Blythewood (34 page)

burnt
.

I WALKED UPSTAIRS trying to sort through all that had
happened today—van Drood’s appearance in Rhinebeck, what
I’d done with the bells, Raven showing up as a boarder at Violet
House, Miss Emmy’s gift of the magical repeater pocket watch
that seemed to have the power of raising a concealing mist,
and confirmation that Miss Frost was the spy. The last revelation was the one that most worried me. Shouldn’t I go to Dame
Beckwith and tell her? But would she believe me? All I’d seen
was a wisp of smoke as van Drood whispered in Miss Frost’s
ear. I’d need more proof than that to convince Dame Beckwith
that her old friend was a spy. Better that I watch her as Raven
had told me to.

In spite of all the tumult of the day, I smiled when I thought
of Raven at Violet House.
Because he’s safer there than in the
woods,
I told myself, pausing on the fourth-floor landing to look
out at the frozen woods. It had been horrible to think of him
out there with the ice giants. Far better to think of him taking
tea with the Misses Sharp and tinkering with clocks with Uncle
Taddie at Violet House . . . where I could visit.

That was the real reason I was happier with Raven at Violet
House, I admitted as I turned away from the window and continued to my room. Now I knew where to find him. It would be
easy to send a message with Sarah, or go into town to visit the
Sharps, perhaps even visit the shop where he worked. It would
be not unlike the little story I’d made up for Sarah. And why
shouldn’t a story like that come true for me? I might not be rich
like Helen van Beek, but a clockmaker wouldn’t require a huge
dowry. . . .

Helen’s voice startled me out of my daydream. I’d walked
right by her without seeing her at her desk, where she was huddled over some papers. “Where were you? In the woods again?”

“No,” I said sharply. “I went into town to post a letter . . .
and then ran into Emmaline Sharp, who invited me to tea.
Then I took a cab back with Sarah and Miss Frost.” With the
subtraction of van Drood and Raven, my afternoon sounded
innocent enough for me to meet Helen’s gaze with only the
slightest of blushes. And boring enough to allay even her curiosity. It would never occur to Helen that I might meet an interesting male at the Sharps’. It probably wouldn’t occur to her
that I’d meet an interesting male
anywhere
.

“Oh,” she said, looking back down at the papers spread out
on her desk. “You might have told me you were going to the
post office. I have some very important letters to mail.”

In other words, more important than anything I would be
sending.
“I’m not your maid, Helen,” I said, my voice shaking. I
turned to hang up my coat and fur hat and muff in the wardrobe so she wouldn’t see the color flare in my cheeks. “I know
you’re used to having servants at your beck and call, but you’re

“I wasn’t aware I was
leaning
on you,” Helen said, her voice
cold and haughty. I turned to see that she was gathering up the
papers on her desk and getting to her feet. “Or on Daisy, whom
I barely see anymore. But I will endeavor not to be a burden.”

“I didn’t mean—” I began, sorry I’d spoken so sharply to her.
“No, you said exactly what you meant,” Helen interrupted.
“And you’re right. I have to learn to ‘do for myself.’ So that’s
what I’m doing—going to be by myself.” With that she turned
and swept out of the room before I could say anything else.

And what could I say? Helen and I came from two different worlds. She couldn’t understand mine and I couldn’t begin
to understand hers. Perhaps it was better if we spent less time
together.

As I hung up my coat my hand lingered on its fur collar, the
silk plush of it reminding of the touch of Raven’s wings. But
when I brushed my cheek against it I smelled smoke and ashes.

The castle had lots of unused rooms, and it was big enough
that everyone who wanted to be alone could find a place of
their own—which more and more seemed to be what everyone
wanted. I assumed Helen had found some little nook to study
and write her letters in. Daisy was always off on some unspecified mission, only stopping by meals long enough to stuff her
pockets with rolls and apples like a squirrel hoarding nuts for
the winter. Even gregarious Cam would often vanish to an indoor target practice that she said some of the Dianas had set
up on the sly—“strictly against the rules
,
” she announced in a
loud stage whisper, “so I can’t tell you where it is.” Dolores and
Beatrice were doing research “for Papa” in the labs.

Between classes and meals, all the girls of Blythewood scattered into their separate nooks and crannies like beetles scurrying into the woodwork. Sometimes walking the deserted
hallways I felt like they had all vanished and I was the last person left in the castle.

