The House of Velvet and Glass Read Free Page B

daguerreotypes and small geodes clustered on a doily, with twin crystal whale-oil lamps at either end.
    The mantel also held a small brass dish, shaped like a leaf, with a smoldering cake of incense, its smoke snaking upward to the ceiling. Two ochre Turkish rugs warred for prominence over the floor, rivaled only by the vitrine against the far wall, cluttered with porcelain, bronze sculptures of frolicking nymphs, and glass-eyed stuffed birds frozen in flight. At the center of the riot of objects, each coated in a dignified veil of dust, glowed a glasslike orb nested in velvet. Sibyl eyed this item idly, attracted to its cleanness, she supposed, for it alone seemed to bear the trace of polish and care.
    Sibyl herself sat perched on a hassock that positioned her too low relative to the table in the center of the room, her knees drawn up and angled sideways, one hand clasping the opposite wrist. A slender woman, ebony eyed and dark browed, with a long nose and milky skin, Sibyl dressed practically, in shirtwaist and slim dove gray skirt, her hair gathered in a bun at the crown of her head. Her one concession to adornment was a small pin at her throat, of gold and black enamel encircling an ivory wafer patterned with two laurel leaves. The laurel leaves were so cunningly worked that it was almost impossible to tell that they were formed from pale human hair: Helen’s mother’s. Helen herself had worn the laurel leaves for years; it was a wonder the pin hadn’t made the voyage with her. Sibyl reached up to finger it, reassuring herself.
    The pin was an outdated ornament, but Sibyl herself was outdated in some respects. Not that she really minded anymore. At twenty-seven she had finally accepted that her life would remain confined to the oversight of her father’s household. She clasped her hands in her lap, digging a thumbnail into the flesh of her palm to distract her from the sore spots forming under the bones of her corset. Maybe Eulah had been right about rational dress after all. She shifted her weight, stomach sinking at the thought of her sister. The waiting was the worst part. Soon they would begin.
    “If you would all kindly take your seats,” Mrs. Dee intoned from the parlor door, where she had appeared with no warning.
    The celebrated medium enjoyed making an entrance though sometimes found it difficult, given her small stature. Sibyl appreciated that Mrs. Dee was always the last one in the room, counting on the element of anticipation and surprise to make up for what she lacked in intrinsic majesty. Plump and mono-bosomed, waddling in last year’s hobble skirt, Mrs. Dee waved her hands in a herding motion to gather her supplicants around the mahogany dining table. A silent butler drew back the most ornate of the various chairs, a pointed Gothic monstrosity that had been raised on casters to make Mrs. Dee seem taller. She settled herself in her throne as the dozen Bostonians in her parlor picked their way to seats that belonged to them by force of habit.
    Sibyl knew a few of them; some she had known from before, in the little world of Boston society with its tight web of marriages and cousinships. Mr. Brown she knew from Belmont: she’d been to dancing school with his niece. Mrs. Futrelle, in from Scituate, her grief making her sharp features more drawn and ethereal with each passing year. Mrs. Hilliard had been in the same Thursday evening lecture club as Helen. The two Miss Newells, survivors both of the gruesome ordeal, the elder of whom, Madeleine, had been in Sibyl’s sewing circle. They were put in a lifeboat by their father on that dreadful night, never to see him again.
    Not in this life, anyway.
    Sibyl shivered, an inward chill raising goose bumps on her arms.
    The others, like the sallow man seated across the table, remained a mystery. She knew that she might see them here and there, glimpsed in a church pew, or in a distant row at the Colonial Society; might even see one of their pictures in the