@mischiefandnightmares lives in a kind of hieroglyphic world
"Are you enjoying New York, Mr. Sharpe?" May asked with one of her perfectly rehearsed and practiced smiles that looked so convincingly guileless no one in New York society thought it otherwise.
There had been talk since the Sharpes' arrival, Dollar Princesses lined up and ready to be both buyer and merchandise. Though much admired by the New York set May Welland was neither on the auction block nor among the prospective buyers.
She privately prided herself on possessing a seemingly good-natured but unknowable serenity. It allowed her to view New York society from the same safe distance a siren might view the sailors who traveled along the water's surface. Descended as they were from Puritans and those overly proud of their European forefathers, New York high society lacked any curiosity about what lay beneath the Welland girl's still but deep waters.
And like the siren who was part animal May thought of herself as immensely pragmatic. Her cousin, whom her family always referred to as 'poor Ellen Olenska', had made a notoriously bad match with a Russian count a mistake May was determined not to repeat.
Yet like all young people, she was not always conscious of the waters in which she so gracefully moved. Had she truly been as mercenary as she saw herself she'd have refrained from asking her question. Yet she had asked it because the Englishman and Baronet quietly fascinated her. Not because of his title which as an American she quietly found ostentatious but because his suit was at least a decade old, his shoes worn, and whereas most gentlemen of Noble standing prided themselves on their lack of profession Thomas Sharpe struck her as having a strange restlessness. The lofty ambitions of a bird trapped in a cage but agonized by a constant view of the sky.