The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [67]
“So have I!” Miss Beaux said, still in a hushed voice. “And then I spend days absolutely kicking myself about it. Particularly with men—most of them are so blasted patronizing that when you meet one that you think might be different, you overwhelm him with opinions.”
“And being the pillars of strength that they are,” Miss Howard agreed, “they run and hide behind a gaggle of pretty, empty-headed idiots.”
“Oh! It’s so irritating …” Miss Beaux looked to me again. “What about you, Stevie?”
“Me, miss?”
“Yes. How do you feel about young ladies—do you prefer that they be intelligent, or do you like them to model their opinions on yours?”
My hand made its way to my head and started to twist a strand of my hair in a nervous sort of way that, when I noticed it, I stopped quickly, feeling childish. “I—don’t know, miss,” I said, thinking of Kat. “I haven’t—that is, I don’t know many—”
“Stevie wouldn’t put up with a fool, Cecilia,” Miss Howard said, touching my arm reassuringly. “You can depend on that—he’s one of the good ones.”
“I never doubted it,” Miss Beaux said kindly. Then she turned to the Linares woman. “Now, then, señora—the eyes. You said they were the feature that you found most arresting?”
“Yes,” the señora answered. “And the only aspect of the face that was at all exotic—catlike, as I said to Miss Howard. Almost—you have seen the Egyptian antiquities at the Metropolitan Museum, Miss Beaux?”
“Certainly.”
“There was something of that quality in them. I do not think that they were excessively large, but the lashes were quite heavy and dark and gave the eyes the impression of size. Then there was their color—glowing amber, I would say, almost a gold—”
I watched as Miss Beaux’s hands went to work toward the top of the sketch—and then jerked my head up when I heard my name being called from across the room.
“Stevie! What are you up to over there?” It was the Doctor. “Mrs. Cady Stanton would like a word with you!”
“With me, Doctor?” I said, hoping it wasn’t so.
“Yes, with you,” he repeated with a smile, waving me over. “Come along now!”
Turning to Miss Howard and giving her a doomed man’s last look, I stood up and dragged myself out to the easy chair what Mrs. Cady Stanton was sitting in. When I got there, she set her stick aside and grabbed both my hands with hers.
“Well, young man,” she said, eyeing me carefully. “So you’re one of Dr. Kreizler’s charges, are you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, as unenthusiastically as I could manage.
“He says you’ve had quite a time of it during your few years. Tell me”—she leaned closer, so that I could see small white hairs on her aging cheeks—“do you blame your mother?”
The question caught me a bit off guard, and I glanced at the Doctor. He just nodded in a way what said, Go ahead, tell her whatever you like.
“Do I—” I paused as I considered it. “I don’t know if blame’s the word, ma’am. She set me down the road to a criminal life, there’s no two ways about that.”
“Because some man was telling her to, no doubt,” Mrs. Cady Stanton said. “Or forcing her.”
“My mother had a lot of men, ma’am,” I said quickly. “And to tell you the truth, I don’t think any of them ever forced her to do anything. She put me to the work she did because she needed things—liquor, at first. Drugs later.”
“Which men supplied to her.”
I shrugged. “If you say so, ma’am.”
Mrs. Cady Stanton studied me. “Don’t blame her too much, Stevie. Even wealthy women have very few choices in this world. Poor women have virtually none.”
“I guess,” I said. “You’d know better than me. But like I say, I don’t know that I blame her, exactly, ma’am. Life was just easier when I didn’t have anything to do with her anymore, that’s all.”
The old girl studied me for a minute and nodded. “A wise statement, son.” She livened up then, and shook my arms. “I’ll bet you were trouble before you met the doctor. That’s the way with you scoundrels. My three oldest were all boys, and no end of trouble! I had whole towns that wouldn’t speak to me because of what they’d get up to.” She