The Ghost Orchid Read Online Free PDF Page A

the sky as the color of sky reflected in water—not so much a color as the ghost of a color. Her hair is a lighter version of the child’s auburn hair, her skin a pure milky white.
    It is said in town that Aurora Latham is ill, that the deaths of her three children last year dealt the final blow to an already frail constitution. And yet, for all her pallor and thinness, she doesn’t look ill. She looks, Corinth thinks, like a woman haunted.
    “She’s much prettier than the last one,” the little girl says. “Can she make noises with her knees and toes like—”
    “Hush, Alice. Go sit with Mrs. Ramsdale for a little while.”
    Corinth turns her head and sees, in a dimly lit recessed alcove, a woman in an amethyst silk dress sitting at a library table writing . . . or, rather, she is holding a pen poised above a sheet of paper, her head tilted to show her fine Grecian profile to advantage, her eyes demurely lowered, so that her thick black eyelashes cast a shadow on the white porcelain of her cheekbones. A pose meant to indicate a woman of high society engaged in literary pursuits, and yet, Corinth can tell that the woman is acutely aware of her presence, while Corinth, until this moment, didn’t even know she was there. It’s not like her to enter a room without taking note of all its occupants. It must be the effect of passing all those statues in the garden: it’s made her lose her sense of what’s real and what’s not. She’ll have to be more careful.
    “But she is prettier,” Alice says sulkily as she gathers up her pencils and her pad.
    Aurora Latham looks up from her daughter to Corinth. “Yes,” she says slowly, drawing out the word, “but I’d heard your hair described as chestnut and it’s really more mahogany.” Aurora narrows her eyes—crinkling the skin beneath them, which is bluer than the eyes themselves—as if she had ordered a set of dining room chairs only to find they’d been fashioned out of the wrong wood. “But then, perhaps the persons who described you hadn’t seen you in a well-lit room.”
    Corinth smiles what she hopes is a cool, placid smile and says, “The harsh glare of light is not conducive to communicating with the spirit world. Electric light especially is thought to interfere with the currents upon which the spirits travel.”
    “So you will do a séance, then? And bring back James and Cynthia and Tam?” the girl asks.
    “Alice, I thought I asked you to go to Mrs. Ramsdale.”
    “Can I just show her my picture first?”
    “Very well,” Aurora says to the child, and then, lifting those transparent eyes to Corinth: “She’s made such progress under Mr. Campbell’s tutelage. Will you indulge her?”
    Corinth smiles without speaking, because the question is, of course, unanswerable. It’s not her place to indulge her hostess’s child nor deny her anything she might want. Alice rises and holds out the tablet.
    The pencil drawing is actually quite good. A dashing young man in fringed buckskin is battling with some sort of great-winged beast while a frightened-looking girl tied to a tree looks on. Corinth recognizes the Indian maiden from the maze fountain—the same ripe figure straining against the same buckskin dress, one sleeve of which is torn to reveal a rounded shoulder and bare bosom. Corinth lifts her eyes from the picture to the little girl, reassessing her age. It’s only her small stature, she sees now, that made her appear younger. She’s closer to eight or nine than seven.
    “Will the brave young warrior save the lady?” Corinth asks.
    “She’s not a lady; she’s only a stinking savage—”
    “That will be enough now, Alice. Leave me and Miss Blackwell alone. You’ll have to excuse my daughter,” Aurora Latham says as Alice, with an exaggerated sigh, drags herself into the darkened alcove and scrunches herself into a narrow ledge beneath one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. “Since her brothers and sister have gone, my husband has