Lucrezia Magazine

Peach-tinted light poured down the cream-colored walls of Lady Deloria’s new drawing room, filling the sunlit space with a delightful atmosphere unrivaled by any parlor in the parish of Vicksburg. Lady Deloria had reached a point in her esteemed life where she had neither the time nor the patience for anything less than sheer domestic magnificence. The drawing room was octagonal in shape, with slanted walls that reached a dramatic apex nearly twenty feet above Lady Deloria’s coifed auburn curls, forming a smaller octagon of paned glass on the ceiling. The tinted glass allowed light to stream downwards upon the Diva of the household like a heavenly spotlight in a grand opera house. Rainbow prisms pirouetted along the rims of a set of fine crystal decanters, and a vase of long-stemmed lavender blossoms brushed softly against one another, teased into their wispy dance by a gentle zephyr floating in from a southern-facing window. Nine pale orange apricots were stacked in an inviting pyramid upon an engraved silver tray, and their sweet essence mingled coquettishly with the heady scent of lavender. A pot of fine Indian Ceylon tea stood brewing, and this third aromatic element elevated each inhalation within the room from that of worldly intoxication to that of the Divine breath itself.