The man fled toward the kitchen, and Ned, taking a lantern, joggedupstairs in search of the gun turret. He did not particularly want to shoot at ladies—it would inspire them to shoot back, and some of them had excellent aim, what with having been engaged in battles since long before he was born. But he would not fly undefended, either.
He found Miss Dole’s artillery in a room with rose-covered wallpaper and a clutter of sofas and tea tables. After trying at first to navigate the maze of them, he simply climbed over instead. He opened the pink window shutters, cranked the window to full dilation, and wheeled the multibarreled rapid-fire gun into position. Lights were flashing in the distance: town houses, manors, and what looked like a plump, vine-swathed cottage, in hot pursuit above the Devonshire fields.
Ned checked the gun’s hopper and saw it was only half-loaded. By the light of his lantern he rummaged about on nearby shelves before locating more ammunition in a box encrusted with seashells and ribbon. He loaded the hopper and turned the crank, letting off a few rounds as a warning. Smoke billowed everywhere. Coughing, cursing, Ned stepped back. He spied a painted lace fan on the shelves and applied it before his face. Moments later, when the smoke had dispersed, he peered through the window.
The ladies were gaining on them.
“Damn,” he said, and tossed the fan aside. Aiming for chimneys, he fired again, and as bricks exploded in the night there was a battery of return fire. The house banked to avoid it, and Ned clung to the gunwheel so he did not go skidding. Nothing fell—at least the place had good stabilizing magic—but then the house veered in the opposite direction, and he grimaced.
Airsickness was a very unfortunate tendency for a pirate.
“One of these days,” he vowed as he set his teeth and began aiming the gun once more, “I am going to steal a nice little cottage and cruise the Lake District, fishing for blackbirds and—” He had a sudden vision of Cecilia Bassingthwaite in the kitchen of that cottage, dressed inwhite with a rosy tumble of hair, a blackbird pie in her hands, calling him in to supper. “More lovely and more tempestuous than a summer’s day,” he said dreamily, and as the house swooped again he dropped to his knees and vomited.
Suddenly, a force of stone and shadow reverberated up through the floors. The house went still, but the sensation of movement continued, and Ned realized they had landed on Northangerland Abbey’s roof. From below came explosions as the abbey cannons fired. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he got up and looked out the window.
One house, its roof aflame, was sinking toward the ground. Two others followed it, grappling hooks flying from their windows in an effort to catch the house and slow its descent. The remaining pursuers were falling back, and Ned sighed with relief.
A bell chimed melodiously as Miss Dole’s front door opened. Ned closed his eyes, knowing what would come next—
“Lightbourne!”
Captain Morvath was on board.
Clambering back over sofas, making his way around tea tables, he went down to meet the pirates’ pirate.
Morvath stood in the Dole foyer, dressed in black like a vampire or an opera singer; he held a gilded marble egg up to his eye.
“Terrible work,” he said.
“I beg your pardon,” Ned replied, bowing in apology.
Morvath sneered. “I meant the egg. It will look good enough to the undiscerning eye, but is in fact a mere replica of Fabergé’s genius. You got the house here intact. Well done.”
“Thank you.”
“And Cecilia?”
“She escaped my clutches.”
“Your clutches, hey?” Morvath looked at him; Ned returned the stare without blinking. A taut moment followed.
Then Morvath laughed. He tossed up the egg, allowing it to fall on the polished floor. The supposed marble shattered into clay pieces.
“Cheap lies. Nothing but ‘snares and wiles of the tempter, to lure the thoughtless to their own destruction.’ Branwell Brontë said that, you know.” (The fact that actually Anne Brontë said it tells you pretty much all you need to know about Patrick Morvath.) “He had wisdom to fit every occasion. That I inherited his brilliance proves God is on my side and that my mission of restoring England to men’s superior rule is a divine one.”
Stepping on the shards with his booted feet, he approached Ned, reaching into his coat as he came. Ned did not move, although his mind was racing to calculate the last moment at which he could draw the knife from his sleeve and stab Morvath if necessary.
But Morvath only produced a locket, which he showed Ned while at the same time laying an arm across his shoulders. “See this? Know who it is?”
Ned studied the miniature portrait of the woman. It matched that which he had found in Miss Dole’s sitting room and carried now in his own coat pocket. “Yes,” he said.
“My beautiful Cilla. She was the most perfect example of womanhood, and mine—all mine.” His breath reeked of whiskey, but Ned did not dare move away. When drunk, the Captain became even more egocentric in his attitude toward reality, and more than one man had died for taking a step in what Morvath deemed the wrong direction. Ned was still not sure how someone with such a twisted mind managed to handle a building as big as the abbey in flight when even simple truths seemed beyond him.
“I’ll never forgive those Wisteria women for my loss,” Morvath went on, unconsciously proving Ned’s point. “If they hadn’t turned Cilla’s heart against me with their poisonous ideas about women’s rights and dignity, I know she’d never have left me. But it’s not onlythem. Even my own mother thought she could treat me like a nobody and just discard me, although I have the blood of genius running through my veins. Genius! You know, you’ve read my poems.”
“Indeed.”
“Women took my name, my heart, my love, from me. Well, by the time we’re finished, the Wisteria Society, the Queen, every damned Englishwoman, will have nothing left except what I deign to give them.”
