Blythewood (33 page)

MY SECOND AFTERNOON tea at Violet House was a stifled affair compared to the first one. I could barely string two
words together after the shock of finding Raven in the Misses
Sharps’ conservatory dressed as an ordinary mortal—and a
rather fussy one at that. He even had on spats and braces! I wondered if the latter might have something to do with keeping his
wings in place. I found myself peering at his back every time he
leaned over to pour out the tea.

Thankfully, the Sharp sisters attributed my muteness and
jumpiness to the shock I’d had. It was soon clear to me that they
had no idea that their boarder was a Darkling—and that they
were entirely enamored of him.

“Imagine our luck!” Hattie enthused, accepting a cup of tea
from Raven, “to find such a suitable boarder. Mr. Corbin is an
apprentice clockmaker. He’s helping Taddie fix all of Father’s
clocks.”

“Raymond says I have a sharp eye for working with mechanical things,” Taddie said with an adoring look at Raven.
“Raymond?” I repeated, lifting an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Raven said, “but all my friends call me Ray. If it isn’t
too impertinent, I’d be happy if you did, too, Miss Hall. Even
though we’ve just met I feel as if we’ve known each other for
ages.”
I saw the aunts exchange pleased smiles. “Oh, we’re so glad
you’re getting on,” Aunt Emmy said. “I had a feeling”—she
winked at me—“that you would. Mr. Corbin . . .
Ray
,” she corrected herself after a mock stern look from Raven, “is interested
in all the things you are, Ava—books, poetry, bird-watching—
why, he’s even made a study of bells!”
“You’re too kind, Miss Emmaline. My study of bells is only
a component of my interest in clocks. After all, what good’s a
clock that doesn’t chime the—”
As if on cue, all the clocks in the house began to chime the
half hour. They each played a different tune, but those tunes
somehow added to each other to create a lovely symphony,
just as Mr. Sharp must have originally planned. The two sisters listened with their hands clasped and eyes closed. When
the chiming ended, Miss Emmaline wiped a tear from her eye.
“We haven’t heard them all chime together like that since Father died. We are so very grateful, Mr. . . . Raymond.”
“And I am so grateful for the hospitality all three of you
have shown me,” Raven said, looking down at his teacup. “It
means so much to me to be made to feel so . . . at home.” He
looked up and I saw a genuine look of gratitude on his face.
“But,” he said, getting to his feet, “I’m afraid I must go. I
have to stop by a house on the River Road to attend to a clock
that needs fixing. Perhaps if Miss Hall is ready to go back to
school I might accompany her.”
“Oh yes, that would be best,” Miss Emmy said. “Ava met a
most disagreeable man at the post office. We wouldn’t want her

to encounter him again. But first she must come in the . . . er . . .
library with me for that . . . er . . . book I promised to send back
to Vionetta.” She turned to me and screwed up one eye in such
a peculiar fashion I thought she must have something stuck in
it, but then I realized she was winking at me.

“Oh yes, the book! Miss Sharp will be disappointed if I
forget it!”
As I got up to follow Miss Emmy into the library, Raven
bowed formally and asked Miss Emmy if she needed any help
retrieving the book. “I’m very good at getting into high places,”
he added mischievously.
“Oh no, no!” Miss Emmy chirped, her hands fluttering like
agitated birds. “You wait here. We’ll only be a moment.”
As soon as we were in the library—a snug octagonal room
with more violet pots, antique clocks, and figurines than
books—Miss Emmy confessed there was no book. “It was a
ruse I made up to get a moment alone with you. I feel quite awful tricking that sweet young man.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t have done it unless it was important.
Did you have something that will help me focus the bells?” I
looked around the bookshelves, wondering if
A Darkness of Angels
could possibly be here amongst the aspidistras and china
shepherdesses. But instead of a book, Miss Emmy produced a
pocket watch from her pocket.
