Ravencliffe (Blythewood series), Page 3

  When I’d gotten home I’d looked at my back in the mirror and seen two long rusty gashes running down my shoulder blades. At least they’d stopped bleeding, and the wings had retreated back under the skin. I’d washed away the dried blood and feathers, bound myself into a new tightly laced corset, and put on a dressing gown before Betsy came into the room to help me get ready, but I didn’t know how long I could keep the wings from bursting out. What if they erupted right in the middle of Georgiana’s ball?

  “Ow!” I cried, the prick of a hairpin bringing me back into the moment.

  “I’m sorry, miss, but your hair’s frightful short and Mrs. Hall was particular she didn’t want you going to the ball looking like a bald goshawk chick.”

  I pivoted around on the swiveling vanity stool to face Betsy.

  “Did she really say I looked like a bald goshawk?” I asked.

  Betsy turned crimson. “No, miss! Just that she didn’t want you to look . . . what with your poor hair being burned away in the fire . . . not that it hasn’t come back in wonderful . . . and it’s a lovely color!” Betsy ended confusedly. I turned back to the mirror.

  It was a lovely color. I was lucky that it had come back at all. Two months ago I’d defeated the tenebrae at Blythewood by setting them on fire—and myself in the process. When my hair grew back, it was a brighter shade of red than it had been before. Gillie, Blythewood’s caretaker and falconer, had once told me that when a falcon was fledging, its feathers grew faster than normal. My hair had been swiftly growing into fat, glossy ringlets, but it still barely reached my shoulders. I liked how it framed my face, making my green eyes look bigger, and how light my head felt—as if I could fly. But fashionable society demanded a more formal coiffure, and so my grandmother had, without my knowledge or consent, purchased an elaborate hairpiece that sat in Betsy’s hands now, looking like Mrs. Rutherford’s pet Pomeranian.

  “Why don’t we save ourselves a lot of trouble and leave it off?” I suggested to the flustered Betsy. “No one will be looking at me with Georgiana strutting about.”

  “I did hear Miss Georgiana’s wearing an entire peacock in her headdress, just like that French queen who lost her head!”

  “Yes, she’s dressing up as Marie Antoinette, and all of us Blythewood girls are supposed to be going as her ladies-in- waiting.”

  We both turned toward the enormous cerise confection of silk, chiffon, lace, and ruffles hanging from the post of my bed. It looked as if it could walk on its own—and I wished it would. Perhaps there was a spell that could animate it and I could send it to the dance in my stead. All I’d have to do was give it instructions to curtsy and utter polite platitudes—Of course I’m thrilled to be one of Georgiana’s ladies-in-waiting! The cucumber sandwiches are simply divine! I’d be honored to have this dance with you. . . . It would probably do it all better than I could, despite the hours of dancing lessons my grandmother had paid for. I was so wrapped up in the idea of sending an automaton in my place that I didn’t hear my grandmother’s secretary come in.

  “Land’s sake! Is that the dress? It looks like someone murdered a raspberry trifle.” Agnes placed a large box down on the bed and stood, hands on slim hips, staring at the hideous dress. “Caroline Janeway said the instructions from the Montmorencys were a bit over the top, but this . . .”

  She cocked her head. In her slim blue serge dress and neat plumed hat she looked like a wading bird listening for fish. Everything about Agnes Moorhen was neat and ordered. Even her freckles adhered to a strict mathematical formula as precise as the social calendar and accounts she kept for my grandmother. Of course she would hate the dress.

  “This,” she concluded with a decisive shake of her plumed hat, “is a riot of ruffles . . .”

  Betsy tittered.

  “. . . a flummox of foorfaraw. . .”

  Betsey snorted and covered her face in her apron.

  “. . . a lunacy of lace!”

  “You’re going to give Betsy an apoplexy,” I said, stifling my own laughter. It wasn’t as funny if you were the one who had to wear the damnable thing.

  “Betsy,” Agnes said solemnly, “go right down to the drawing room and remove the late Mr. Hall’s dueling pistols from above the mantel. Someone must shoot this dress and put it out of its misery.”

  Betsy fled the room, shrieking like a banshee.

