Six months later.

In surveying the party scene, Lorenzo automatically took on the atmosphere. The men wore their tails in varying demure colours. They gathered in their cliches and spent their time talking about various conquests: new business ventures, new laws in government, new competitors and old rivalries. Always with a grim smile and always with a forced laugh.

The ladies also gathered in their respective cliches. Their sweeping gowns brought all colours to the room with varying degrees of silver and gold linings. Their groups were more based on age and status.

The older women, children flown the coop women, eyed all other women across the room less conspicuously than their younger counterparts and their comments carried further.

"...what is she wearing!?"

"...her ladies are out tonight..."

"...what a strumpet..."

"...why is he talking to her..."

The younger wives, with children at home, eyed the debutants jealously. They were the wives of up-and-coming men and referred always to their status to ensure they were behaving correctly and bragging within their station. They spoke in hushed voices about their children who had home tutors and whose husbands were being faithful/successful.

"...he is looking her way..."

"...my husband has increased his business..."

"...we hire two tutors – one for each child..."

The debutants gathered like a flock of frightened finches. Preyed upon and dissected by not only their older counterparts but also the men in the room, they were the main attractions. Their patterned dresses drew the eye to their figures as they walked with an innocent twist of the hips. If Lorenzo could hear them, and if he cared, he would hear them whisper about him when he strode past them.

"...that's Lorenzo Sinacore..."

"...he's back from across the Mediterranean..."

"...no wife yet. Must be soon..."

"...I spoke to him once. Impeccable manners..."

Lorenzo was approached by a man, an affiliate of Lorenzo's contacts, with his wife and a nervous looking young woman. The young woman naturally caught his attention and he was introduced to her.

"Sinacore, this is my wife, Macella and our daughter, Sofia," the man told him. Lorenzo, gave Macella the appropriate kiss on the back of the hand

"Lovely to meet you, Macella," he told the short lady with the curls she had given to her daughter.

"And also you, Sofia," Lorenzo studiously added, kissing the daughter's hand too. She had a lovely round face, framed with voluptuous curls that sprang from her forehead and down to her shoulders. Interestingly different to every other head of hair in the room. She had porcelain skin and delicate blue eyes. Sofia knew her manners as she curtseyed, with a bowed head.

The man, Guilano, began to talk politics but Lorenzo cut him short, "My friend," Lorenzo laughed with a wide smile, "This is a party – not a government house. Please, leave the work talk for work."

A little off-put, the man conceded. "Isn't my daughter lovely?" he asked instead. Lorenzo knew all too well what this meant. He agreed with Guilano, smiling at Sofia who shyly accepted the praise.

"She is to be sixteen, soon," Marcella added. So young.

"A good age to be," Lorenzo toasted her. Sofia blushed. She was one of many such young ladies brought to him and hinted at, even during the course of this one night. This one was lovelier in the face than others and she had a certainty that came with her status. Those curls too – they were remarkable. Lorenzo felt it necessary to tell her so. But she was much too young, barely a child. Lorenzo pitied her and all her sufferances in order to marry well. He would not be swayed with unique curls alone.

"Marcella, did you enjoy the theatre?" he asked Macella. The woman, surprised to be spoken to again so soon said that it was most agreeable.

"And you, Sofia? What was your favourite part?" Lorenzo asked. The blue eyes froze in fright, like a deer.

"The singing, of course," she managed a meek reply. Lorenzo nodded approvingly but wondered if the young woman recalled anything about the story that had been presented to them. "And you?" Sofia managed to ask after sucking in a breath.

"Me also, the singing," he agreed lamely. In fact, the music was the most interesting part of the operetta. If he could get away with it, he would close his eyes while attending the opera and lose himself in the swirling sounds that quickened the heart and tricked the mind. The onstage theatrics were visuals he could do without. Unfortunately, the people on stage were not the only watched beings in a theatre and sitting there with eyes closed was a sure-fire way to drawn unwanted attention to oneself.

"I'm curious, Sofia, what do you think of the fact that women aren't allowed to perform on the stage?" he asked suddenly. She frowned in confusion and looked to her parents for guidance. They could not help her though, Lorenzo asked for her opinion.

"I believe that women have their rightful place," Sofia replied hesitantly, "In the home and with her children." An uninspiring answer but her upbringing guided her again as she asked him, "What say you?"

"There is a certain kind of arrogance borne of men who believe they can play a women character better than a woman could. Women are far more capable than they are allowed to be, Sofia. While I don't expect you to tell me that you would love a chance to act on a stage, what would you do if you could do anything you wanted?"

"Sir, I don't think this is an appropriate conversation for our daughter," Guilano injected carefully then gave a nervous laugh, "Can you imagine what would happen to our world, our order if women could do anything they wanted?" Marcella nodded, supporting her husband.

"Oh, Sir, I mean no harm. Just arguments sake," Lorenzo laughed with a friendly hand on this man's shoulder, "It's not as though we are changing laws here. I'd like to hear the young lady's thoughts." The bar rested on Sofia's shoulders as she glanced at her parents again, who had guided her with their disapproval of the conversation topic, and Lorenzo, who waited, patiently as always, for her reply.

"I would be at home, caring for my husband and children," she said, scaring away any further thoughts Lorenzo might've had about her.

The night went on and Lorenzo managed to shed his present company after an obligatory dance with the plain young woman with the resplendent curls, Sofia. His high hopes of her gentle face and dark curls matching a mind equal to that of Genevieve's had been dashed.

She often sat with him in the darkness of his carriage on his way back to his villa in Tuscany. Where Lorenzo sat shrouded in a cloak of black, Vieve shone bright as day, clear as a bell on the seat directly across from him. Usually she would talk to him, tell him the answers to all the questions he'd pressed on each young woman he had been introduced to during the course of the night. Answering his questions easily with her own mind, her own opinions, her own logic.

Not tonight. Never on nights like this.

Tonight, the Genevieve in his mind watched him with her dangerously darkling eyes in fastidious silence. She was less clear than the last time she manifested in his space. Fuzzy around the edges. Charred and smoking.

"Is everything alright?" a sultry, feminine voice interrupted his mind's eye from next to him. There was naught for it but to acknowledge the strumpet's presence. Lorenzo handed her into the carriage himself so it was no surprise that she was there. He couldn't see her in the darkness but she slid close to him, her warm body wrapping itself around his arm.

As the woman spoke again to ask him gently, "What are you thinking about, love?", Genevieve across from him frowned and her displeased eyes moved from him, to the passing darkness outside the window. Smouldering and dormant.

He sighed heavily, recognising Vieve's resentment as his own, "Nothing." He surrendered himself without any happiness to keeping the strumpet for the night.

The next day, he left the woman in his room. She knew she would not see him in the morning and that she would be appropriately compensated. That was the arrangement. He wandered his Villa aimlessly for a while, expecting ghostly company like usual.

Genevieve didn't reappear to him. The halls echoed his singular footsteps. Her absence was sadly noted.