Serafina and the Black Cloak - Robert Beatty Page 0,60

even beats my uncle, and nobody beats my uncle.”

“He seems to be amazing at nearly everything,” she scoffed.

“Well, you don’t have to be mean about it. He’s a good man.”

She took the book from Braeden and kept reading. It explained that otets was the formal way a child would address a parent in public. But the more intimate way, used only within the family, was the word batya, which translated roughly to “daddy” or “papa.”

She frowned in confusion.

They were the same age and completely unrelated. Why in the world would Mr. Thorne repeatedly address Mr. Rostonov as his papa?

As Serafina and Braeden crawled back into the ventilation system, she asked, “Do you know all the gentlemen who are currently guests at Biltmore?”

“I’ve met most of them,” Braeden said as he closed up the vent cover behind them, “but not all of them.”

“Do you know which rooms they’re staying in?” she asked as they made their way on their hands and knees along the shaft back toward his bedroom.

“The guests are on the third floor. Servants live on the fourth.”

“But do you know the specific rooms?”

“I know some of them. My aunt put Mr. Bendel in the Raphael Room. The Brahmses are in the Earlom Room and Mr. Rostonov is in the Morland Room. It goes on and on. Why?”

“I have an idea. If the Man in the Black Cloak is one of the gentlemen at Biltmore, then he needs to store his cloak someplace when he’s not using it. I’ve checked the closets and coatrooms on the first floor, but I want to check the bedrooms, too.”

“You want to sneak into people’s private bedrooms?” Braeden asked hesitantly.

“They won’t know,” Serafina pointed out. “As long as we’re careful, they won’t catch us.”

“But we’ll be looking through their private belongings.…”

“Yes, but we need to help Clara and the others. And we need to stop the Man in the Black Cloak from doing this again.”

Braeden pursed his lips. He didn’t like this idea. “Isn’t there some other way?”

“We just need to look,” she said.

Finally, he nodded his head.

Serafina followed Braeden along the shaft. Mr. Vanderbilt had called in private detectives, who now stood guard at various points in the corridors of the house. As long as they stayed in the ventilation system they were safe, but moving through the other parts of the house unseen was going to be far more difficult than before.

Serafina could tell that all the searches and the presence of the detectives weren’t bringing solace to Biltmore’s anxious inhabitants. She sensed that both the guests and the servants were losing hope. From what she overheard people saying to one another, there was an increasing sense that the children weren’t just missing but dead. She had to defend her own heart from the same terrible conclusion. She’d seen them vanish, but her pa had told her that everyone had to be someplace. Even dead bodies had to be someplace. We’ve got to keep looking, she kept telling herself. We can’t give up. We’ve got to help them. But when the members of the various search parties began to return without any sign of the children, people were more disheartened than ever.

Serafina and Braeden snuck into the Raphael Room and looked through Mr. Bendel’s belongings.

“Mr. Bendel is always so cheerful,” Braeden said. “I don’t see how he could have hurt anyone.”

“Just keep looking,” she whispered, determined to stay focused.

She found all sorts of expensive clothing in Mr. Bendel’s finely decorated traveling chests, including many stylish gloves and a long, dark gray cloak, but it wasn’t the Black Cloak.

Next, they checked the Van Dyck Room, with its finely detailed terra-cotta-colored wallpaper, its dark mahogany furniture, and many paintings hanging by wires on the walls. “Mr. Thorne has always been very kind to me,” Braeden said. “I don’t see how it could possibly be him.”

Ignoring him, Serafina searched the room as thoroughly as she could, digging through all of the old chests that he’d left unlocked. She found no trace of the cloak.

“You like him too much,” she said as she searched under the mahogany bed.

“I do not,” Braeden protested.

“We’ll see.”

“He saved Gidean’s life when Mr. Crankshod was going to kill him with an ax,” Braeden said.

Serafina frowned. In Braeden’s mind, the man who saved his dog could do no wrong. When they heard someone coming, they darted back into the ventilation shaft as quickly as they could.

“I don’t think it’s any of the gentlemen at Biltmore,” Braeden said as they made their