Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) (25 page)

She stuttered like a wind-up toy that had been wound too tight, her head tilting from side to side, a puzzled look in her eyes.

“That last one seemed to have knocked something loose,” Mr. Bellows said. “Try it again.”

Miss Corey hummed the previous tune. I listened to it carefully, as did Miss Sharp, her blue eyes focused on Miss Corey’s face growing suddenly clear.

“Lillian!” she cried. “You’re back! . . . What . . . ?” She looked down at the bouquet in her lap and fingered the satin of her dress. “Why am I dressed like this? What nonsense have I been spouting?”

“It’s all right, Vionetta, you were mesmerized.”

“But I thought I was really going to be married . . . to some stranger! It didn’t even matter to whom.”

“It was the spell,” Miss Corey said more firmly. “Don’t upset yourself.”

“But how could I have even
thought
such a thing”—she leaned forward and took Miss Corey’s hand—“when the only person I ever want to be with is you?”

Miss Corey turned pink and began to stammer her friend’s name, but Miss Sharp stopped her mouth with a kiss. Which, after a moment, Miss Corey returned.

I turned away to find Mr. Bellows and Nathan gaping at the two women. “Let’s memorize that tune to make sure we have it right,” I suggested. “I’ve got it right here on my repeater.”

“Oh . . . y-yes,” Mr. Bellows stuttered.

I peeked back to steal a glance at Miss Corey and Miss Sharp, holding hands and beaming at each other.

“Right,” I said, turning to Nathan and Mr. Bellows with a broad smile of my own. “Let’s get to work.”

27

OUR TEACHERS WANTED
to go straight to the bell tower, but Nathan insisted on finding Helen and the rest of the girls first.

“I’m not leaving my friends alone with those . . . bounders,” he said.

Miss Sharp suggested that Nathan and I go to the ballroom while they went to the bell tower. “We’ll de-mesmerize whomever we find along the way until we have enough to ring the bells. But you two stay together. I was converted in an instant. Once you’ve cured Helen you can break off into pairs, but always make sure you work with a partner and instruct whomever you cure to do the same.”

We looked into the Great Hall, which was full of arriving guests. Long tables were set with steaming punch bowls fragrant with liquor and spice and silver trays loaded with roasts and mincemeat pies. But despite the good smells of food, the room was full of the smoky fug from the men’s cigars. The seven bell maker’s daughters looked down from their stained-glass windows with sadness and shock. But they didn’t look as angry as Nathan.

“How dare those men come into Blythewood with evil intent toward our girls? The bells ought to be pealing out at their presence!”

Why
weren’t
the bells ringing? I wondered as we went up the narrow back servants’ stairs, Nathan following me so closely I could feel his breath on the back of my neck.

“I’m not going to turn into a monster and fly away,” I hissed at him when he trod on my feet.

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he said. “Raven said you might still be weak from your . . . sickness. He said to stick close to you.”

I was about to snap back that I was perfectly fine, but then, looking at him more closely, I saw that he wasn’t. In the dim light of a flickering wall sconce his skin was a sickly yellow and his hair a dead gray, and his eyes glittered like a fever patient’s. The shadows lurking in Nathan’s soul were rising to the surface, flushed out by the presence of the visitors. That’s why Raven had told him to stay near me—for his protection, not mine.

“Okay,” I said, squeezing Nathan’s hand. “I’ll stay close.” Before I could finish, we both heard something growl at the top of the stairs. Nathan squeezed past me. I followed close on his heels to find a snarling, razor-fanged, green-skinned imp. Nathan drew out his dagger, and the creature lifted its shaggy dark head and glared out of acid-green eyes.

“No, wait,” I cried, “it’s Gillie!”

Nathan stared at me with disbelief, but I crouched down and held out my hand, speaking in the firm voice Gillie had taught me to use with the hawks. “It’s all right, Ghillie Dhu, we’re not here to steal your girls, but to help them.”

The creature growled low in its throat, but I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes, which changed now from the acid green of pond scum to the soft green of moss. He stood up, and resumed a more human cast to his features.

“Hell’s Bells, it is Gillie!” Nathan swore. “What did they do to him?”

“No time to explain,” I said. I suspected that the threat to the Blythewood girls had triggered a defensive reaction that had turned the peaceful Gillie into a snarling monster. “Are you okay now, Gillie?”

The caretaker nodded and grunted. “Aye, lass. I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s the guests,” Nathan said. “The board members and the investors. We think van Drood is controlling them.”

