Free The House of Velvet and Glass by Katherine Howe Page B

onto Harrison Avenue. A dried sprig of mint hung, upside down, their private signal, pinned to the naked wood of the door, below the hand-painted numeral 8.
    Harlan lifted his hand to knock, his pulse quickening.
    Just then the door clicked open, and a smiling green eye observed him from behind a brass chain. The door closed as the chain was unfastened, and then opened again.
    “I’m so sorry,” Harlan started to say. “I couldn’t—”
    He was interrupted by a delighted laugh, and the sound of shushing. The person behind the door took hold of the lapel of his glistening overcoat, pulled him inside, and closed the door.

Chapter Five

    Sibyl’s hands plucked at the edge of her overcoat, anxious. The rattling taxicab rocked her to and fro, and every so often her hand wandered up to reassure itself that the edge of her hat wasn’t bumping the cab window. The previous day’s brilliant light had given way, in the desultory way of New England at springtime, to a thick mist, creeping up the streets in the night and refusing to burn away. On days like this Boston reasserted its stubborn kinship with the water, as if to remind the city that though its swamps might be drained, its air freed of fever, its tide flats filled, it would always be a tiny spit of land in a world of water, river to the one side and sea to the other. The air tasted of salt and wet earth. River bottom.
    The cab rounded a corner and approached the Harvard bridge, rising like the back of a sea animal through the fog. Sibyl heard the crack and the groan of metal wheels, the electric 76 streetcar trundling past on its way into Boston, loaded down with writhing limbs, each rider pressing under the overhang to shelter from the drizzle. Sibyl recoiled at the thought of so many bodies pressed together, of the unwanted intimacy of public life. Her busy hands folded themselves around her opposite elbows with a shudder.
    A few pedestrians plodded across the bridge, huddling under black umbrellas. Beyond them the slate surface of the Charles rippled beneath the white-gray cloak of fog. The cab moved at a stately pace, motivated, she supposed, by either concern for her perceived gentility or desire for a costlier fare. Sibyl’s eyes slid to the back of the driver’s head. He wore a wool checked cap pulled low, revealing a beefy roll of neck at the top of his collar. She wondered how many times he must cross this bridge in a day. What did he think about on all those bridge crossings? Did he even notice them anymore?
    Out of the fog the outline of Cambridge emerged, the new concrete dome of the technology institute rolling into view first. Sibyl’s hands knitted together in her lap. The call had come late, well after her father retired for the night. She herself was only half-awake, already undressed and settled in bed with a book when Mrs. Doherty scratched at her door. The housekeeper appeared, lamp in hand, dressing gown knotted tight, hair in a long braid over her shoulder, grouchy with sleep.
    “Telephone. A Mister Derby. I told him ’twas well too late to be rousing the household, but he was most insistent,” Mrs. Doherty informed her, in a tone that suggested Sibyl might think twice about accepting such an impertinent overture.
    “Benton Derby? Are you quite sure?” Sibyl asked, perplexed, propping herself up on one elbow.
    “I’ve left the handset for you, ma’am,” Mrs. Doherty said, and then withdrew, light from her lamp trailing behind her as she made her way to the service stair.
    Sibyl rose, pulling a filmy lace dressing gown over her shoulders and taking up her own lamp. Her bare toes gripping the velvet carpet runner reminded her of the nighttime excursions to the drawing room when she was a girl. In the entry hall, tucked behind the stairwell, she found the telephone in its dedicated niche, a technological toadstool, earpiece waiting on the table. In the background loomed the La Farge. Sibyl hesitated, discovering herself to be nervous,