Except for Sarah. I was always running into her on her errands for Miss Frost. No matter how busy she was, she would
take time to chat with me and ask if I had a message to send to
my “beau” at Violet House. The problem was that I had nothing to report to Raven. After our encounter outside the Wing
& Clover, Miss Frost had taken to her room on the third floor
of the North Wing with a bout of ague.

I made it a point to walk with Sarah when she brought up
meals and her medicine to check that she was really bedridden.
When Sarah unlocked the door (“She has a horror of being disturbed,” Sarah confided), I was nearly overwhelmed by a wave
of hot, camphor-laden air. “She likes to keep it warm,” Sarah
whispered as I followed her in. “And the camphor fumes are
good for her lungs.”

At first I could barely see. Heavy drapes were pulled over
the windows. The only light came from a low fire in the hearth
and the flickering flames of spirit lamps, on which small copper basins of liquid bubbled and steamed up a brew of camphor and strong-smelling herbs. A heavy fog hung in the air.
Miss Frost lay in the center of it like a beached whale on her
four-poster bed.
“Have you brought me my medicine, girl?” she asked querulously as Sarah approached the bed.

“Yes, Miss Frost, and a visitor. Avaline Hall has come to say
hello.”
“Ah,” Miss Frost said, struggling to sit upright and find her
lorgnette on her nightstand. “Is she still here? I’d have thought
she would have vanished like her mother by now.”
“I’m still here,” I said, my nose prickling at the rank odor of
the bedclothes as I stepped closer. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She regarded me through her lorgnette, her eyes magnified into grotesque bloodshot orbs, and sniffed. “Well then, you
might as well make yourself useful. I’m afraid your friend Miss
Muffat—”
“Moffat,” I corrected.
Miss Frost waived her hand dismissively at my correction.
“I’m afraid she’s making a mess of my specimens while I’m indisposed. Go down and check for me—”
“I can do that, Miss Frost,” Sarah interrupted, giving me an
apologetic smile.
Miss Frost shifted her gaze from me to Sarah. As her eyes
moved I noticed that there was a film over them and that a
vein twitched at her temple. She stared at Sarah as if she didn’t
recognize her. Was she going blind? I wondered. But then she
blinked and the film cleared. “You do too much,” she rasped
hoarsely. “You . . .” A coughing fit kept her from finishing.
“Not at all, Miss Frost,” Sarah said, pouring a teaspoonful of the medicine she’d brought. “I’m happy to be of service.
Here. Drink this. It will help your cough.”
Sarah leaned over and deftly inserted the spoon into Miss
Frost’s mouth. The coughing slowly subsided, leaving Miss
Frost exhausted. “There, that’s better,” Sarah said soothingly,
pulling up the counterpane. Then to me she mouthed, “We’d
better go.”
We tiptoed out of the room. Before we left, though, I heard
Miss Frost murmuring something. It sounded like “Miles.”

I wrote a message to Raven that evening. “E.F. looks too ill to do
anything dangerous, but I plan to keep an eye on her tonight.” I
sealed the note, borrowing a bit of Helen’s sealing wax because
that was something the girls in Mrs. Moore’s books did when
they sent secret notes. I smiled to myself at the memory of the
girl who used to read girls’-school adventures at the Seward
Park library. She seemed a much more innocent person than
the girl who was spying on her teacher.

While I was putting back the sealing wax a slip of paper fell
out of one of the desk’s pigeonholes. Putting it back, I couldn’t
help notice that it was a bill from a dress shop. I tucked it back
in with several other bills. I recognized Miss Janeway’s letterhead and the trademarks of several of the stores I’d gone to on
Ladies’ Mile. As I’d suspected, Helen’s correspondence was
mainly to do with clothing orders. Nothing as weighty as my
note to Raven.

I slipped the note to Sarah at dinner. I needn’t have worried
about being so secretive. Cam had left early for her clandestine
archery practice, Bea and Dolores had their heads together over
a textbook, Helen was reading a letter, and Daisy was intent on
cutting up her beefsteak into tiny pieces.