Gillie muttered something in Scots that I suspected was a string of curses, finishing in English. “I should never have let them in, but the Dame insisted. But she’s no’ herself, is she?”

“No, Gillie,” I said. “The girls are all under a spell. We can break it, we think. Can you guard the front door for us and make sure no one tries to take the girls away?”

“Aye,” he growled. “Those bastards will take my girls o’er my dead body!” He lurched away down the hall toward the front stairs. I watched him go worriedly, hoping that focusing on a mission would keep him from transforming back into a Ghillie Dhu.

Just then three girls in matching doll costumes flitted out of the dressing room, humming the winter polka from
Die Puppenfee
, and headed toward the ballroom. The sound of hearty male voices was rising up from the stairs along with that awful stench of smoke. The orchestra was tuning up. The dance was about to begin. I took a deep breath and, repeater in hand, dove into the dressing room.

For a moment it called to mind the Triangle factory at closing hour on the day of the fire: girls in rows chattering together, running back and forth in a frenzy. Instead of smoke the air was full of tulle swathes billowing out from the girls’ costumes as they spun around and around. Just watching them made me dizzy. I found myself humming the polka . . .

I pressed the repeater to my ear and looked around for Daisy and Helen. Fortunately they were standing together comparing their costumes. Helen was wearing a shade of lavender I knew she wouldn’t be caught dead in. I marched over to them and grabbed them each by their arms and started pulling them toward the door. They both squawked, but I told them we were going to the ballroom because it was time for their dance. That seemed to satisfy them both so well they began dancing as we left the room. I handed Helen over to Nathan and waltzed with Daisy around a corner and whisked her into an alcove. I held up the repeater and played the tune.

“That’s not my part,” Daisy said, frowning.

“It’s a new piece that Herr Hofmeister wants you to learn,” I said. “You must concentrate, Daisy.” I played it again for her. She tilted her head back and forth and began to shake. Terrified that I’d somehow broken Daisy, I screamed for Nathan. He came running with Helen.

“It’s all right,” Helen cried, putting her arm around Daisy. “This happened to me, too. In my case I think it was the shock of finding myself in
mauve
. Daisy is no doubt just realizing—”

“I broke off my engagement with Mr. Appleby!” she wailed, pulling a lace handkerchief from her bodice.

Helen straightened her back, took Daisy by the shoulders, and looked her in the eye. “I will personally explain everything to Mr. Appleby and you
will
marry him if that’s what you want, and Ava and I will be your bridesmaids in whatever dreadful dresses you choose.”

Daisy flung her arms around Helen and pulled me into their embrace. “I was so afraid to tell you both because Helen was so angry at the other girls getting engaged and Ava—well, I know you might never get married because you love a Darkling.”

That
was why she’d kept her engagement from me?

“Ahem.” Nathan cleared his throat. “Far be it from me to interrupt your wedding planning, but we have a school full of girls to de-mesmerize.”

“Right,” Helen said in a businesslike way while wiping a tear from her eye. Daisy handed Helen her own handkerchief, which Helen quickly passed to me, as if I were the one in need of it. “Let’s memorize this tune,” she said to Daisy.

Nathan and I left Helen and Daisy practicing the de- mesmerism tune and headed back to the dressing room. As we rounded the corner, though, we ran into Mrs. Calendar waltzing around the landing, humming the Chinese mazurka from
Die Puppenfee
. “Ah, there you are! Why aren’t you children dancing? You, Nathan Beckwith, you’ve always been a lazy, ne’er-do-well. If you don’t apply yourself you’ll break your mother’s heart.”

As Mrs. Calendar berated Nathan I saw the shadows rising in his eyes. I grabbed hold of the Latin teacher and held the repeater up in front of her face. At first it had no effect. Years of memorizing Latin declensions and conjugations had given her a mind like a steel trap. Once I got through to her, though, she sprang into action. “We must rescue Dame Beckwith first. She’s in the ballroom.”

As we approached the ballroom, a flock of girls in pink gauze and tulle flitted past us, twittering like sparrows. Nathan tried to grab the last two in the troop, but they leaped nimbly out of his grasp and joined their cohorts. We’d only managed to de-mesmerize a handful of girls, whom Daisy was trying to corral back into the dressing room. The rest of the girls were streaming into the ballroom. We were caught up in the flow. The ballroom seemed to be spinning like the Hellgate, with colorful bits of flotsam and jetsam caught inside it. I pulled Mrs. Calendar off to the side so I could get my bearings.

