Ravensclaw Read Online Free PDF

concept. Especially in connection with Zizi, Bela, and Lilian.
    Miss Dinwiddie was complicating his existence. With or without his cooperation, she would have made her way to Edinburgh, a curious lamb blundering into a lair of hungry wolves. He’d had no choice but to escort her. The matter of St. Cuthbert’s knuckle bone aside, he had to destroy that blasted list. 
    In the interim, he would help the young woman retrieve her stolen items. If he took few things seriously, including himself, Val took the d’Auvergne athame very seriously indeed.
    Isidore cleared his throat. Val threw back the covers. “What?”
    “The chimneys needed sweeping. It turns out that Miss Dinwiddie has strong feelings about chimneysweeps. This particular chimneysweep was caught trying to steal a candlestick. By Drogo.” Isidore’s thin lips twisted. “Scared the puşti out of a good year’s growth.”
    “What did you do with our young thief?”
    “ ‘He that may not do as he would, must do as he may’.” Before Val could either comment or cuff him, the old man shuffled out the door.
    Val pulled on fresh breeches. Though he had long been aware of the Dinwiddie Society’s existence, he had not known that the d’Auvergne athame had come to rest in the Society’s vaults. He wondered how far Miss Dinwiddie would go in her efforts to protect herself from him, and hoped she wouldn’t drape herself about with bleached bones, or eat grave dirt.
    Val was smiling as he tied his cravat. Of all things, he disliked being bored, which was why he kept around him an ancient manservant who spouted proverbs at him, and maidservants who were no better than they should be. Emily Dinwiddie promised to provide more amusement than he had enjoyed in a score of decades.
    Contrary to custom, Count Revay-Czobar didn’t let out each story of his townhouse as a separate flat: the ground floor occupied by a tradesman and his workshop; the lower floors provenance of aristocrats and prosperous merchants eager to escape the streets’ dirt and stench and at the same time avoid the steep climb up the common turnpike stair; the highest floors home to servants and poorer workmen whoreaped some benefit in that they were privileged to glimpse sunlight. Though the bottom floor of Val’s house was indeed occupied by a small cloth merchant’s booth, the MacCamishes were in his employ, and insured that during his absences the rest of the dwelling was kept secure and in good repair. The first floor housed his kitchen and dining area, the second his drawing room, the third his bedroom and adjacent study. Guest and servants’ rooms were located above.
    Val descended the winding turnpike stair to the drawing room, a cozy chamber with green-paneled walls and a simple fireplace, nail-studded leather furniture, faded rugs on the wood floor. Here, too, books littered every available surface, interspersed with maps of the world, a calculating board, and a perpetual almanac in a frame.
    He paused unnoticed in the doorway. His house-guest was standing in a patch of sunlight that glinted off her spectacles, rendered her fair freckled skin almost translucent, and turned her fiery hair every shade from copper to gold. Val experienced a sudden urge to see the current head of the Dinwiddie Society wearing something other than unrelieved black. Or, even better, clad in nothing but clouds of frizzy ringlets and her fair freckled skin.
    She was clutching a sooty urchin’s elbow as she lectured him on the penalties for theft, which ranged from branding to transportation to simply being hanged. Drogo had taken up an alert position in front of the fireplace. Machka was engaged in an inspection of her nether bits.
    Val strolled into the room. “Isidore informs me that we have a guest.”
    Miss Dinwiddie shoved the boy behind her. “I understand, my lord, that the chimneys of these old wooden buildings have to be swept lest the coal dust builds up and results in a house fire. I also