Mistress of Souls: A Prophecy of the Sisters Novella Read Online Free
Author: Michelle Zink
difficult to know what she required, but it did not take long to get over her initial uncertainty. She started with the basics—flour, sugar, coffee, tea—adding to the list as her eyes roamed the store: tins of butter cookies; potatoes; apples; fresh cheese wrapped in cheesecloth; loaves of thick, crusty bread; jars of preserves. If the old man was surprised by the size and variety of her order, he gave no indication of it. He simply turned away when she was done and began collecting things from the shelves and barrels.
After charging her purchases to the Milthorpe account, she placed the packages in the carriage. Then, not quite ready to return to the isolation of Birchwood, she made her way down the walk.
It was cold, even with her coat on, and she stuffed her hands inside her pockets and hunched over against the wind, not caring if it was unladylike. Every shop held a memory, and she felt her heart grow heavier with every step. There was the candy shop where her mother had purchased sweet sticks for Alice and Lia when they were little, the hotel where she had taken them to tea. There was the milliner where they had hats made when they did not order them from abroad, the dressmaker who made some of their gowns.
And there, right next to the stairs leading to Wycliffe, was the Douglases’ bookstore.
Her pace slowed as her gaze fell on the window, “Douglas’s Fine Books” rendered in gold script across it. She hesitated. James Douglas and his father were the only two people she truly knew outside of Birchwood. Or rather, the only two people she knew who had not yet shunned her.
She turned and carefully opened the door, wanting to avoid the tinkle of the bell, not quite sure she wanted to speak to the Douglases at all and knowing she would have no choice if they heard her enter the shop.
It was quiet, the soft murmur of voices in the back room the only sound, save for the clip-clop of horses outside and the muffled rattle of carriages outside the store. She ducked behind a shelf of books that nearly reached the ceiling at the front of the store. It had been ages since she’d been in the Douglases’ bookshop on anything other than a school assignment, since the early days of Lia and James’s courtship, when Lia would insist they stop in on their way to or from Wycliffe.
She pulled a book from the shelf. It was a book of poems by John Keats, and she opened the cover, inhaling the scent of paper and ink, of cloth and dust. She had always loved the smell, but Father’s library and all the books housed there had been Lia’s domain, and she and Father had ruled supreme within its walls. Alice went there only in the dark of night, pulling books from the shelves, opening them just to sniff the place where the paper met the binding, choosing one or two to secret back to her chamber.
This she had never confessed to anyone. To do so would be an admission of desire, a plea for acceptance into a club that would never truly admit her. The humiliation of it would be too great. Better to hold her head up and pretend she didn’t want it. To pretend that she wouldn’t accept it even if it were offered, for who wanted to spend their time in the confines of the dull and dusty library when one could be outside in the fresh air and wind?
She looked down at the book in her hands. It was open to “Ode to a Nightingale,” and she read the first words silently, letting them wash over her like gentle waves.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
She was pondering the meaning of the words when the bell on the door rang, followed by high-pitched laughter.
After charging her purchases to the Milthorpe account, she placed the packages in the carriage. Then, not quite ready to return to the isolation of Birchwood, she made her way down the walk.
It was cold, even with her coat on, and she stuffed her hands inside her pockets and hunched over against the wind, not caring if it was unladylike. Every shop held a memory, and she felt her heart grow heavier with every step. There was the candy shop where her mother had purchased sweet sticks for Alice and Lia when they were little, the hotel where she had taken them to tea. There was the milliner where they had hats made when they did not order them from abroad, the dressmaker who made some of their gowns.
And there, right next to the stairs leading to Wycliffe, was the Douglases’ bookstore.
Her pace slowed as her gaze fell on the window, “Douglas’s Fine Books” rendered in gold script across it. She hesitated. James Douglas and his father were the only two people she truly knew outside of Birchwood. Or rather, the only two people she knew who had not yet shunned her.
She turned and carefully opened the door, wanting to avoid the tinkle of the bell, not quite sure she wanted to speak to the Douglases at all and knowing she would have no choice if they heard her enter the shop.
It was quiet, the soft murmur of voices in the back room the only sound, save for the clip-clop of horses outside and the muffled rattle of carriages outside the store. She ducked behind a shelf of books that nearly reached the ceiling at the front of the store. It had been ages since she’d been in the Douglases’ bookshop on anything other than a school assignment, since the early days of Lia and James’s courtship, when Lia would insist they stop in on their way to or from Wycliffe.
She pulled a book from the shelf. It was a book of poems by John Keats, and she opened the cover, inhaling the scent of paper and ink, of cloth and dust. She had always loved the smell, but Father’s library and all the books housed there had been Lia’s domain, and she and Father had ruled supreme within its walls. Alice went there only in the dark of night, pulling books from the shelves, opening them just to sniff the place where the paper met the binding, choosing one or two to secret back to her chamber.
This she had never confessed to anyone. To do so would be an admission of desire, a plea for acceptance into a club that would never truly admit her. The humiliation of it would be too great. Better to hold her head up and pretend she didn’t want it. To pretend that she wouldn’t accept it even if it were offered, for who wanted to spend their time in the confines of the dull and dusty library when one could be outside in the fresh air and wind?
She looked down at the book in her hands. It was open to “Ode to a Nightingale,” and she read the first words silently, letting them wash over her like gentle waves.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
She was pondering the meaning of the words when the bell on the door rang, followed by high-pitched laughter.
Readers choose
Rebecca Raisin
Alison Weir
Stephen; Birmingham
J. C. Fiske
C. Hope Clark
Joyce Lamb
Shannon Stacey
Scarlett Jade
Harold Robbins
Alanna Knight