The House of Velvet and Glass Read Free Page A

the four thousand dollars for the ticket, then. Lan could complain about the expense as he might, but it was worth it if she could see at least one of her children settled.
    “ Le Sang de Morphée indeed,” Mrs. Widener remarked to herself, surveying the glittering scene before her with a gaze of supreme boredom.
    “Blood from a stone, more like,” Mr. Widener replied, resettling a pair of gold spectacles on the bridge of his nose and applying his attention to a sheet of heavy card stock in his hand. Helen was shaken out of her reverie long enough to notice that menu cards had appeared. Oysters! Well, she supposed that was apt. And perhaps that boded well for Eulah’s chances. Helen placed equal stock in the power of old wives’ tales as she did in the newer branches of thought. Consommé Olga, whatever that was. Poached salmon and mousseline sauce with cucumbers.
    “What is the name of this tune, Helen?” Mrs. Widener interrupted her thoughts with a poke of her gloved finger on Helen’s forearm.
    “Why, I’m sure I don’t know.” Helen smiled, catching a glimpse of Eulah in the crowd of dancers, her head thrown back in exquisite laughter at something Harry was saying. Through the rising babble of dinner conversation, the clinking of cutlery and glassware, the swelling horn section of the band, Helen wondered if she could be hearing the clock tolling again. Was it tolling in actuality, or just in the back of her mind? She pushed the question aside, taking up the menu again to see what gustatory delights lay in store for her and her daughter.
    Roast duckling in applesauce. Parmentier and boiled new potatoes. Cold asparagus vinaigrette. Pâté de foie gras, and—oh, Eulah would be so pleased—chocolate and vanilla eclairs! Helen turned in her seat, searching for her daughter’s gay face in the crowd of revelers, dropping the menu in her haste on the floor, where it settled against the gilded leg of her chair.
    At the top of the menu, engraved in elegant, nautical letters, was written the name of the splendid ocean liner that was carrying them home: T ITANIC .

Chapter One

    Beacon Hill
Boston, Massachusetts
April 15, 1915
     
    Goodness, but the air was cloying. Sibyl Allston felt a cough rise in her chest and pressed her handkerchief to her lips to silence it. Thankfully she had soaked the kerchief in a little 4711 this time; the astringent, citrusy scent of the cologne sharpened her mind and pushed away the room’s miasma. She shifted, feeling her heart turn over in her chest, lurching in trepidation tinted with a strange kind of excitement.
    Across the table, Sibyl observed an anonymous man, on the elderly side of middle age, also overcome by the heavy atmosphere. His eyes watered, and skin hung in sallow folds over his detachable collar. She didn’t know his name, though she supposed it would have been easy to deduce from the papers if she bothered to look. Sibyl saw him, every once in a rare while, driving down Beacon Street in an old-fashioned brougham, one of the last ones in town, his eyes sheathed in worry. Strange that they should always see each other here, always be seated directly opposite one another, and yet never breathe a word.
    Mrs. Dee insisted on that. Absolute secrecy, and absolute silence. Mrs. Dee had a way of dealing only in absolutes that Sibyl had once found reassuring.
    The parlor where they gathered every year had been redone in the modern style some decades ago, in homage to Mrs. Dee’s “celebrated” status. The furniture was all carved rococo woods, weighted down with curlicues and waxen fruit and snarling animal faces, the seats upholstered in scarlet silk with golden tassels. The walls bore silk upholstery in a rival shade of magenta patterned with rosebuds, their dignity screened from sunlight by double-hung velvet portieres in deep navy, kissed by sun bleaching at their fringed edges, ends puddling on the floor. The fireplace mantel was black marble, crowded with