing can distract him from his next pursuit-except, perhaps, the enchanting con artist he never saw coming. Having secured his place atop the city’s highest echelons of society, he’s now setting his sights on a political run. But no matter how much success he achieves, he always wants more. ![]() īorn into one of New York’s most respected families, William Sloane is a railroad baron who has all the right friends in all the right places. And one pragmatic industrialist is about to learn that a man may make his own destiny, but love is a matter of fortune. New York City’s Gilded Age shines as bright as the power-wielding men of the Knickerbocker Club.
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