Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) by Carol Goodman Page B

mayor. There were others—men in dark, expensive evening coats and sleek whiskers, one in a police uniform with medals, another in a cleric’s collar, and one, half-hidden in the smoke and shadows, who was looking straight at me.
    Impossible!
I was hidden inside the niche and he couldn’t see me through all that smoke.
    But I felt the force of those eyes on me as strongly as if they had pinned me in place—and I heard the bass bell gonging in my head. The last time I had felt this frozen immobility and heard my bell ring so madly was when I’d encountered Judicus van Drood on the streets of Rhinebeck. Was it him?
    But then the door to the smoking room closed and the spell vanished. I broke from the niche like a pheasant flushed from the underbrush and ran through the servants’ quarters to find the service door, my wire wings trembling behind me and all the clocks in the house chiming midnight as though I were Cinderella fleeing the ball.

6

    I MET NATHAN and Helen at the Fifty-Ninth Street station where the Sea Beach Railway embarked for Coney Island. Nathan looked cool and crisp in striped linen trousers, matching jacket draped nonchalantly over one shoulder, and a straw boater tipped rakishly low over his face. I didn’t know how he managed it. The walk downtown had left me drenched and limp as last night’s violet corsage, which lay on my night table. Helen was also enviably fresh in a frothy lace dress with matching parasol, which looked more suited for tea with the Astors than a train ride with the masses. I wondered if she had ever ridden in public transportation before. She was peering around her at the morning holiday crowd as if she’d just landed in a spice bazaar in remotest India.
    “Where’s your bathing costume?” she demanded as I joined them.
    “I don’t plan to bathe,” I replied primly. “This isn’t a holiday outing. We’re going to find clues to Ruth Blum’s whereabouts, not to have fun.”
    The truth was I would have loved to swim. My mother used to take me on Sundays and holidays to the beach. We’d wade in, hand in hand, squealing at the slap of waves so excruciatingly cold I couldn’t imagine going an inch farther, but when she cried “
Now!
” I would dive blindly into the swell. My mother would emerge laughing, her hair slicked back like a seal’s fur, her face radiant, as if the cold salt water had washed away the sadness that always clung to her like the lingering scent of smoke.
    My body ached for that kind of release. But how could I risk even the most modest bathing costumes with my newly emerging wings? Besides, after all I’d seen last night through poor Molly’s eyes, I wasn’t in much of a holiday mood. But I was more determined than ever to find Ruth.
    “Nonsense!” Helen sniffed. “This is my first excursion to Coney Island, and I’m determined to enjoy the full experience. We will ride the Steeplechase, eat fried clams, and bathe in the ocean. I’ve brought a bathing costume for you.” She held up a basket that dangled from her arm and pulled out a red and white striped bathing costume covered with ruffles and ribbons. “I used it at Newport last summer, so it’s out of date, of course, but it should do.”
    “Ava’s four inches taller and ten pounds lighter—” Nathan began, until I kicked him in the shin. Aside from not wanting my physical attributes described—had he been paying such close attention?—I’d just realized why this outing was so important to Helen. Last summer—and every summer of her life before that—Helen had spent the season in Newport, but she and her mother could no longer afford such luxuries.
    Instead, she had spent this summer in the hot, dusty city helping her mother pack up their Washington Square brownstone and sell their most valuable possessions to move to a dreary suite of rooms at the Franconia Hotel. Mrs. van Beek had let it be known within her social circles that she’d sold the brownstone because she was