“Yes, sir,” Ned responded as he was supposed to.
“Or you’ll die trying.”
“Understood,” Ned replied.
Morvath laughed, slapping him on the back. “Good. Now, on to stage three of our plan. Are you ready?”
“More than you can know,” Ned answered—thinking,You bastard.
Literally as well as vulgarly, he added, and tried not to smile.
Morvath snapped shut the locket and held it to his breast. “Oh, Cilla,” he moaned. “Forever my dearest ghost. It hurts unbearably to be parted from you!”
Then you probably shouldn’t have killed her, Ned commented silently.
“Come on, lad,” Morvath said, tucking the locket away again. “Let’s go burn the world.”
7
tea—the accoutrements of a strolling lady—an exotic recipe—mary shelley’s example—miss brown’s observations—a skirmish (mock)—the great peril—cecilia seeks direction—a skirmish (real)—calamity!
If a woman drank tea with all the powers of her puny being, she couldn’t drink as much in eighty years as Miss Darlington did in the following week. There was the everyday routine to be upheld—tea, and tea-with-biscuits, and a quick cup, and medicinal tea, and tea-before-bed, et cetera; but there was also an endless round of tea drunk in various houses with other ladies of the Wisteria Society as they strategized their response to Morvath’s piracy. Friday afternoon they even went into Ottery St. Mary to have tea in a little teahouse where the tablecloths were pink and the spoons were stealworthy.
On this occasion, Miss Darlington, Cecilia, and Pleasance walked into the village with Olivia Etterly, a lady of forty years’ age (and some more she did not acknowledge) who was infamous for having once made Lord Byron cry. Miss Darlington took the journey seated beneath a parasol in a wheeled wicker peacock chair pushed by Pleasance. As they went, she fanned herself so as to protect her lungs fromthe diseases exuded by hedgery, and at regular intervals warned Cecilia about the breeze (“don’t breathe too much, it will chill your heart”), a passing sparrow (“they’re wingèd mice, you know”), and the perils of walking faster than a gentle stroll (“alack, slow down, you will break your ankle at that intemperate pace, my dear!”). Pleasance kept glancing back, for she was anxious leaving the house. In fact, before setting out there had been a fervent discussion about it between her, the pirate ladies, and the monsters in her head.
“It will be stolen!” Pleasance had wept, her hair unraveling, her hands clinging to the balustrade as the ladies tried to convince her to come along.
“Morvath wouldn’t dare take my house,” Miss Darlington had retorted.
“The ghost of the Blood Countess is warning me otherwise!”
“Ghosts aren’t real,” Olivia Etterly had assured her with the authority of a woman who had killed enough people to know.
“The countess told me you’d say that!” Pleasance wailed.
Olivia glanced at Miss Darlington, who shrugged. “She’s a fantastic cook,” Miss Darlington explained. “It’s worth putting up with a few histrionics for the sake of her roast chicken.”
Olivia patted Pleasance’s arm. “Your passion is a credit to your employer, dear girl. I will send my husband over to be a guard. He was a pirate of some disgrace before he retired, and will keep your house safe.”
“But what about your own house?” Miss Darlington asked (mostly concerned that Mr. Etterly might cough on her furniture or drink from her favorite cup).
“Anyone who can get past my pet tiger deserves to steal it,” Olivia said.
And so Mr. Etterly came across in his slippers and smoking jacket, equipped with scrapbooking supplies to while away the afternoon while the ladies took their outing. Miss Darlington had brooked nofurther disagreement. An excursion was vital for Pleasance’s mental health. Besides, someone needed to carry the coats, parasols, medicines, spare daggers, coins, handkerchiefs, and smelling salts that a lady required for any afternoon’s stroll. In addition to pushing the wheeled chair, Pleasance was so laden that, although her mental health may have benefited from the excursion, her physical health was now in significant peril.
Some way down the lane, they encountered Miss Fairweather and Miss Jane Fairweather, also heading into the village for tea. Both were dressed plainly, for being homeless they had been forced to borrow clothes from the other Society ladies until they could steal some of their own. Miss Fairweather’s gown bore only five gold fringes on its bodice, and the bustle was no more than four feet wide. Jane was in brown. In contrast to Cecilia’s fashionable ensemble of pale blue and cream, she looked positively dreary.
Cecilia would rather have worn plain brown herself, but Miss Darlington liked her in elegant clothes “for the sake of the starving children in Bethnal Green,” who presumably would get emotional nourishment (almost as filling as soup and porridge) from Cecilia’s style, if only they could see it.
“Such a good idea of yours to have tea in the village,” Olivia said to the senior Miss Fairweather.
“Yes, although I hope none of the locals have typhoid,” Miss Darlington added.
The senior women fell into the sort of pleasant conversation about enteric fever and other rigors of farming life that only wealthy urban ladies can have. Jane and Cecilia glanced at each other, whereupon Jane brought out her book of battle poems and read in pointed silence.
Cecilia smiled. She did not particularly want to talk with Jane anyway. She was too preoccupied with her own thoughts. Over and again she strove to analyze her last meeting with Captain Lightbourne. Themere recollection of his ungloved hands gripping her wrists caused the same rush of blood, even all these days later. Had he somehow infected her with a malaise through his touch? And why had he, ostensibly Lady Armitage’s hired assassin, been stealing houses on behalf of Captain Morvath? That question made her frown in bemusement, and she hastily tipped her parasol to act as a shield, for a proper lady did not make such an exceedingly vulgar display of emotions in public.
“Hello there,” came a woman’s voice, and they all looked over to see Anne Brown emerge from behind a hedge, rearranging her skirts as she did so. “I’ve just been going to see my aunt,” she explained, and everyone lowered their gaze politely in the face of this bald euphemism.
