Free All Other Nights by Dara Horn Page B

interested, though in a rather macabre way. “Yes,” he said, “but I don’t believe that this is ladies’ talk. I suspect your father would agree.” He glanced at Philip, hoping for support. But Philip said nothing, helping himself to more potatoes.
    Jeannie shimmered with energy. There was something captivating about her, Jacob saw, but he didn’t yet know whether it was the compulsion of beauty or the fascination of an imminent train wreck. “Did you ever see anyone who had a broken jaw, for instance?” she asked.
    Her younger sisters smirked; the elder one groaned. “Oh, Jeannie, not again!” Lottie wailed.
    Jacob hesitated, wondering what new humiliation awaited. Philip, who had been disregarding the whole exchange, finally looked up, his hands frozen in the air above the potatoes. He glared across the table at her. “Eugenia, if you even think about doing that, at the table or anywhere else, you will regret it for many years to come.”
    But Jeannie clearly hadn’t listened to her father in many eons, and her father was apparently resigned to her not listening, along with the rest of the circumstances of his widower’s life. She smirked at her father, who merely sighed. Just as Jacob was wondering what on earth Jeannie could possibly be about to do that everyone was dreading, a series of carriage bells rang just outside the front door.
    “Oh, is that Major Stoughton again?” Lottie asked, turning in her seat. “Stupid Yankee. He’ll never give up on me, will he?”
    This was intriguing. Jacob had been briefed on the Levys’ policy of taking in Northern smugglers and other undesirables as boarders—out of sheer financial desperation, he had gathered—but he hadn’t quite imagined it in reality, especially when that reality involved four phenomenally beautiful girls. Though not a boarder himself, Major Stoughton, as Jacob would later learn, was a Federal officer, decorated in the Indian wars and loyal to his old command, despite his origins in Virginia. His mother, an elderly invalid, still lived in New Babylon, and he knew the border guards well enough that they were satisfied with the passes he produced, and the generous compensation he provided, to cross the lines and tend to her. With this convenient excuse, he was able to pursue his actual goal: courting Philip Levy’s eldest daughter. Lottie, Jacob saw, was biting her lip.
    “What do you expect when you keep leading him by the nose?” Phoebe asked with a grin. “I suppose you’re planning on having him propose to you too!”
    Lottie turned back toward Phoebe, and snarled.
    “Draw noses onward!” Rose screeched, her voice full of glee.
    The bells rang again, and a man’s voice outside called, “Lottie, darling? Are you there?”
    “Oh, fine, I shall meet him outside,” Lottie groaned, and turned to look out the window. Jacob leaned forward in his seat and caught a glimpse of the person coming up the front path—a man in a smart suit and hat, about ten years older than he, strutting impatiently along the flagstones.
    At that moment, as Jacob and everyone else turned toward the windows, the room resounded with a loud bodily crack, like a bone being broken.
    Jacob spun back toward the table and saw the most ghastly sight. Jeannie was slouched in her chair, almost collapsed onto Rose’s little shoulder. But what was horrifying was her face: the entire lower half of it—her lower lip, teeth, cheeks and chin—was grotesquely shifted, as if her jaw had been dislocated by a sudden blow. Her eyes were rolling toward the back of her head. He had never seen anything like it except once in a circus sideshow, and the circus lady had been a freak.
    “Miss Levy!” Jacob shouted, and instinctively jumped out of his seat. “Are you all right?” He reached across the table toward her, and then glanced at the others. No one else at the table had even moved. Even Philip continued chewing his potatoes.
    The grotesque gargoyle that was Jeannie’s