  “You really shouldn’t tease her,” I scolded Agnes. “If she does pick up one of those pistols she might shoot herself.”

  “They haven’t been loaded since Throckmorton Hall used them to hold off an invading army of rebel trolls at the battle of Antietam,” Agnes said. “And it would take more than them to do away with this monstrosity.”

  At the word monstrosity I broke out in a cold sweat. Agnes had always been kind to me. But if I was discovered as a half-breed Darkling and sent away in shame from my grandmother’s house and Blythewood, I’d never see Agnes again—and I wasn’t sure she’d even want me to. I’d be an outcast to everyone I loved—maybe even Raven. For all I knew the Darklings would reject me because I was half-human. Perhaps that was why Raven had stayed away from me all summer. I was a monster to humans and Darklings alike.

  “What’s the matter, Ava?” Agnes asked, narrowing her eyes at me. “You don’t look well. Has Betsy laced your corset too tightly?” She laid her hand lightly on my back, but it felt like a brand burning through the silk of my dressing gown. I flinched away from her touch. Her eyes widened in surprise.

  “Did you hurt yourself today chasing that creature?”

  “She’s not a creature!” I cried. “She’s a person with thoughts and feelings.”

  “Strictly speaking she doesn’t have her own thoughts and feelings, only those of the host she takes over, but I think I understand why you feel such sympathy for a creature of Faerie. It’s that Darkling boy you met last year, isn’t it? That Raven fellow. You think that if he’s good, then all the fairies—”

  “He’s not a fairy!” I sulked, sorry now that I’d ever told Agnes about him. “The Darklings are different. They bridge the gap between humans and fairies. It’s all explained in the book my mother was looking for—A Darkness of Angels.”

  “You mean the book that poor Mr. Farnsworth died trying to save?”

  I was immediately sorry that I’d brought it up. Last winter I’d written to Mr. Herbert Farnsworth, the librarian of Hawthorn, Blythewood’s brother school in Scotland, asking about the ancient book A Darkness of Angels. Raven had told me that it would prove the Darklings’ innocence, and that it also contained the secret to destroying the tenebrae, the embodiment of pure evil. Mr. Farnsworth had written back to tell me he was sailing to America with the book. He embarked on the same boat that my grandmother and Agnes—and Helen’s parents—were taking back from England: the ill-fated Titanic.

  There’d been another passenger on the voyage—Judicus van Drood. Agnes and Mr. Farnsworth had seen him on the deck when the ship ran into the fatal iceberg, and Mr. Farnsworth had used the book to keep van Drood on the sinking ship. As much as Agnes grieved for Mr. Farnsworth, we’d both hoped that van Drood had perished, too.

  Now, I wasn’t so sure. I told Agnes about the changeling morphing into the likeness of van Drood and showed her the picture of Ruth and the shadow man. I thought she’d be horrified, but instead a glimmer of hope sparked in her eyes.

  “If van Drood survived, perhaps Mr. Farnsworth did, too!”

  “Maybe he did,” I said, thinking it was rather unlikely. If he had survived, why hadn’t he contacted us?

  “I’ll check again with the Seamen’s Friend Society,” she said enthusiastically, and then added, “I’m sorry I called your friend Raven a fairy. I’m sure if Mr. Farnsworth risked his life for that book, there must be something valuable in it, and real proof that the Darklings aren’t evil. Perhaps you could ask Raven to help look for him.”

  �
��I would, but I haven’t heard from him since the end of school. We had a . . . disagreement. I’m afraid I may have driven him away for good.”

  Agnes sighed. “Perhaps that would be for the best.” Seeing my stricken look, she gestured to the large box she’d laid on the bed. “Why don’t you open the box? There seems to be a corsage of violets on top.”

  I was up and across the room as if my wings had sprung loose. So many people grew violets in Rhinebeck that it was known as the violet capitol of the world. There was no reason to assume they came from Violet House, where Miss Sharp’s aunts lived. And certainly no reason to think they came from Raven, who lived there under the disguise of Raymond Corbin, clockmaker’s apprentice. But still . . .

