English.”
She darted a quick, pleading glance at him: please don’t betray me. Amused, he dipped his head a fraction, the ghost of a nod.
“The impertinence,” the older lady muttered, narrowing her eyes at the Djinni. She spoke more loudly now, assuming he wouldn’t understand, though of course her tone was plain. “I’m sorry, Sophia, I never should have left you alone.”
“Really, Auntie, it’s of no concern,” the young woman said, embarrassment in her voice.
“Promise not to speak a word of this to your parents, or I won’t hear the end of it.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Now let’s take you home. Your mother will be beside herself if you aren’t ready in time.”
“I can’t stand these parties, they’re so wearisome.”
“Don’t say that, my dear, the season’s just starting.”
The older woman took her companion’s arm—Sophia, she had called her. Sophia glanced up at the Djinni. It was clear she wanted to say something, but couldn’t. Instead she allowed the older woman to escort her from the fountain, across the expanse of red brick. They ascended the staircase to the carriage drive, and then they were gone from sight.
Quickly he dashed across the terrace, startling those in his path. He took the stairs two and three at a time. Near the top he paused. Keeping out of sight, he watched from below as the two women approached a gleaming, open-topped carriage that waited on the drive. A man in livery opened the passenger door for them. “M’lady. Miss Winston.”
“Thank you, Lucas,” said the young woman as he helped her into the carriage.
The man climbed onto his high perch and flicked the reins, and the carriage rolled smoothly away down the drive. The Djinni watched the carriage until it curved past a grove of trees and disappeared.
He considered. It was late in the day, and growing cold. The sky was still overcast, and edging on threatening. Now would be the time to turn south and retrace his steps. No doubt Arbeely was wondering where he was.
But the young lady had intrigued him. Moreover, the dark, aimless longings that had surfaced at the wedding party had returned, and he was not in the habit of denying his own impulses. Arbeely, he decided, could wait for him a few minutes longer.
He had little to go on, only her name, but in the end it was almost absurdly easy to discover where Sophia Winston lived. He accomplished it by traveling eastward to the edge of the park, alongside the path her carriage had taken; and then, once he was through the gate and again on the city streets, asking the first man who passed by.
“Winston? You mean Francis Winston? You must be joking.” The man he’d stopped was large and jowly, and dressed like a laborer. “He’s in that new mansion at Sixty-second. Big heap of white bricks, as big as Astor’s. Can’t miss it.” He pointed north with a meaty finger.
“Thank you.” The Djinni strode off.
“Hey!” the man yelled after him. “What you want with the Winstons, anyhow?”
“I’m going to seduce their daughter,” the Djinni called back, and the man’s roar of laughter followed him up Fifth Avenue.
He found the Winston residence easily, just as the man had said. It was an enormous three-story limestone palace, topped by dark gables that rose to high peaks. The house was set back from the street, behind a swath of neatly trimmed grass and a spike-topped iron fence that ran the length of the sidewalk. It hadn’t yet acquired the thick patina of grime that clung to its neighbors, and it wore this newness with a quiet self-satisfaction.
At the front of the house was an enormous lamp-lit portico. The Djinni walked past it, and turned the corner, following the iron fence. Lights blazed in the tall windows beyond. He could see figures moving about inside, silhouetted behind drapery. At the back corner of the house, a thick hedge stretched out to meet the sidewalk, and the iron fence became an imposing brick wall, shielding the grounds behind the mansion from passing eyes.
The Djinni eyed the fence. The bars were strong, but not especially thick. He eyed the distance between them. Two, he decided, would be enough. He wrapped a hand around each of the bars, and concentrated.
Sophia Winston sat disconsolate in her bedroom, still in her dressing gown, hair damp from the bath. The guests would be arriving in less than an hour. As her aunt had predicted, Sophia’s mother was in one of her states, careening about the house like a loose parakeet, issuing orders to every servant within earshot. Her father had retreated to the library, his usual foxhole. Sophia wished she could join him, or else help put her brother George to bed. But George’s governess disliked Sophia’s “interference,” saying it undermined her authority. And if Sophia’s mother found her mooning over travel journals in the library, there would be a row.
Sophia was eighteen years old, and she was lonely. As the daughter of one of the richest and most prominent families in New York—indeed, in the country—it had been made clear to her, in ways both subtle and overt, that she was expected to do little more than simply exist, biding her time and minding her manners until she made a suitable match and continued the family line. Her future unrolled before her like a dreadful tapestry, its pattern set and immutable. There would be a wedding, and then a house somewhere nearby on the avenue, with a nursery for the children that were, of course, mandatory. She’d spend interminable summers in the country, traveling from estate to estate, playing endless games of tennis, chafing under the strain of being constantly a guest in someone else’s home. Then would come middle age, and the expected taking-up of a cause, Temperance or Poverty or Education—it did not matter so long as it was virtuous and uncontroversial, and furnished opportunities for luncheons with dowdy speakers in severe dress. Then old age and decrepitude, the slow transformation into a heap of black taffeta in a bath chair, to be displayed briefly at parties and then put out of sight; to spend her last days sitting bewildered by the fire, wondering where her life had gone.
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