“Fine.” He stepped back, releasing her, and performed a deep bow. “Miss Bassingthwaite, may I beg the honor of introducing myself?”
“You may,” she said, rocking slightly and pressing a hand against her brow. “Only do it quietly.”
He grinned. “Ned Lightbourne, Miss Bassingthwaite. Captain of Her Majesty’s secret police brigade, at your service.”
“So you say.”
He blinked, taken aback. “You don’t believe me?”
“Of course not,” she replied with a dry laugh.
“Very well.” He bowed again. “Ned Lightbourne, Miss Bassingthwaite. Tired man trying to do the right thing.”
Cecilia acknowledged him with a nod. “Captain Lightbourne, I have heard so much about you. It is a pleasure to”—she held up her hand, and they both waited while her stomach contemplated whether it wished to join in the conversation—“to make your acquaintance,” she concluded, and turned to vomit over her corset on the floor.
(As a feminist statement, it was ambiguous at best.)
“Oh dear,” Ned said sympathetically. “Why don’t you go back to bed?”
“I am fine,” she averred, wiping her mouth with her gloved hand, and then departed for the bathroom. Ned heard water running and teeth being scrubbed to within an inch of their lives. Several minutes later she returned, fresh albeit gloveless. She waved a hand at Ned. “Hurry up, stop this loitering, we must be on our way at once!”
Ned opened his mouth to argue, then smiled instead. “Surely a decorous lady cannot go out in public with neither corset nor gloves?”
Irritation and disdain formed an unlikely union in her countenance. “Another word, sir, and you shall go out in public without teeth.”
(Whereas that went more to the point.)
And there it was. She might have a shady heritage of Romantic intellectualism, but she’d been raised pure pirate. Ned bowed to her again, smirking, and then followed her to the door. She opened it, and they stared at the distinguished couple and porter standing on the other side of the threshold.
Ned immediately placed his hat upon his head. “We were sent to the wrong room,” he pronounced in Lord Albert’s ostentatious voice before anyone else could speak.
“This one is a travesty,” Cecilia added, sounding eerily like her aunt. “Someone has made an appalling mess which has been left uncleaned. We are going downstairs now to complain to management.”
“Um,” said the dumbstruck porter.
“Out of the way,” Ned demanded, and the porter shuffled back.
“I will not be recommending this hotel to my good friend the Duchess of Leinster,” Cecilia said as they marched through the doorway and along the corridor. “Do you remember, my dear, how Hermione was talking of her wish to come to Sidmouth?”
“I do indeed, my dear,” Ned replied. “But this place will not suit at all.” He didn’t need to glance back to know they were being watched. And then—
“Oh my heavens!” cried the lady, obviously having looked into the room.
Ned placed his hand on Cecilia’s elbow and they increased their pace so as to reach the stairs a moment later and disappear from view.
“Do you really know the Duchess of Leinster?” Ned asked as they hurried down the stairs.
“Of course,” Cecilia said. “That is, we would have been introduced had she not been engrossed in the opera while I was relieving her ofan emerald hair comb. The weight of such jewelry causes terrible headaches in women, you know.”
“So kind of you to help her in that way. How is your own headache?”
“It will surely kill me.” They turned off the stairs and into a corridor leading toward the kitchen. “But as long as it does so after I have rescued the Society, I cannot complain.”
“Brave girl,” he said, and shoved her into a broom closet.
“Well I n—”
He slapped a hand over her mouth and, pushing his own way into the small space between brooms, buckets, and mops, closed the door silently behind them.
