Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) Read Online Free PDF

the shape of an invisible girl. A girl on fire. The dress was the color of molten gold, embroidered with tiny rubies and blood-red feathers. “Oh!” Agnes said. “It’s quite . . . quite . . .”
    “Divine,”
I finished for her, thinking that a girl wouldn’t need wings to feel like she was flying in such a dress.
    “Try it on,” Agnes said with a mischievous grin.
    I shucked off my dressing gown and held up my arms for Agnes to slip the dress over my head. It felt like a waterfall spilling down my bare skin. I tingled from head to toe as the cloth skimmed past my breasts, flared over my hips, and swirled around my ankles like a cat. I turned to look in the mirror, the satin moving with me like a second skin, and thought someone else had taken my place. A changeling, perhaps, who had assumed my features and figure but had set them on fire.
    The bodice was fitted with tiny pleats and a beaded design at the neckline that framed my throat with a rim of rubies that made my skin whiter, my eyes greener, and my hair an even more vibrant red. The overskirt flared out into a petaled design that swished as I moved. The damask red underskirt clung to my ankles. I looked like some kind of exotic bird rising from the flames.
    “Like a phoenix,” Agnes said, fixing the gold and ruby wings to my back and then a matching feathered crown to my head. “It’s the perfect costume for you to wear tonight.”
    “But all the Blythewood girls are supposed to go as Marie Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting,” I said, glaring at the monstrosity hanging from the bedpost.
    “Too bad your dress was never delivered from Miss Janeway’s,” Agnes replied, handing me a pair of crimson satin gloves. “And this came instead. There must have been a mix-up.”
    She picked up a folded card nestled amidst the tissue paper. “Hm . . .” Agnes said, frowning. “Caroline writes that the instructions and payment for the dress were sent to her and that she was to have it made to your measurements with a note that said that it was from—”
    “Yes! Who’s it from?”
    “It says, ‘From a secret admirer.’”

4

    THE MONTMORENCY MANSION was only two blocks north of my grandmother’s house, and I could have easily walked. Indeed, I would have gotten there more quickly on foot than trapped in the traffic making its laborious progress up Madison Avenue. But my grandmother had scoffed at the idea when I’d come into the parlor to say goodnight, and I was afraid a prolonged argument would draw more attention to my dress, which she was already studying skeptically through the lenses of her lorgnette.
    “I thought the theme was the court of Marie Antoinette.”
    I considered claiming, as Agnes had suggested, that Caroline Janeway had sent the wrong costume, but I didn’t like the idea of getting Miss Janeway in trouble, and I certainly didn’t want to say anything about the note that had come with it. Every time I thought about it my knees went weak.
A secret admirer.
Who could it be but Raven?
    “I like this dress better,” I said, lifting my chin defiantly, although part of me wanted to cringe like the ebony Moors crouching on either side of her chair. I sometimes fancied that they—along with all the statuary, stuffed birds, antimacassars, and aspidistras that cluttered the Victorian-style parlor—had been frozen by my grandmother’s Medusa stare.
    “Mmmph,” she finally uttered, tapping her cane on the marble floor. “Wise girl. I told Albertine Montmorency that wearing Marie Antoinette’s necklace to her own ball fifteen years ago didn’t bring any luck to Cornelia Bradley-Martin, not to mention what it did for Marie Antoinette. But are you sure this dress is not a bit . . .
revealing
?”
    “It’s quite similar to the dresses all of Paris wore after Monsieur Poiret’s costume ball last year,” Agnes piped up, having crept silently into the room. “And doesn’t Ava look lovely in it?”
    “Of course she looks