“My father made this for me,” she said, cradling it in her
plump palm. Its gold case was etched with a design surrounding a small enamel watch face. At the top of the watch face were
two bells. Two figures flanked the bells—a woman and a man
with wings. They were each holding a small hammer poised
above the bells. When Emmaline pressed the stem at the top
of the watch, the two figures struck the bells, producing a faint,
tinkling tune. A familiar tune. It was the same tune that the
Blythewood bells rang when I first heard them.
“It’s an automaton repeater,” Emmaline said. “My father
programmed it to play certain protective tunes and also to repeat whatever tune was in my head so that I could learn how to
make the bells in my head ring to my command.”
“And have you learned how to do that?” I asked.
Miss Emmy smiled. “I’ve learned to slow the bass bell—the
one that signals danger—to calm myself and others. It works
wonders with Taddie when he gets agitated. But I’ve never been
able to hear more than one other bell. Papa said there was a
book somewhere that explained how.”
“
A Darkness of Angels
?”
“Yes, that was the one. He looked for it everywhere but
never found it.”
“I may have found a copy.” I told her about Mr. Farnsworth.
“Oh, Papa was good friends with Mr. Farnsworth. They
looked together for the book. Perhaps he has found it. But in
the meantime you hold on to this.” She pressed the watch into
my hand.
“But it was from your father!” I cried. “I couldn’t.”
“He would want you to have it.”
“But don’t you need it?”
She shook her head, her curls trembling. “Oh no, I have that
tune memorized and all the clocks in the house are here to remind me now that Raymond has fixed them.” She wiped a tear
from her eye. “You need it more than I do.” She squeezed my
hand closed around the smooth gold watch. I could feel it ticking, like the beat of a bird’s heart.
“Thank you,” I told Miss Emmy. “I promise to take good
care of it.”
“Just take good care of yourself . . . oh, and here . . .” She
plucked a book off the shelf. It was a guide for the cultivation
of violets.
“What’s this for?”
“Why, it’s our alibi!” she said, attempting another wink.
“So Mr. Corbin doesn’t think we lied to him.”
“How clever of you,” I said, smiling at the thought of Miss
Emmy thinking she was fooling Raven. She turned to leave,
but I thought of one other question.
“You said you learned to summon one other bell. Which
one?”
“Oh, Merope’s bell,” she replied, blushing. “But I didn’t
summon
it. It summoned me.” Lowering her voice, she whispered, “It’s the one that rings when you fall in love.”

Raven escorted me down Livingston Street, my arm tucked
firmly under his elbow, as if he were my suitor walking me
home from the Sunday church picnic, smiling and tipping his
hat at the good townspeople of Rhinebeck. My heart fluttered
in my chest like a trapped bird. What if Raven’s wings suddenly
burst free of his tweed jacket? What would those good townspeople think of me then?

“Play a part so . . .
convincingly
. You’ve got the Sharps completely bamboozled.”
He laughed. “They’re sweet, trusting people. Why shouldn’t
they believe I am what I say I am?”
“But Emmaline is a chime child. Shouldn’t she  .  .  .
sense
there’s something wrong with you?”
His arm muscles tensed under my hand. “
Wrong?
” he
echoed, an edge of anger in his voice.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant
different
.”
“A chime child senses danger. If I meant the Sharps any
harm—which I don’t—Emmy would sense it. What about you?
What do
you
feel with me now?”
Lightheaded? Giddy? Airborne?
All occurred to me as possible answers, but instead I replied primly, “Confused. I mean,”
I added when he cocked one eyebrow at me, “I don’t understand
what you’re doing at the Sharps pretending to be a clockmaker’s apprentice.”
“I
am
a clockmaker’s apprentice,” he snapped. “I’ve signed
papers with Mr. Humphreys for a year’s apprenticeship after I
demonstrated my expertise. I’ve been practicing, you see, for
some time. I like fiddling with clocks and I’m good at it. So why
shouldn’t I have a job like anyone else? Do you think I want to
live in a tree the rest of my life?”
