“Are you not employed by me?” the captain asked. “Is not your role to do whatever I require?”
“Of course,” Ned lied smoothly. “But as regards to your daughter, I thought—”
“You thought.”
“—that I was meant to—”
“Get her to me long before now. Yes. I grew tired of waiting. So now I have her, and the entire Wisteria Society as well, in one foul swoop. That is how a real captain does it.”
“I’m a real—”
“I mean a captain with an abbey, not a house currently at the bottom of the sea.”
“Actually, it’s still on the beach.”
“Broken into pieces. As you will be if you don’t obey me, Edward. But I am not cruel. I am not vicious. After I’ve tortured and killed the Wisteria ladies, I’m more than happy to give you one of their houses as a reward for your service.”
“Thank you,” Ned said with appropriate gratitude.
“And you will receive the honor of an invitation to Cecilia’s wedding, although you’ll need to hire a decent tailor.”
“Cecilia is to be married?” Ned inspected a smudge on his thumbnail as if it was of more consequence to him than the answer to that question.
“Indeed. I have in my house the Bassingthwaite heir—”
“Her cousin?”
“Yes. Frederick is a sniveling jellyfish, but upon marrying him Cecilia will become mistress of Starkthorn Castle, the greatest man-o’-war in England, not counting my own abbey, of course.”
Ned worked to smile in response. He knew the stories about Starkthorn Castle. Its owners, the merchant family Bassingthwaite, had been on the up and up (i.e., the British definition: “becoming successful,” not the American one: “honest and sincere”) even before they learned how to fly their premises. No haberdashers were more elegant or more ruthlessly ambitious; piracy was almost an easing back of operations for them.
He’d also heard endlessly from Morvath about how CeciliaBassingthwaite’s mother, also named Cecilia, ran from that castle one night into Morvath’s arms, escaping her repressive mother Cess (Cecilia) and grandmother Sissy (Cecilia), renaming herself Cilla, and swearing she would not return to Starkthorn again unless to burn the place down.
And he’d heard from everyone else how Morvath found her in the garden that night and snatched her away against her will.
Ned guessed something between those versions was true. Cilla had ever been an enigmatic figure. She had renounced her proud pirate heritage to marry a man whose only crime up until then had been the composition of a novel so bad publishers had him threatened with legal action if he ever submitted to them again. But by the time Cilla left him, Morvath had gone from dreaming about literary fame to amassing a Gothic abbey, a great stockpile of weapons, and several notebooks filled with plans to destroy England.
Ned was unsure if Cilla had encouraged Morvath’s decline or if she had merely been one of the treasures he’d always intended to capture along the way. After all, she was a Darlington on her mother’s side, and Morvath hated that family with a passion. Eloping with her had been the perfect way to hurt them.
But as a Bassingthwaite on her father’s side, Cilla was practically a pirate princess. Ned could not help but wonder—although Cilla was universally mourned as Morvath’s victim, just who had taught him the flying spell and where to get a good deal on machine guns?
It was all as melodramatic as a Brontë story, and it certainly involved as many ghosts. Cilla and her foremothers, Morvath’s adoptive parents (who had perished in a mysterious fire while punting on the Avon River), and all the other people he had gone on to kill. Thinking about it, Ned’s smile flattened, and he had to glance away before the captain noticed.
In truth, Morvath probably would have become an evilmastermind regardless of who his parents or wife had been. There was a madness in him that need not be traced any farther back than his own broken mind. And now he had a full fleet of battlehouses at his command. He could move forward with his dream to burn down Parliament, seize the throne, and usher in a new age of tyranny, awful poetry, and boring fashions.
All with Ned as his trusted right-hand man.
There was only one apparent flaw in this plan—and it was currently running down the lane in a light blue dress, hat askew and face bared recklessly to the elements.
“Well, well, well,” Ned murmured to himself with a smile as he got to his feet. “If it isn’t the best Cecilia of them all, falling like manna from heaven right into my hands.”
Cecilia had seen the houses rising like hot-air balloons over the trees—albeit rectangular, rigid, and less colorful, without flames beneath, so in fact nothing like hot-air balloons, but a failure of simile was the least of her problems at this moment. She actually resorted to running down the lane, skirts hoisted to her knees, stockings exposed. But there was no one to see her disgraceful behavior. There was no one at all.
Only a lady’s bonnet tumbled over the grass in the magic-stirred breeze, ribbons fluttering wistfully.
Cecilia stopped in the middle of the field, staring at its emptiness. The houses were dwindling into the northeast distance. The silence was like a slap, leaving her dazed.
“Goodness gracious,” she said, and took off her hat.
