The Hidden Goddess Read Online Free Page A

gilded leaves and obsessively wrought peonies in shades of plum and peach—seemed to glisten humidly. A pair of cherubs, frolicking blissfully naked atop a gilt mantel clock, were almost certainly laughing at her.
    There were six women in the room, waiting for tea that would be served piping hot. It was herself, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Stanton’s three daughters (Euphemia, Ophidia, and Hortense), and Miss Jesczenka. They had decided it would be pleasant to read a selection from Wordsworth. Or rather, Mrs. Stanton had decided that it would be pleasant, and as seemedto be the case in all things pertaining to the precise ordering of Mrs. Stanton’s world, no one had dared contradict her.
    This, apparently, was how people amused themselves in New York.
    Or, Emily reflected, perhaps the Wordsworth was just a gloss, and all the women were really having fun placing secret mental wagers on who was going to faint first. Indeed, that dubious mental exercise—and her idle musings about life insurance—were the only things keeping Emily upright.
    That, and indignation. What kind of freakish constitution did these New York women have, anyway? Mrs. Stanton looked as if mechanically chilled ice water were being piped into her through a special arrangement of plumbing in her red-velvet chair—and the perfect rigidity of her carriage gave Emily a pleasantly unpleasant idea as to how the piping was plumbed. The elegant Miss Jesczenka—Emily’s Institute-assigned chaperone—sat placidly, hands folded in her crisp lap, not a hair out of place, not a trickle of sweat upon her smooth brow.
    Ophidia and Euphemia were even worse. Ophidia, staring out from under heavy-lidded eyes, had a fat orange cat spilling over her lap like an ill-tempered carriage blanket, and Euphemia—good Lord!—clutched a woolen shawl around her shoulders.
    Only red-faced Hortense posed Emily any kind of challenge in the arena of heat prostration, and that was because she was going through such extravagant oratorical convulsions over Wordsworth:
    “Ethereal minstrel!
Pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?”
     
    Hortense’s voice trembled with emotion. Emily could not recall ever having seen a skylark, but she assumed it must be a jewel-encrusted wonder-bird from the praise being heaped upon its fool head, earth-despising or otherwise.
    Mrs. Stanton, however, was listening closely, making small nods at places where she seemed to especially approveof Mr. Wordsworth’s take on skylarks. And since Mrs. Stanton was the mother of Dreadnought Stanton, the man Emily was engaged to marry, Emily could hardly follow her natural inclination, which was to snatch the book from Hortense’s hands and hit her bucktoothed future sister-in-law over the head with it.
    Emily licked her lips and let her eyes wander over the mahogany paneling, wallpaper, and the goddamn naked cherubs for the hundredth time. The clock read 2:30. Miss Jesczenka had drummed it into her that the proper length of this type of call was precisely one hour—no more, no less. That meant a full half hour more of skylarks, airlessness, and piercing looks from Mrs. Stanton to slog through. Emily sighed silently.
    With an impulse of bold rebellion, she let her eyes tiptoe over the carved mahogany side table, on which lay a folded copy of
The New York Times
.
    “Unprecedented Earthquakes Along the Pacific Coast. Hundreds Killed from Mexico City to San Francisco. Aberrancies Running Rampant.”
    Emily’s brow wrinkled. She squinted harder, trying to make out the type beneath the headline without turning her head. She’d been so busy since she’d come to New York, she hadn’t had a moment to wonder what was going on at home in California. She craned her neck a little further, and was rewarded with the subhead:
    “Warlock Experts Attribute Disastrous Happenings to Mysterious Expulsions of Black Exunge. Citizens Are Strongly Advised to Avoid Toxic Earth Substance at All