“... Thou art a blushing apple, and I the worm of love...”
She found what she was seeking in a porcelain doll dressed as Olga the Ogre, an émigré pirate rumored to have bathed in the blood of virgin boys. (It was actually pomegranate juice, excellent for the skin, but Olga saw no need to ruin her reputation by advertising this.)
“... We shall populate the family tree with our sunlit fecundity...”
Olga had died being trampled by the cattle of a mad Scottish baron she had been trying to ride (er, the cattle, not the baron), but her doll still contained beneath its scarlet dress a vicious little knife seven-year-old Cecilia hid there in the days before she and her mother escaped the abbey. She hastily tucked the knife into her garter belt, causing Frederick to almost swoon at the sight of her leg.
“I say,” he gasped. “Even knowing your breeding, I did not expect such a fine filly! You remind me of my sister; she has the same ravishing calves...”
Cecilia stared narrowly at the wall for a moment, then tappedagainst one of the birds. Nothing happened. She tried another, then another. Finally, the wall shifted as a secret door came ajar. Hinges groaned. Mustiness wafted out. As Frederick continued to wax eloquent about his sister’s figure, she stepped into the darkness beyond the wall.
Twelve years was a long time, but Cecilia had never forgotten this particular hidden passage, having taken it scores of times as a child. Walk straight for a minute, follow a bend to the right, go three steps down, and open a door into Morvath’s library.
“It’s very dark,” Frederick said, trailing behind her. Cecilia stopped, swallowing an impatient word.
“Why don’t you wait in the bedroom?” she suggested, turning back toward him.
“But I would follow you into the pits of hell, dearest Cecilia.”
“I’m not going there. I’m going to the library, and thereon to kill my father. You’ll be safer in the bedroom. I’ll come back for you afterward.”
“Kill Morvath? How I love your kittenish humor. When we are married—”
“I’m not joking,” Cecilia interrupted him. “I never joke. Allow me to be plainer, Cousin Frederick. Either wait in the bedroom or be stabbed here, now.”
“But I—”
“Just listen to the lady,” came a suggestion from the darkness behind Cecilia. She sighed. At this rate, she would be older than Lady Armitage before she got to set foot in a library again.
“Captain Lightbourne,” she said wearily.
She did not need to see him to feel his grin; the heat of it burned into her spine. “Miss Bassingthwaite. We meet again. Again.”
“Fiend.”
“I’m glad to see you too. The chloroform should have worn off hours ago. It was almost as if you didn’t want to wake up.”
“Cad.”
“And yet you woke still so eloquent.”
She tried to think fast. The situation was not good: caught in a lightless passage between a sniveling jellyfish and a smirking scoundrel, with only knife enough for one of them, and a library just out of reach.
“You can’t spin around and kick me in the unmentionables,” Ned mused, answering her thoughts. “The passage isn’t wide enough for that. You can’t run; Freddy’s in the way. And the weapon you almost certainly have hidden somewhere is useless, since your back is to me. There’s also the aggravating factor of this gun I have pointed at your head. Go back into the bedroom, Cecilia.”
“I say!” Frederick pouted. “You can’t call me Freddy in that manner, Lightbourne. I am a scion of the noble pirate family Bassingthwaite and you are a homeless nobody!”
“Actually,” Ned replied, “in Portugal I am known as Duarte Leveport, Baron of Valando, a title gifted to me after I—er, did a favor for Princess Maria Amélia. Therefore, I outrank you,Freddy. Now, get out of the way so the lady can return to her room.”
“She’s not a lady.”
Ned cocked his pistol. “I beg your pardon?”
“She’s an angel.” Frederick flung out his arms expansively. There was a crack as his wrists smacked against the walls. “Ow! See the pain I suffer on your behalf, dear Cecilia?Ladyis too meager a term for one so—”
“Just shoot him,” Cecilia said.
“I would, but I’m worried about ricochets in this small space,” Ned answered.
