Blazing Bodices Read Online Free PDF Page A

colors and nationalities. Women dressed in every style of feminine garb I could imagine, from the corseted dresses of London and Western Europe to the sarongs of India, from the kimonos of Japan to the fur coats of the Eskimos, from the bowlers and serapes of South America to the buckskins and feathers of the American Indians. It was a veritable international army of women, all of them suffused with the crimson light that had drawn us from above.
    I could not hope to count them all in that moment, but I estimated that there were thousands, tens of thousands, all encircling a distant dais in the center of the cavern. All watching a single figure on that dais, a woman, all listening to her voice as it echoed throughout the vast space.
    At first I thought she might be Countess Calypso, but no. I couldn't be sure if she was anyone I'd ever known. I couldn't understand a word she said, either. She was speaking some kind of foreign language, one I didn't recognize. That alone amazed me, because I'd thought I'd known every language on Earth.
    Not that the women in the cavern seemed to have any trouble understanding. As the woman on the dais shouted rapid-fire jumbles of alien words, the crowd around her clapped and cheered and shouted back at her using the same language.
    Bess was no exception. I saw her up ahead at the edge of the crowd, alongside Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan. As I watched, Bess clapped her hands overhead and called out in response to what the woman on the dais was saying. I shuddered, unaccustomed to hearing the words of an alien language emerging from my own dear wife's ruby lips.
    I turned to Lady Crenshaw at my side and leaned close, speaking into her ear. "What are they saying? I don't understand a word of it."
    "You wouldn't, would you?" Lady Crenshaw raised one eyebrow and looked at me with a considering gaze. After a moment, she seemed to come to a decision, and her expression softened. " Lingua femme, we call it. The language of women. A way for women to communicate no matter where they come from or what the dominant language of their homeland might be."
    I scowled at her, taking it all in. "This lingua femme ...you've known of it all along?"
    Her smirk had a trace of playfulness around the edges. "Among other things, darling."
    My mind was working overtime as things started falling into place. I was afraid to ask the next question that occurred to me, afraid to hear the answer from her lips. "Undine." A bitter chill pervaded my body. Cold sweat trickled between my shoulder blades and down my back between the corset and my skin. "Have you been to this place before?"
    Lady Crenshaw giggled. "Now, darling." She hooked her arm around my elbow and led me toward the crowd. "How many times have I told you about asking questions when you already know what the answers will be?"
    Â 
    *****
    I did not resist as Lady Crenshaw pulled me forward. I was, of course, concerned that Bess would find me out, but a part of me actually hoped that she would. I felt in need of another ally against this army; Bess might be a part of it, but I still held out hope that she would take my side when my true identity was exposed.
    As we drew near to Bess and Mrs. Whitaker-Bunyan, the speaker on the central dais began to sing an eerie, keening song. The strange music that had been playing through the cavern rose in pitch and tempo to match her, and the army of women sang along.
    As the priestess on the dais (for that was what she seemed to me, a priestess invoking an ancient rite) raised up her arms, so did every woman in the cavern except for Lady Crenshaw. The singing grew higher and faster with each passing second.
    "What on Earth are they doing? " I had to shout for Lady Crenshaw to hear me. "Some kind of incantation? "
    Lady Crenshaw didn't answer. As we reached the crowd, she too raised her arms and sang along with the priestess.
    The red light in the cavern pulsated like pumping blood, growing alternately brighter and darker. Above the