I stared at him, open-mouthed. We’d reached the corner of
Main Street and had to pause to let a streetcar go by. Raven was
staring at the traffic as though he’d like to vault over it. “But
you’re a . . .” I lowered my voice at his warning glance. “A
Darkling
. You can carry souls across the worlds. You can
fly
! Why
would you want to live an ordinary life?”
He stared at me for a long moment, those dark eyes resting
on me with a touch soft as velvet. His arm, though, was rigid as
steel beneath my fingertips and I could see the cords in his neck
tensing and his jaw clenching. I felt the ripple of muscles from
arm to back. He was holding himself tight to keep his wings
from unfurling and breaking through his jacket. There was so
much pent-up energy inside him that I could see it, rising off
him like heat waves on a sultry day. Then the ripple passed and
he let out a soft sigh.
“You’re right,” he said through tight lips. “Why would anyone want to live an ordinary life with a monster like me—?”
“Wait,” I said, “that’s not what I meant.”
But Raven ignored my interruption as he steered me across
the street and headed us north on Main Street. “I have other
reasons to be at Violet House. Thaddeus Sharp was quite the
inventor—and he was a friend to the Darklings. He understood
that the Darklings weren’t the enemy, but that the
tenebrae
were. I believe the clocks in the Violet House were designed to
repel
tenebrae
. I’m studying them to see if I can understand how
they work.”
“I think you’re right that Thaddeus Sharp was trying to
find a way to repel the shadows with his gadgets. Emmy gave
me this.”
I took out the pocket watch and opened it up. Raven
stopped dead in the street and cupped my hand in his as the
watch played its tune. The touch of his bare hand made me feel
warm all over. I heard the treble bell in my head and thought of
what Emmy had said it meant—but who knew if she knew was
she was talking about. And besides, when had she been in love?
When the tune had played out Raven folded my hand over
the watch to close it and then abruptly dropped my hand. “An
automaton repeater. Interesting. Yes, I think that will help
protect you—and you’ll need it if you’re going to take on the
Shadow Master on the streets of Rhinebeck. What did you do
to draw him out, by the way?”
Ignoring the sharpness of his tone—and glad that he had
looked away so he wouldn’t see the blush that had risen to my
face—I told him how I’d found
A Darkness of Angels
listed in
the catalogue, written to the librarian at Hawthorn, and decided to post the letter in town.
“He was waiting for me. He knew that I’d found something in the Special Collections and come to town to post a
letter. I would have told him who the letter was to if the bells
hadn’t rung! When he touched me I felt this burning ice creep
through me.”
“
Tenebrae
.” Raven hissed the word. “I’ve heard that’s how
they feel when they get inside you—first cold, then burning,
and then, after they burn through you, a dead numbness. If you
hadn’t gotten away you would have become his slave.”
“I was able to break his hold on me,” I said. “But I can see
how he does it. Perhaps his spy is someone he took over  .  .  .
someone weak. I think it might be our deportment teacher,
Miss Frost.” As if saying her name had summoned her, the lady
herself emerged from the door of the Wing & Clover just as we
passed.
“There she is!” I hissed, pulling Raven into the doorway of
the greenhouse next door.
We needn’t have been so secretive. Miss Frost did not look
as if she would notice an elephant parading down the main
street of Rhinebeck. She stood blinking in the sunlight, swaying unsteadily on her feet, her face as flaccid as blancmange. I
felt an unexpected pang of pity for her in her confused, helpless
state, but that sympathy vanished when she was joined on the
sidewalk by Judicus van Drood.
Raven pulled me deeper into the doorway, shielding my
body with his. I felt the rustle of his wings beneath his jacket
straining to break free. I placed my hand on his back, between
his shoulder blades, and willed the bell—which had begun tolling inside my head as soon as van Drood appeared—to slow
and its vibrations to travel from my body to Raven’s, just as I
had done with little Etta at the factory. I held Emmy’s pocket
watch in my other hand. The bell slowed in my head, but Raven’s wings still beat, tearing at the heavy tweed of his jacket.