  I untied the bouquet and lifted the flowers to my nose, inhaling their fragrance. Memories of a wooded grove, a night I’d spent in Raven’s tree house hidden in the highest boughs, came flooding back to me, along with a touch of wings that had calmed me, a mouth that had tasted of violets . . . no, the kiss had come later. But it was all mixed up now with the scent of violets. Could Raven have sent them?

  “Are you going to open the box?” Agnes asked with amusement. “I think there’s more than flowers in a box that big.”

  The box sprang open as if something alive had been waiting to get out . . . something with feathers.

  I stepped back, catching my breath, as delicate, sheer wings unfolded from the box.

  “Costume wings,” Agnes said, lifting them from the box. “And look—there’s a dress to go with them.”

  I’d never heard practical Agnes utter the word dress with such longing in her voice. Her freckled hands gingerly lifted the gown out of its nest of lavender tissue paper. It seemed to catch a breeze as it rose, billowing into the shape of an invisible girl. A girl on fire. The dress was the color of molten gold, embroidered with tiny rubies and blood-red feathers. “Oh!” Agnes said. “It’s quite . . . quite . . .”

  “Divine,” I finished for her, thinking that a girl wouldn’t need wings to feel like she was flying in such a dress.

  “Try it on,” Agnes said with a mischievous grin.

  I shucked off my dressing gown and held up my arms for Agnes to slip the dress over my head. It felt like a waterfall spilling down my bare skin. I tingled from head to toe as the cloth skimmed past my breasts, flared over my hips, and swirled around my ankles like a cat. I turned to look in the mirror, the satin moving with me like a second skin, and thought someone else had taken my place. A changeling, perhaps, who had assumed my features and figure but had set them on fire.

  The bodice was fitted with tiny pleats and a beaded design at the neckline that framed my throat with a rim of rubies that made my skin whiter, my eyes greener, and my hair an even more vibrant red. The overskirt flared out into a petaled design that swished as I moved. The damask red underskirt clung to my ankles. I looked like some kind of exotic bird rising from the flames.

  “Like a phoenix,” Agnes said, fixing the gold and ruby wings to my back and then a matching feathered crown to my head. “It’s the perfect costume for you to wear tonight.”

  “But all the Blythewood girls are supposed to go as Marie Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting,” I said, glaring at the monstrosity hanging from the bedpost.

  “Too bad your dress was never delivered from Miss Janeway’s,” Agnes replied, handing me a pair of crimson satin gloves. “And this came instead. There must have been a mix-up.”

  She picked up a folded card nestled amidst the tissue paper. “Hm . . .” Agnes said, frowning. “Caroline writes that the instructions and payment for the dress were sent to her and that she was to have it made to your measurements with a note that said that it was from—”

  “Yes! Who’s it from?”

  “It says, ‘From a secret admirer.’”

  4

  THE MONTMORENCY MANSION was only two blocks north of my grandmother’s house, and I could have easily walked. Indeed, I would have gotten there more quickly on foot than trapped in the traffic making its laborious progress up Madison Avenue. But my grandmother had scoffed at the idea when I’d come into the parlor to say goodnight, and I was afraid a prolonged argument would draw more attention to my dress, which she was already studying skeptically through the lenses of her lorgnette.

  “I thought the theme was the court of Marie Antoinette.”

  I considered claiming, as Agnes had suggested, that Caroline Janeway had sent the wrong costume, but I didn’t like the idea of getting Miss Janeway in trouble, and I certainly didn’t want to say anything about the note that had come with it. Every time I thought about it my knees went weak. A secret admirer. Who could it be but Raven?

  “I like this dress better,” I said, lifting my chin defiantly, although part of me wanted to cringe like the ebony Moors crouching on either side of her chair. I sometimes fancied that they—along with all the statuary, stuffed birds, antimacassars, and aspidistras that cluttered the Victorian-style parlor—had been frozen by my grandmother’s Medusa stare.

  “Mmmph,” she finally uttered, tapping her cane on the marble floor. “Wise girl. I told Albertine Montmorency that wearing Marie Antoinette’s necklace to her own ball fifteen years ago didn’t bring any luck to Cornelia Bradley-Martin, not to mention what it did for Marie Antoinette. But are you sure this dress is not a bit . . . revealing?”

