“Dancing a tango—”
“We’ll get it back—”
“And then into a dip—”
“We’ll beat him with—”
“Kid gloves—”
“Hear! Hear!”
“Hair like spun gold, even with the wax—”
“And leather whips—”
“All hot and melting—”
“And then we’ll cut off his—”
“And you can eat it with—”
“Lady Armitage.”
Cecilia froze, with her teacup almost to her lips, as she listened even more determinedly to what was being said about her assassinatrix. But Constantinopla had worked herself into quite a passion about her fencing master, and any useful information was so jumbled with descriptions of the master’s manliness that Cecilia’s resulting impression was of Lady Armitage undulating her hips in skintight breeches while conspiring with the butler to thrust and twirl in Miss Fairweather’s cockpit—at which point her brain, not to mention her modesty, threatened to implode.
She set her teacup on the table and rose. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “but I might just visit the powder room.”
“You do look a little heated,” Constantinopla remarked. “Why don’t you go outside for some fresh air?”
“But it’s dark,” Jane said, shocked into joining the conversation.
“I don’t mind that,” Cecilia said. “It’s a good idea. If my aunt asks, would you tell her I’ve gone to powder my nose?”
The two other girls hesitated at the thought of lying to Miss Darlington, who was infamous for evicting a maid from her service just for saying there were no crumpets when there was in fact one remaining, green and stiff with age, at the back of the pantry—evicting her, that is, while the house was one hundred and twenty feet above Oxford Street. Had the maid’s hooped petticoat not served as a parachute, her termination might have proved terminal. But both girls were scoundrels born and bred and ultimately could not resist a deception.
“Of course,” Constantinopla said, grinning. “Take your time.” She bounced her eyebrows suggestively, as if Cecilia was going outdoors to smoke a cigar or give money away to charity.
“It’s your funeral,” Jane said, with a tint of hope in her voice, and went back to reading.
The senior ladies were too engrossed in their discussion to notice Cecilia slip from the room. She took the hallway unseen (other than by a maid, two footmen, and the butler) and stepped out into the night with a sigh of relief. The butler offered to fetch her coat but she declined, and as he closed the door behind her with a punctilious click of the latch, she inhaled the dark quiet of evening.
Goose bumps rose on her arms and she rubbed them complacently. The cold was restorative. The several houses surrounding her were lit here and there as husbands or servants went about their gentle evening occupations. Only one seemed to flare, then darken, then flare again, as if the occupants were rushing about with lanterns. Cecilia felt a sense of peace.
She wandered away from Mrs. Rotunder’s door and stood gazingeast at the mountains she had noticed earlier. They spiked an alluringly secretive horizon. One day she’d fly her own house into such a horizon, chasing adventure, stealing treasure, hunting down her father to murder him, dancing on the unfettered winds. The Wisteria Society ladies could not deny her promotion forever.
She looked west, but then frowned and turned back to stare again at the mountains. How unusual they were—all blocks and heavy spires, quite unlike the plump hills she was accustomed to seeing around southern England. Her heart tossed up melancholy images of towers from her childhood home. How miserable she had been in those dark days, huddled in a corner reading while her father stalked the halls raving about poetry and pain, her mother wept, and the old abbey ghosts moaned dutifully. Then her mind, not to be outdone, joined in with visions ofJane Eyre’s Thornfield Hall, and Cecilia gasped, clutching instinctively at her locket. She understood now what exactly it was she was seeing against that eastern horizon.
She would have returned at once to Mrs. Rotunder’s drawing room but suddenly someone was behind her, wrapping their arm around her waist and pressing a knife to her throat.
“Good evening, Miss Bassingthwaite.”
“Captain Lightbourne,” she replied frostily, recognizing not so much his voice but the smirk beneath it. “As we are still not formally acquainted, I must insist you step back.”
“But I am concerned for your health, Miss Bassingthwaite. You have come outside without coat or shawl. You might catch a chill. I consider it my duty to warm you with a frisson of fear.”
“I am fine, thank you, and would appreciate not being assassinated in a field like some yeoman. Perhaps we could make an appointment for the next time I am in town?”
He smiled against her hair. And although Cecilia was not afraid, inexplicably she began to warm.