The whirlpool was made of dancing couples spinning around the polished marble floor, the girls’ dresses bright as tropical fish. The orchestra was playing on the balcony, which was swathed with evergreen boughs. The walls had been draped in heavy garlands of evergreen and sprinkled with some white dust to look like snow. In the corners of the room the pine boughs had been arched over sleighs, their benches upholstered in red velvet and dripping with furs. Here the board members and the older women of the Order sat, the women sipping cider, the men puffing their cigars, the smoke from which hung in the air over the dancing couples.

I looked again at the dance floor. The girls’ partners were all young men, handsomely attired in black evening coats and smart red ascots, sprigs of holly pinned to their lapels. They were moving so fast, though, that I couldn’t make out the men’s faces. They all blurred into one featureless face . . .

I tottered on my feet and Mrs. Calendar—frail little Mrs. Calendar—righted me with a firm shake.

“Get ahold of yourself, girl!” she snapped. “Now’s not the time to swoon. There’s Dame Beckwith.”

As we made our way around the edges of the ballroom I kept my eyes on Mrs. Calendar’s ramrod-straight back and grasped my repeater in my hand. When I tried playing it, though, it repeated the waltz that the orchestra was playing, so I recited Latin declensions and kept my eyes off the dance floor, not wanting to look at those blank faces.

I tripped over the leg of a man sitting in one of the sleighs. He grabbed my arm and I felt his whiskers brush my face and smelled the reek of tobacco on his breath. “Watch yourself, girl.”

I stared at the old man. His face was fat and red, rimmed with white muttonchops. His eyes were clouded over by cataracts. He looked like someone’s harmless old grandfather, but then I saw, swimming beneath his cataracts, smoke-gray shadows like the
tenebrae
I’d glimpsed beneath the ice.

“Leave her alone, Winthrop Clay,” Mrs. Calendar said, pulling me away. “Everyone knows you drove your own wife into the madhouse.”

“You know these men?” I whispered as we left Winthrop Clay puffing on his cigar, eyes vacant as his empty punch glass.

“I grew up with most of them. Played croquet with Winty Clay in Newport. Thought he was sweet on me.” She smiled up at me, her wizened old face looking for a moment youthful. “But the Order had other ideas for us. Married me off to a man twice my age.”

“That’s awful!” I said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “It was. When he died I wasn’t allowed to remarry because I’d had no children.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, not sure what else to say.

“I was too, for a while, but then I was allowed to go back to my studies and teach. I’ve come to think of you girls as my children. As for this lot,” she snorted, “look at Winty now. His wife, Elvira, wound up in the Hudson River State Hospital for the Insane down in Poughkeepsie. And look at Maunsell Livermore.” She pointed to a cadaverous gentleman lurking behind the refreshment table. “Lost all his money in the crash of ninety-three and has been knocking around his old mansion like a ghost ever since. In fact, the men of the Order have been going downhill since the crash. No wonder they want to marry you all off. They need new money to shore up the endowment.”

I followed Mrs. Calendar to the refreshment table, where Dame Beckwith was chatting with Maunsell Livermore and a portly gentleman whose enormous girth was barely restrained by a scarlet cummerbund.

“. . . all of good stock,” Scarlet Cummerbund was saying as we drew up to them. “Young men of good families—wealthy families . . . er, p’haps not
old
families like us, if you take my meaning.”

“No, not
old
families,” Maunsell Livermore drawled. “But wealthy ones. And that’s what we need right now.”

“Infusion of new blood, don’t you know,” Scarlet Cummerbund puffed, smoke billowing out of his fat red lips.

“Infusion of new money,” Livermore echoed. “Just the ticket. Never mind your fancy breeding charts. What the Order needs now are financial resources.”

“I suppose so,” Dame Beckwith said uncertainly, tucking a strand of silver hair behind her ear—I don’t think I’d ever seen a single strand come loose before. “But where did you say you found these young gentlemen?”

“Found
us
,” Scarlet Cummerbund said, bellowing forth more smoke . . . but when had he taken another puff of his cigar? “Enterprising lads. They want to raise their stock by marrying into the old families. Sound reasoning, I say.”

“The soundest,” Livermore purred, smoke dribbling down his chin. “Good investment, what?”

“I suppose so,” Dame Beckwith said, blinking in the smoke. “Oh, here’s Mrs. Calendar. You know her, of course.”

Both men blinked at the Latin teacher and then simultaneously said, “Junessa Calendar,” and bowed.

“And here’s Miss Avaline Hall, one of our brightest students and from a very old family indeed.”