“Help her up now, please,” Cecilia added, “so she may have her tea.”
“You’re joking, Cecilia.”
“Do I ever joke?”
He frowned, she sighed with exasperation, and they stared at each other. You could have cut the tension (both psychological and sexual) with a knife. Which is exactly what Lady Armitage intended to do. Taking advantage of the distraction, she tugged the blade from her sleeve and threw it at the signor.
The air seemed to flash and shout. Lady Armitage’s knife crackeda plate Cecilia had flung like a discus toward it, then veered off course and impaled itself in the previously shot shoulder of Jacobsen, lying stupefied on the floor. He jolted up, screaming, his eyes flung open in shock, and Cecilia promptly returned him to unconsciousness with a brisk application of the tea tray.
The signor looked about to comment but drank his tea with a politic silence instead. Lady Armitage began reaching for the knife concealed in her other sleeve.
“We do not have time for this,” Cecilia said. “Aunty, Morvath has kidnapped the Society and stolen their houses. You can imagine the terrible danger my aunt Darlington will be facing in Northangerland Abbey. Yours is the only battlehouse remaining. We need it to effect a rescue. Furthermore, I have a hangover from eating seafood and may die at any moment, leaving you the only pirate captain available.”
“I’m—” the signor said, then sighed. “Never mind.”
“Good heavens!” Lady Armitage declared. “Why did you not say so from the start? Of course I shall help.” She began to lift herself from the ground, accepting Signor de Luca’s rather cautious assistance (for she could have got up on her own, absolutely, her knees were as strong as a maiden’s, but a lady does like to be given her due respect). Once standing, her hair quivering, she extended her hand, palm up. After a moment of reluctance, Signor de Luca surrendered the key into it. Turning away, she lifted her skirts, rummaging beneath them. Metal scraped against metal.
Ned looked at Cecilia, an eyebrow raised.Chastity belt, she mouthed, and his face contorted in horror.
Lady Armitage turned back, smoothing her skirts and holding up a small, golden, slightly damp key. “We sail at once,” she pronounced in a ringing voice. “No one kills Jemima Darlington but me.”
13
hell on earth—a lost opportunity—semi-starvation—lady armitage gets a taste of her own medicine—a shot in the dark—the psychology of pneumonia—albert and victoria, bible students, not mannafrom heaven—fade to black
One can be happy in eternal solitude: a book, a cup of tea, and no company; that was Cecilia’s idea of heaven. Having spent the past week surrounded by people, and thwarted at every turn in her efforts to locate a library, she was now feeling as if she had endured an upper circle of hell.
As a consequence, she stood at the window of Lady Armitage’s dining room with her arms crossed and her mouth tight as she stared out across the lush green fields where they had finally moored for the evening. “Blackdown Hills,” she said—alas, not for the first time. “Hills. We have seen nothing but meadows for hours now.”
“There was that hill in Stockland,” Ned reminded her as he set a plate of cold meats on the table. She glanced at it unhappily.
Without servants in the house, they had been forced to contrive a dinner from whatever they could find in the kitchen, so whilst Lady Armitage mapped out a plan of reconnaissance for the morning, andJacobsen shouted from the room in which they had him locked, Ned and Cecilia had searched cupboards and pantries for food.
This had presented an ideal opportunity for charming comic scenes that would increase their rapport—a little explosion of flour, a splashing back and forth of water, a bumping of hips and gazes as they maneuvered the small kitchen spaces and reached awkwardly for spoons—but since Ned was queasy from airsickness, and Cecilia had just about reached the end of her tether, they had wasted said opportunity and managed to lay a dinner table in sadly efficient time.
It was slim pickings, with only two types of sliced meat, cold roast potatoes, smoked fish, scallop fritters, bread rolls with sweetened butter, asparagus, artichoke hearts, and a braised apple dessert that Ned had whipped up while Cecilia prepared the guns for possible battle and Lady Armitage bunny hopped the house across farm fields before finally coming in to land.
Cecilia didn’t think she had an appetite even for such meager offerings. Every time she tried to rest her thoughts, they turned into a sword slicing through sunlight, Cilla screaming at her to run, Morvath laughing as he ripped her world apart. She grew unbearably tense with memory and fear. Was Aunt Darlington being killed that same way, even now? Ned had promised not. And yet, which Ned exactly had promised? The charming assassin, the Queen’s noble Captain Smith, or the man who had been working with her father? Could she trust anything he said? Her brain advised not, but her heart whispered otherwise. As for her stomach—it was more taut than Lady Armitage’s hair.
She’d expected to have found the abbey by now. Although Ned had explained that Morvath kept on the move, and Jacobsen had confirmed this on pain of having the information seduced out of him by Lady Armitage if he did not speak fast, she’d still assumed a day would be enough to find a hulking great abbey accompanied by various battlehouses—especially considering the geography of the area.
“Only an Englishman would call that knoll a hill,” she said. “The village’s church tower was higher.”
“That was because of the angle you were viewing it from,” Ned replied complacently. “Besides, look at all that horizon out there, full of mystery and distant magic.”
She gave him a long, cool look. Despite his mischievous grin, he appeared worn-out: unshaven, his eyes shadowed, his clothes dusty from the road. Cecilia supposed she herself was not much better. “Nevertheless,” she said, “the name Blackdown Hills conjures a different impression than this.” She indicated the view from the window.
Wandering over, Ned put his hands in his pockets as he looked out across sunset meadows of rural peace, speckled with sheep and trimmed with lush hedges of wild rose and brambleberry. “I will admit,” he said, “it’s not the typical location for a villain’s lair.”
Cecilia sighed. She felt tremulous—which was due entirely to worry, she told herself, and not the presence of the scoundrel so close beside her. After all, she was a strong, modern woman. A blackstocking, if you will. If Ned Lightbourne dared kiss her again, she would... she would... make him walk the plank! Although there wasn’t far for him to fall in these so-called hills. Slapping would be better! Mind you, she did not want to gain a reputation as a slapper. Stab him! Yes, that was a lovely thought. She would thrust a long, heavy knife into him, penetrating—
“Goodness, it’s very hot in here,” she murmured, and tugged on the window latch.
Ned glanced at her sidelong, smiling as if he could read her thoughts. “Are you quite well, Cecilia?”
“Just worried, that’s all.” The window would not open. She muttered something as she tugged harder.
“Let me.” As he reached over to fiddle with the latch, his sleeve brushed her bodice. His scent of road dust and apple peel slippedthrough her senses. Cecilia took a hasty step back, knocked into a chair, stumbled forward again, and found herself pressed entirely against his body. Her inner Miss Darlington gasped. Her inner pirate remarked upon how many weapons he had secreted in interesting places. And her inner Lady Armitage, which even the sweetest girl has somewhere deep inside, whispered that not all of those hard-edged items were weapons and if she pressed a little closer—
