The Baskerville Tales (Short Stories) Read Online Free PDF Page A

working a spell. “Perfect. Just perfect.”
    They’d reached the academy, and there would be no more privacy to talk before the evening meal. Imogen squeezed her hand—their signal that they’d pick up the conversation later—and they ran up the stairs to change before Mrs. Roberts could inquire where they had been.
    The senior girls had rooms of their own. They were small, barely holding a narrow bed and a chest of drawers, but the privacy was a hard-won privilege after years sharing with up to four others at a time. Evelina saw a box sitting on her bed, tied with string and labeled—sure signs that it had been delivered by post.
    In an instant, she forgot that she was cold and damp. She hurried forward to examine the arrival. A glance at the writing told her it had come from Grandmamma Holmes.
    It was a large box, four feet wide at least. Room enough for a letter inside—and no matterwhat else the parcel held, it was that personal note Evelina wanted. She
had
to know where she was to go once the graduation dance was over. Given her unconventional relationship with her grandmamma, she could assume nothing.
    An orphan, Evelina was the product of a mésalliance. The Holmes family’s only daughter had eloped with a lowborn army captain. After his death, Evelina’s mother had come home begging for shelter for herself and her unborn daughter, only to be turned away. The worst misfortune was that her brothers—Sherlock and Mycroft—had never learned of the incident until years later and far too late to help their wayward sister.
    Fortunately, Captain Cooper’s relations—the colorful members of Ploughman’s Paramount Circus—hadn’t been so particular. They had raised Evelina long after her mother died, right until Grandmamma Holmes had swept in and taken her to Wollaston to be civilized.
    That had worked, more or less, but what came next? All the other girls had family arriving, plans for their presentation to the queen, and maybe a shopping trip abroad to celebrate their coming of age. Evelina had no fortune and no prospects. She had become too much a lady to go back to the circus, but couldn’t see herself pouring tea for her grandmamma until she faded away like a carpet left too long in the sun—not that the old lady permitted errant sunbeams beyond her drawing room’s heavy velvet drapes.
    It was almost natural to imagine the day when every last girl went from the academy to their brilliant futures, and Evelina would be left standing on the drive, her suitcase at her feet. Alone and penniless, just like her mother had been. Were things really that bad? Was she really so unlovable that no one would come?
    Everything depended on a letter being in the box. A cold wave settled through her like a sudden fog and she actually trembled, admitting in some distant part of her soul that she hadbrushed up against the thing she feared most.
    Evelina cut the string and swept it aside. The box was plain but sturdy and the lid resisted opening. Or maybe her fingers were clumsy. Eventually, it came away with a rustle of white tissue paper. Evelina peeled it back to reveal a bodice of soft green satin, the exact hue of tender new leaves. It shimmered like a lake of liquid summer.
    Evelina gasped. She recognized the dress. It had hung in a wardrobe filled with her mother’s things—the beautiful party gowns and formal dresses abandoned in her wild flight to marry the handsome Captain Cooper. And her grandmother had sent the treasure to her!
    They were the same height, and her mother had possessed the same dark hair and blue eyes. The green would be perfect—feminine without making her look like a sickeningly sweet petit four. This was a woman’s dress, not a girl’s.
    And Imogen’s handsome brother, Tobias, would be there. Tentative, questing, Evelina’s fingers trailed over the delicate net of gold threads that rimmed the neckline of the gown. She realized it had been altered, the shape subtly recut to match the