“No, thanks, I only drink tea.”
His brain laughed at him. Looking up, he found Cecilia in front of him with a mug in one hand, a book in the other, all her lovely hair bound neatly again, and no hint of emotion on her pale, beautiful face.
“I thought so,” she said, passing him the mug. He took it numbly and stared into the steaming milky tea. Well, damn.
“How did you walk in here so silently?” he asked.
“If ever I can’t open a door without being heard, I’ll quit piracy in shame, retire to the countryside, and take up a gentle lifestyle of raising poultry and blackmailing village parsons.”
“Fair enough.” He sipped tea, trying to regain some equilibrium. “Where did you go? I was a little disconcerted.”
“I needed a book in case of emergencies.”
“You mean like being attacked by foul-mouthed highwaymen?”
“No, I mean those moments when nothing important is happening, such as during travel. After supper. Before sleeping. Or whilst one’s opponent reloads their gun.”
“Ah. So you were in the hotel library?”
“Can you believe they don’t have one?” She shook her head incredulously, and Ned sipped tea again to hide his smile.
“Shocking,” he murmured.
“Indeed. Luckily, the local Young Women’s Christian Association has a reading room. It carries only religious tracts, but when Iaccidentally knocked over a stack of Bibles, I found this hiding behind them. Who would have thought young women in a small town would be interested in Gothic scenes of wild, dark passion?”
She held out the book for him to see, and Ned raised his eyebrows.
“Wuthering Heightsagain. Are you really sure you want to be reading that?”
“Of course.” She held it protectively against her breast. He registered then that she was dressed in a brown riding ensemble and wondered if the Young Women’s Christian Association had a wardrobe attached to it, or if she’d been elsewhere that morning. “Why shouldn’t I read it?” she asked.
“Because your father is planning to go to war on the basis of it?”
“Surely not. It is only a book.”
“A Brontë book. It represents the bastard heritage that drives all he does. You know if Branwell Brontë hadn’t fooled around with—”
“How dare you speak like that to me!” Her outrage was so strong, she rocked with the force of it.
“—or even if he’d married her, then Morvath would have grown up with a secure sense of identity and no need to prove himself. Almost certainly we would have been saved his many crimes and the war he intends to bring upon us now. Heathcliff is a moody child compared to your father.”
“‘Almost certainly’ is an oxymoron,” she said, and turned away, the long brown feather on her hat flicking the air disdainfully. She opened a small door in the sideboard, rummaging within for something to steal. “Moreover, what would a mere henchman know about anything?”
“Is there ever any point in me saying ‘Captain’?”
“No.”
“And I know because I’ve had to listen to Morvath read aloud from his memoirs and poems. He did not inherit his aunts’ talent, I can tellyou that. He did, however, inherit their overwrought sense of drama: ‘Woe is me, I was adopted out, therefore shall burn down the world in revenge!’ Besides, my mother—that is, I met your mother.”
She went very still. “Did you indeed? Well. Are you almost ready to leave? I would like to be in Lyme Regis as soon as possible.”
“Jemima Darlington would have seven fits if she knew you were reading a Brontë novel.”
“The many things Aunt Darlington doesn’t know about me would kill her outright, I’m sure. Besides, the Brontës are my heritage too.”
“Only partly. The rest is a respectable line of pirates tracing back to—”
“Thank you, sir, but I do not need a lecture on my own history from a man who goes by seventeen different names.” She closed her eyes, pressing a hand over her mouth. Ned watched her anxiously. He should not have said anything. But to hear Patrick Morvath’s daughter speak in such defensive tones of her paternity made Ned shudder. Cecilia was beautiful, beguiling, but if she bore even the merest sympathy for her father, then she would have to be taken out of play, regardless of Ned’s personal feelings.