  “It’s quite similar to the dresses all of Paris wore after Monsieur Poiret’s costume ball last year,” Agnes piped up, having crept silently into the room. “And doesn’t Ava look lovely in it?”

  “Of course she looks lovely in it!” my grandmother barked. “We Hall women have always had good figures. Go and have a good time.” She waved her lorgnette at me. “Show all those Montmorencys and Rutherfords what we Halls are made of.”

  I kissed her cool cheek and hurried out before she could change her mind—or before I could. But now I was stuck sitting in a stifling-hot motorcar as Babson the chauffeur jockeyed for position in front of the Montmorency mansion. Staring up at the granite façade, I felt a bit as Marie Antoinette must have felt approaching the Bastille. I could see all my classmates emerging from their carriages and motorcars in frothy explosions of lace and ruffles. There was Wallis Rutherford in a peaches-and-cream pouf that looked like a blancmange. Her hair was piled high on top of her head and powdered white. She was followed by Alfreda Driscoll in a chartreuse confection that quivered like lime aspic in the glare of the photographers’ magnesium flash lamps.

  But as hideous as the dresses had seemed to me, I saw now what they really were—protective armor. Corset, bustle, and wire hoops sheathed in layers of lace and taffeta and damask formed a carapace that enclosed the girl beneath the costume. These girls—my Blythewood classmates—were clothed in their uniformity, protected by their families’ wealth and position. I, on the other hand, was about to stand nearly naked and exposed at the foot of this granite altar of high society.

  “Perhaps if we can’t get in we should just turn around and go home, Mr. Babson.”

  “Not a chance, miss,” Babson replied, nosing the Rolls into a narrow gap between a Benson and a horse-drawn phaeton. “You’re worth ten of them overdressed poodles. I’ve watched you make your way through streets on the Lower East Side what would make a stevedore quake, Miss Ava, and seen you face down gangs of strikebreakers at them meetings you go to at the Cooper Union. You hold your head up and do us proud.”

  I met Babson’s eyes in the rearview mirror and smiled. Having a chauffeur drive me to the settlement house and union meetings had been the one condition my grandmother had demanded to allow me to do “social” work. It had been embarrassing to be chauffeured around poor neighborhoods, and I had imagined it had embarrassed Thomas Babson to deliver me to such destinations. I’d had no idea he thought well of the work I was doing. It gave me courage.

  “Thank you, Mr. Babson,” I said. “I think I can now.”
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  “That’s all right then, miss,” he nodded curtly. “Because here we are. Sit tight till I come around to get the door for you and I’ll give you my arm while you make your grand entrance.”

  I took a deep breath to steady myself as Babson got out. This is silly, I told myself. You’ve faced down goblins and ice giants. What’s a handful of reporters and curious onlookers?

  A flash like lightning greeted my first step on the pavement, followed by a thunderous roar. Behind the flash of the magnesium lamps and the smoke they made was a crowd of spectators pressing against a line of policemen. There were mostly girls in the crowd—young girls like me, in shirtwaists and skirts, shopgirls and factory girls come to see the society debutantes in their fancy dresses. I remembered how Tillie always strained to make out the hats worn by the factory owner’s daughters. If Tillie were alive, she’d be in this crowd.

  “Don’t she look a dream!” I heard one cry. “Like something out of a fairy story.”

  If only she knew.

  “Miss Hall,” a voice beside me said, “you’re wearing a most unusual costume. Could you tell the readers of The World why you’re not dressed like the other young ladies tonight?”

  I turned to the reporter, hearing my grandmother’s voice in my head—a woman’s name should only appear in the paper three times: when she’s born, when she marries, and when she dies. I could murmur some inanity about liking feathers or a mix-up at the dressmaker’s, but when I looked at the crowd of young women behind the police line I was reminded of the women who had struck last year for better working conditions, and of the girls who had died in the fire at the Triangle Waist factory. I knew from my work at the settlement house and the union meetings I attended that many were trying to improve working conditions, but I also knew that there were plenty of girls who labored in overcrowded factories or were forced into working at the bordellos. Or who disappeared from the crowded city streets like Ruth Blum, never to be seen again, because no one cared what became of them.