Then I remembered that with Etta I had held her bare hand in
mine.
I slipped my hand under the collar of his jacket and touched
his bare neck. His skin was hot and he was trembling. I stroked
his back, listening to the bells in my head and felt the taut cords
in his neck slowly relax. His wings subsided beneath his jacket.
I took a deep breath and craned my neck around Raven to see
what was happening.
Van Drood was standing next to Miss Frost, whispering
in her ear, his unnaturally red lips nearly touching her skin. I
shuddered at the sight . . . and then saw something worse. His
lips parted and he spit out a writhing stream of black smoke
that snaked into Miss Frost’s ear. I felt my knees buckle and I
gasped.
Van Drood must have heard the sound. He lifted his head
away from Miss Frost’s ear and swiveled his neck like Blodeuwedd when she heard a mouse squeak—only his eyes were
colder than any owl’s. I felt the chill of them move over our hiding place, saw the blood-red lips pull back over blackened teeth.
My hands turned slick at the sight. I nearly dropped the pocket
watch . . . and somehow hit the stem, releasing a tinkling chime.
Now he’d be sure to find us!
But instead of pouncing on us, the
black eyes fogged over as though a mist had risen in them—
a mist that had also risen around Raven and me. In my hand
the watch continued playing its tune—a different one, I noticed
now, from what it played before. I wondered if the mist would
continue to conceal us when the tune was over. But before it
finished I heard a familiar voice calling Miss Frost’s name.
Van Drood snapped his head toward it. Sarah Lehman, in her
threadbare black coat, a thin scarf wrapped around her face,
was crossing the street.
“Miss Frost, do you need me to find you a cab?” she called,
making straight for van Drood.
I wanted to call out and stop her, but Raven held me back.
Van Drood tipped his hat to Sarah. “You are just in time,
Miss  .  .  .” Sarah stopped a few feet away and stared at van
Drood. “You must be one of Miss Frost’s students whom she
was just praising so highly. I am afraid she has overexerted herself and suffered an attack of . . . um . . .”
“Neurasthenia,” Miss Frost blurted out as if she were one
of the automaton figures on the repeater come to life. “It’s my
neurasthenia. Yes, I had better return.” She looked around her
as if unsure of where she was.
“To Blythewood,” van Drood supplied. “Please allow me.”
He raised his cane to summon a passing hansom cab. It stopped
with a screech of breaks and van Drood opened the door, guiding—nearly pushing—Miss Frost inside. He pressed something into Sarah’s hands—cab fare, I imagined—then, bowing
low, strode briskly north on Main Street, swinging his cane.
Sarah stood at the cab door staring after him.
“Come on,” Raven said, pulling me out of the doorway,
“this is your ride.”
“But why?” I began to object, but Raven ignored me and
marched straight up to Sarah Lehman.
“Excuse me,” he said, tipping his hat to Sarah. “But are you
going back to Blythewood? Would you mind taking Miss Hall
with you? She’s feeling a bit faint.”
Sarah stared at Raven—and then me. “Ava?” she said.
“What are you doing here?”
Raven answered for me. “She was having tea at Violet
House, where I am a boarder. Raymond Corbin, clockmaker’s
apprentice.” He held out his hand.
Sarah placed her hand in his. “Sarah Lehman,” she said.
“Oh yes, Miss Hall has often spoken of you.”
Had I?
I wondered. But Raven was speaking so quickly I
didn’t have time to remember. He was chattering on, explaining
to Sarah how I’d nearly fainted in the street and he’d helped me
into the greenhouse for a rest, when I’d recognized Sarah and
Miss Frost and he had suggested I share their cab back to the
school. Within minutes it had been settled and Raven was bustling me into the cab, his eyes already scanning the street, with
only a hurried whisper in my ear to “keep an eye on this one.”
Of course, I realized, he wanted to go after van Drood and
needed to get rid of me first. I felt like a parcel that has been
delivered as I squeezed up against Miss Frost’s bulky—and
inert—form. She had fallen heavily asleep and was already
snoring. Sarah perched on the jump seat across from me and
looked out the back window as the cab drove away. I craned my
neck around and saw that she was following Raven’s progress
down the street.
