The Vespertine Read Online Free PDF Page A

blind one, would you blush?"
    Heat flashed across my face, so it seemed the answer was yes. "Shame on you for wanting to embarrass me."
    "Shame on you for indulging me."
    Laughter rose with the clatter of china and silver, and I felt so very close to Zora's circle but not quite in it. It wasn't Zora's fault, because she addressed me often and encouraged her cousins to speak to me—once or twice with kicks beneath the table.
    But she couldn't know that the light on her circle paled to the light in mine. Even when I looked at the cousins, admiring their smiles and pretty laughter, I felt myself drawn back to Nathaniel Witherspoon. And each time I caught him looking at me. At my mouth.
    "Mr. Witherspoon, you're acquainted with the theatre," Zora said, cutting through our haze for his attention. "Have you heard anything about the Mysterious Lady Privalovna's engagement?"
    And as if it were perfectly natural to be caught twined on a lady's arm at dinner, Nathaniel answered smoothly. "Only that you shouldn't miss it."
    "Why is that, sir?"
    "I'm given to understand that her spirits coalesce onstage. An ethereal mist drawn out of her for all to behold." To emphasize his point, Nathaniel fluidly swirled a hand in the air before him, unlatching us and performing all at once.
    "Is that so?" Sarah asked, suddenly turned our way.
    Zora reminded Sarah with a nudge, "Miss Avery promised that, too."
    One of the boys groaned. "That was a waste of a nickel. Just at the climax, she claimed the spirits were too perturbed to materialize."
    "Should've taken the warning at the window seriously. No refunds—for you'll be back asking for one, no doubt!"
    Sarah frowned. "Just once I'd like to see a real one! It's tedious, wasting money on false spiritualists."
    One of the boys cackled. "It's not madness?"
    The table exploded in laughter, and they disappeared into familiar jests and stories only they knew. I was outside their consideration and wonderfully alone with Nathaniel again. Offering a smile, he raised his glass and his gaze to me once more.
    And I drank deeply.
    ***
    After dinner, we girls retired to the parlor while the boys converged on the back porch. They shouldn't have been smoking, though the sweet scent of tobacco crept into the house, nonetheless.
    We shouldn't have stolen tastes of the sherry, but there we were at the fireside with one glass to share among us. There was wine at dinner, and that should have been more than enough spirits for any party. But all the same, with surreptitious dips of the crystal decanter, Zora handed around seven tastes in quick order.
    "I'm not entirely well," I said when the glass finally came to me.
    But I caught a glimpse of myself in the marbled glass above the mantel—tall, rough, rustic—surrounded by glorious Baltimore belles who each seemed like her own jewel set on velvet.
    Sarah Holbrook shone as if she were summer itself. Her skin was bronzed chestnut, her hair rich black, braided into loops and weft with white ribbon. Beside her stood Matilda Corey—Mattie—another cousin perhaps, I had lost track in the introductions. She was Sarah's ghost in every way—platinum-haired and milk-skinned, her ribbons scarlet.
    Their gowns bared their shoulders. Seed pearls and chokers made their necks seem that much more slender. I was the plain center of the blossom, buttoned to the chin in an old-fashioned suit and gloves of no remarkable style.
    Kindly, Zora moved to pour the sherry back into its bottle, but I changed my mind. I took it and swallowed my portion in two sips. Smiling with a braveness I didn't quite feel, I said, "Now I'm fortified, I think."
    "Good! Let's call the boys in," Sarah said.
    She led the march—she on her toes and the rest of us following in kind. At the back door, we pressed in to listen, trying to steal snatches of the masculine conversation taking place just outside. I couldn't make much of it, only that they were loud and wild, and most certainly burning away cigars like