Clockwork Princess Read Online Free PDF Page B

if she were aware of all eyes on her—especially Will’s.
    “A great monster,” she wept. “A creature—it seized darling Rupert from the carriage and made off with him!”
    Will pushed her a bit farther away. “What do you mean ‘made off with him’?”
    She pointed. “Th-there,” she sobbed. “It dragged him to the Italian gardens. He managed to elude its maw at first, but it harried him through the paths. No matter how much I screamed, it would not put him d-down!” She burst into a fresh wave of tears.
    “You screamed,” Will said. “Is that all you did?”
    “I screamed a great deal.” Tatiana sounded injured. She drew fully away from Will and fixed him with a green gaze. “I see you are as ungenerous as you ever were.” Her eyes skated to Tessa, Cecily, and Jem. “Mr. Carstairs,” she said stiffly, as if they were at a garden party. Her eyes narrowed as they fell on Cecily. “And you—”
    “Oh, in the name of the Angel!” Will pushed past her; Jem, with a smile at Tessa, followed.
    “You
cannot
be other than Will’s sister,” said Tatiana to Cecily as the boys vanished into the distance. Tessa she pointedly ignored.
    Cecily looked at her incredulously. “I am, though I cannot imagine what difference it makes. Tessa—are you coming?”
    “I am,” Tessa said, and joined her; whether Will wanted her there or not—or Jem either—she could not watch the two of them walk into danger and not want to be where they were. After a moment she heard Tatiana’s reluctant footsteps on the gravel behind her.
    They were moving away from the house, toward the formal gardens half-hidden behind their high hedges. In the distance sunlight sparked off a wood-and-glass greenhouse with a cupola on the roof. It was a fine autumn day: There was a brisk wind, the smell of leaves in the air. Tessa heard a rustle and glanced at the house behind her. Its smooth white facade rose high, broken only by the arches of balconies.
    “Will,” she whispered as he reached up and unlocked her hands from around his neck. He drew her gloves off, and they joined her mask and Jessie’s pins on the stone floor of the balcony. He pulled off his own mask next and cast it aside, running his hands through his damp black hair, pushing it back from his forehead. The lower edge of the mask had left marks across his high cheekbones, like light scars, but when she reached to touch them, he gently caught at her hands and pressed them down
.
    “No,” he said. “Let me touch you first. I have wanted …”
    Blushing furiously, Tessa pulled her gaze away from the house and the memories it contained. The group had reached a gap in the hedges on their right. Through it what was clearly “the Italian garden” was visible, ringed round by foliage. Within the circle the garden was lined with rows of statuary depicting classical heroes and figures of myth. Venus poured water from an urn in a central fountain, while statues of great historians and statesmen—Caesar, Herodotus, Thucydides—regarded each other with blank eyes across the walkways that radiated out from the central point. There were also poets and playwrights. Tessa, hurrying along, passed Aristotle, Ovid, Homer—his eyes bound with a stone mask to indicate his blindness—Virgil and Sophocles, before an earsplitting scream rent the air.
    She whirled around. Several feet behind her Tatiana was standing stock-still, her eyes bulging out of her head. Tessa dashed back toward her, the others on her heels; she reached the girl first, and Tatiana caught at her blindly, as if forgetting for the moment who Tessa was. “Rupert,” Tatiana moaned, staring ahead of her, and Tessa, following her gaze, saw a man’s boot protruding from behind a hedge. She thought for a moment that he must have been lying stunned upon the ground, the rest of his body hidden by foliage, but as she leaned forward, she realized that the boot—and the several inches of gnawed-upon, bloody flesh that