The pair nodded along, as though it were entirely unsurprising that a young woman of twenty should go abroad without a single friend or relation, only two strangers for servants.
“She has arranged her itinerary, and I have approved it,” Julia said. “You will be overseas for roughly six months.” She slid a piece of paper across the desk. They took it and read it over together.
“Never been to India,” the woman said.
“But you do have experience traveling abroad?” said Julia.
“Yes, ma’am,” the man said. “Mexico, mainly.”
Julia frowned at this—she could only imagine what two such as they had been doing in that country—but went on. “My daughter was recently ill,” she said. “She has fully recovered except for a lingering anemia. Her hands tremble occasionally, and she is often cold. She may need help to dress herself—but do not coddle her, especially in public.”
They nodded again, placid, unquestioning.
“As to the second part of your duties.” She shifted, uncomfortable. “Last year, my daughter, through no fault save her own innocence, fell under the sway of a dangerous foreigner, a man I believe to be the ringleader of an international gang. He invaded our house one morning this spring, along with a handful of his associates. Thankfully they were persuaded to leave—but he may still have designs upon her.”
“Can you describe him?” the man asked.
“Tall, olive-skinned, perhaps thirty years old,” Mrs. Winston said. “She called him Ahmad, though I have no idea if that was his real name. You will protect her from this man, and from others like him. You’ll report to me regularly, describing her health in general and her comportment in public, especially around members of the opposite sex. And so far as is feasible, you will never let her out of your sight.” She paused. “I hope I needn’t explain that Sophia will only be told the first half of your duties.”
“Of course, ma’am,” the woman said smoothly. “No explanation necessary.”
The interview ended; the man and woman were shown out.
Alone, Julia rubbed her eyes. She could only imagine what the pair had made of her carefully crafted story. She’d left out Sophia’s failed engagement entirely; it had little bearing on the matter, and there was only so much humiliation she could endure in the face of strangers. Nor had she mentioned the feats of mesmerism that this Ahmad had performed—for she had no desire at all to report that her own husband, one of the most powerful men in America, had sworn to her that he’d watched the man burn alive in their fireplace and then emerge without a scratch.
And then there was the matter of Sophia’s “illness.” Julia had been there when it began, on a trip to Europe; for weeks afterward she hadn’t been able to close her eyes without picturing her daughter unconscious on a parquet floor, her skirts soaked through with blood. The doctors had dismissed it as a variant of the usual female affliction, distressing yet benign. And then, when the girl’s shaking and chill had refused to improve, they’d suggested to Julia that the girl’s troubles rested not in her body, but her mind.
At the time, Julia had rejected this suggestion out of hand. But after the foreigners had burst into their home—and Sophia, taking full advantage of the scandal, had broken her engagement with the relief of a woman spared the guillotine—Julia had begun, for the first time, to wonder if they were right. There was no sensible reason for Sophia to act so outrageously against her own interests and willfully destroy every advantage she’d been given; it seemed a sort of self-violence, like a murderous coachman who drives his passengers off a cliff knowing that he, too, must perish. What else would one call it but a kind of madness?
A knock at the door startled her from her thoughts. It was a maid, her face apologetic. “A message from Mr. Winston, ma’am. He’s been unavoidably delayed, and will miss supper.”
Julia dismissed the maid with a sigh. Ever since Sophia had settled on her plan, her husband had found countless excuses to stay away. A fine thing, when the blame could be laid squarely at his feet! Would Sophia have even contemplated such a thing had Francis not allowed her to linger in his library for hours at a time, reading travel memoirs and archaeological journals? He might as well have opened their door to the gang himself!
Alone in his office above Wall Street, Francis Winston stared out the window at the evening traffic, the day’s business ignored upon his desk.
His message to Julia had been a lie, and he despised himself for writing it—not out of any particular distaste for lying to his wife, but for playing the part of a weaker man, one who must bend his own schedule to fit another’s. But neither could he stomach returning to the mansion where his once-vibrant daughter now sat trembling before the fire, and his wife accused him for it with every word and glance.
Worse, he suspected that Julia was right. Francis Jeremiah Winston was the descendant of fur traders and timber barons, men who’d measured their wealth in acreage and rainfall and sunlight, in rivers forded and traps set. Over the succeeding generations, these rough spoils had been transmuted to more civilized substances: real estate holdings and railroad shares, shipping lines, munitions factories. Francis couldn’t regret the domestication that had placed the Winston name alongside the likes of Astor and Vanderbilt—and yet a certain vitality, he felt, had been lost along the way. And so when young Sophia had showed an interest in travel and archaeology, and had asked to hear the stories of his bachelor years spent hunting game and climbing ruins, Francis had been secretly pleased. The doctors all had doubted that Julia could carry to term again, and so