“What a charming young man,” she said when I turned
back. “Have you known him long?”
“Oh no!” I nearly shrieked. “I only just met him at the
Sharps.”
Sarah tilted her head and looked at me quizzically. “But
he said you’d spoken of me
often
and you two seemed . . .” She
wrinkled her brow. “As though you’d known each other longer
somehow. Almost
intimate
.”
Blood rushed to my face. Had Sarah seen us in the greenhouse doorway, pressed close together, Raven’s arm around my
waist, my hand on his bare neck? My blush deepened as I recalled the moment. A slow smile dawned on Sarah’s face.
“Ava! You’re blushing! Is he a secret beau?”
There was something so gleeful in Sarah’s expression that
I hated to disappoint her. Of course I couldn’t tell her the real
story, but I could tell her something close to it.
“I met him in the city,” I said. “In Washington Square Park
while walking to work. His . . . um . . . the clock shop where he
worked was nearby . . . on Waverly Place,” I added, recalling that
there
was
a clock shop on Waverly. “We passed each other often
and one day he spoke to me. . . .”
As I embroidered the details a picture began to take shape
in my head—a moving picture like the ones that played in the
Automatic Vaudeville House in Union Square. It was my old life
of working in the factory overlaid by a gauzy construction—
walking through the park with Tillie, who might have urged me
to talk to the handsome clockmaker’s apprentice we saw each
morning.
He likes you
, Tillie would have whispered in my ear.
With her encouragement, perhaps I would have been so bold as
to let him walk me home from work one day. He’d have brought
me flowers. Perhaps he would have bought me an ice from one
of the Italian stands on Minerva Street. Eventually I might have
agreed to accompany him to Coney Island one Sunday. . . .
“How romantic!” Sarah cried, her voice breaking into my
little daydream. I’d barely realized I was saying it all out loud.
“And now he’s followed you up here to Rhinebeck!”
“Oh,” I said, “I’m not sure. I suppose it was the opportunity
to work with Mr. Humphreys.”
“Nonsense!” Sarah leaned forward and lowered her voice,
even though Miss Frost’s snores assured us of her comatose
state. “He’s come for you. Why else would he be staying at the
Sharps, where it will be easy for you to find excuses to meet?”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, suddenly nervous at the
turn Sarah’s imaginings—or rather
my
imaginings—had taken. If it got around that I was seeing a strange boy in town, how
long would it be before Raven’s true identity came to light?
Sarah’s eyes widened at my obvious discomfort. “Don’t
worry,” she said, grabbing my hand and squeezing hard. “I’ll
keep your secret. I could even carry messages for you if you ever
need me to. I’m always going into town on errands for
her
.” She
slid her eyes over to the recumbent Miss Frost.
I looked into Sarah’s wide brown eyes, as trusting and hopeful as a spaniel’s, and realized how happy I’d made her by taking her in my confidence. Perhaps few other girls, if any, shared
gossip with “Lemon.” And I might need to get in touch with
Raven. He had told me to keep an eye on Miss Frost. I would do
that—and report back to him.
“And you won’t tell anyone else?”
Sarah’s eyes shone. “Your secret is safe with me,” she said
solemnly, pressing my hand in hers over her left breast.
“Secret  .  .  .” Miss Frost’s voice blearily echoed Sarah’s
words.
Sarah rolled her eyes and, giving my hand one more
squeeze, let it go. “We’re almost back at school,” she said loudly
to Miss Frost. “Shall I help you to your room? I have a new dose
of your physic.” Sarah held up a parcel from her bag and shook
it. The sloshing sound seemed to revive Miss Frost.
“Be careful with that,” she snapped, reaching across me for
the parcel. As she leaned over me I was nearly overwhelmed
by her odor—the familiar scent of tea rose, gin, and formaldehyde, now overlaid by something new. The stench of something