“I’m going in the morning to pick up a new physic for Miss
Frost,” Sarah whispered. “I’ll deliver it then.”
After dinner I waited until everyone had gone off to their
separate hideouts and then crept up the back stairs in the North
Wing to the third floor. I didn’t have much hope of catching
Miss Frost doing any spying, but I wanted to be able to tell Raven that I’d at least tried, and if I did see anything important I’d
go myself to Violet House to tell him. I’d wear the new dress
my grandmother had sent me from Paris. It was a lovely forest green that brought out the red in my hair, which I thought
would remind Raven of his treetop nest.
I was so engrossed imagining myself in the dress—and Raven’s reaction to it—that I didn’t notice the two people coming
down the stairs until they were almost upon me. I ducked behind a tall highboy on the third-floor landing just before Miss
Corey and Miss Sharp reached it. Luckily they were too deeply
engaged in an argument to overhear my hurried retreat.
“I don’t know what you’re so upset about, Lil,” Miss Sharp
was saying as they walked by. “I was merely agreeing with Rupert that there needed to be certain changes. I know you think
so, too. I’ve seen how you look at Miss Frost’s specimens.”
“Of course it’s horrible what she does to those poor sprites,”
Miss Corey cried out, “but the question is how best to bring
about change. I just don’t see where Rupert Bellows comes off
storming in and demanding that we make changes.”
“Because he’s a man?” Miss Sharp inquired archly.
“Well, yes, since you mention it. Why can’t the men run
Hawthorn and let
us
run Blythewood?”
“You know that’s not how it works, Lil. We must all work
together as the knight and sisters did.”
“In the old ways? Really, Vi, not you, too! And what if they
tell you to marry some decrepit old man?”
“They won’t,” Miss Sharp answered, her voice bitter.
Miss Corey lowered her voice and whispered something,
her voice warbling, as though she were fighting some deep
emotion, but they were too far below me on the stairs for me
to hear them. I thought I knew where this argument was going
anyway. It sounded like the one that Agnes had had with Miss
Janeway. At the time, I’d thought it was to do with the women’s
vote, but now I realized it was about the Order. It seemed as if
everyone wanted to change the way things were done but they
were afraid of making things worse—the way the girls at the
factory were afraid that if they spoke out against the bosses
they would lose their jobs. And look what happened to them. I
felt a great pang then, missing Tillie.
She
would put the Order
to rights if she were here.
A floorboard creaked. I pushed myself deeper into the
space between the highboy and the wall and waited. I heard
the sound again, coming from the third-floor hall. Someone
was approaching, perhaps Sarah coming from Miss Frost’s
room  .  .  . but these footsteps were softer and more erratic
than Sarah’s purposeful, boot-heeled stride. An odor of gin
and camphor soon announced who it was. I peeked out and
saw Miss Frost, barefoot in her nightgown, her long gray hair
hanging loose and tangled down her back, careen onto the
landing.
“Must check on my specimens,” she muttered as she passed
me. “Can’t trust that girl.”
She stumbled on the stairs going down and I thought she
was going to plunge headlong to her death, but she grasped the
banister and righted herself and kept going, muttering as she
went.
I followed her, staying far enough back so she wouldn’t hear
me, although I don’t think she would have noticed a scurry of
goblins or a berg of ice giants thundering down the steps in her
condition—nor did I have much trouble following her. Even
without Miss Swift’s tracking classes I could have tracked her
by her scent.
On the ground floor, she veered down the hallway into her
classroom. I crept carefully to the doorway and peered in. She
was standing in a patch of moonlight, in front of the glass specimen cases, looking down at a square of glass.
“I will never forget what they did to you, never!” I thought
she was talking to one of the specimen trays until she hung
the object back on the wall and I saw it was the silver-framed
photograph of Sir Miles Malmsbury. She touched her fingertips to her lips and then pressed them to the photograph.
Sighing heavily, she turned back to the specimen case, lifted
her hand to a brass handle, and turned it. Instead of the glass
door opening, the whole bookcase swung inward on silent,
well-oiled hinges and Miss Frost disappeared inside it, leaving
the case slightly ajar.
A secret passageway! The answer of what she was doing
for van Drood—and proof of her duplicity—might lie inside.
I crept into the classroom and looked through the secret doorway. Moonlight illuminated stone steps leading steeply down
into the dark. Pitch dark. Looking into it was like looking into
the well I’d fallen into during the crow attack. What if van
Drood was down there? I didn’t know if I could face him and
summon the bells in the dark. I stood uncertain on the threshold, remembering the eerie feeling of being down in the dungeon near the candelabellum. I could wait until tomorrow, tell
Raven about the passageway, and ask him to come with me—
but what if tonight’s meeting was important? What if they were
making plans to do something awful to Blythewood—or to the
Darklings? I had to know what Miss Frost was doing down
there.
I turned back to the room and snatched up one of the spirit
lamps. Lighting it with the matches she kept in her desk and
shielding the flame with my hand, I followed her into the dark.