Alex reluctantly left, slipping the neighboring gentleman’s gold cigarette case from the table into his coat pocket along the way. Nedwould have whispered,I don’t need anyone at all, but at that moment a shadow fell over him, a coolness, a great dragging silence like the empty dark chambers of an ancient abbey. Ned sighed into his whiskey glass.
“Captain Morvath,” he said as the man slid into a chair. This one didn’t slouch or put up his feet. This one held himself like a cocked weapon.
“Edward Lightbourne.” It was a soft voice, typical of those who long had spoken with great power; a voice that could whisper death in a tower room and far below a man would be strangled among the garden roses.
“You should say Captain Lightbourne,” Ned replied.
“Captain of what? Your house fell off a cliff. Captain of a horse, perchance? Or a rented carriage?”
Ned said nothing, swallowed whiskey. He looked sidelong at the sleek, gray-haired man, seeing only angles like a scimitar, eyes like char, cruel suggestions in the shadows. Behind him, at the far end of the room, Alex was glancing back worriedly. The whiskey burned in Ned’s throat.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Morvath said ominously.
Ned shrugged. “I was busy with a personal matter.”
“You have no personal matters until you get my job done. Who was that man you were just talking to?”
“Some idiot trying to sell me on an investment idea.”
“I hope you didn’t listen to him. Believe me when I tell you people can’t be trusted. Which reminds me, there was an explosion in Chesterfield Street earlier. If you were the one responsible...”
“I wasn’t,” Ned lied complacently.
“I want the girl brought to me safe and sound, Lightbourne. No explosions. Do you understand?”
“I understand.” In fact he was only too well aware of the writhingdepths of Morvath’s psyche, where a bastard heritage the captain could never properly claim lurked like an aquatic monster, rearing now in a moment of narcissism, now in a moment of abject worthlessness. Morvath was riding that monster with the intention of destroying anyone who had offended him, but his plan for Cecilia seemed in some ways worse than destruction.
Ned tried not to think about it. “You can count on me,” he said.
The captain expelled a hissing laugh, and Ned understood he was not counted on beyond the merest fraction. It came as a relief. People whom Patrick Morvath relied upon tended to end up facedown beneath the roses.
“Anyone tries to assassinate her, you kill them,” Morvath said, and Ned tried not to smirk. “Darlington house is on the move. I heard it from over on Curzon Street. Someone is making a real hash of the spell’s unmooring phrase.”
“Interesting.” Ned drank whiskey again and wished he could unmoor himself and fly away to some cozy hearth fire miles from here, where the drink was warm milk and the company not a homicidal maniac.
“Follow them,” Morvath ordered. “Steal a house or, I don’t know, a wheelbarrow for all I care. And no more distractions with ‘personal matters’ if you don’t want me to start docking you.”
“You haven’t paid me any wages at all yet,” Ned reminded him.
“I wasn’t talking about docking wages,” Morvath said, and stared pointedly at Ned’s ear. “Time is running out. Everything must be in place before the Queen’s Jubilee Banquet. All the other elements of my plan are coming together like the lines of an exquisite poem. My spies are ready, my artillery complete. It’s beautiful, Edward, the best plan that’s ever been made. Only this last thing remains. If you fail me with it, or betray me, you’ll be sorry. ‘In the next world I could not be worse than I am in this.’”
Ned nodded. There was really nothing to say when the captain began quoting his ill-fated birth father. At least it was better than when he began quoting his own poetry. Ned tried not to shudder at the very thought. Glancing over the man’s shoulder, he saw that Alex had finally left. Something spiky moved in his heart. Damn that anyone should take a pirate at his word. But he’d gone into this venture alone, and really a friend would only get in the way. He looked back at Morvath coolly.
“What about Miss Darlington?”
Morvath’s face darkened. “I don’t care about her,” he growled. “Just Cecilia. Understand?”
Ned set down his whiskey and turned a smile—hard, sharp, uncompromised by humor—to the older man. “Your servant, sir.”
“Excellent,” Morvath said. “Soon, Edward, very soon, England will burn. It’s going to be a beautiful thing.”
3
a botanical adventure—the influence of ghosts—the wisteria ladies’ society—miss darlington surrenders—preventative measures—a bandit, a skylark—a verbal sally—miss bassingthwaite—the halfpenny bridge—another sally: lunn—cecilia approaches the library
It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles that was the cause of Cecilia’s annoyance that morning, but the honeysuckles embracing her ankles as she tried to walk through the field. Flowers were altogether charming things, giving her hours of occupation as she arranged them in vases and pressed them in poetry books, but this indiscreet manner in which hedges overflowed and rambled all through the grass was decidedly uncouth.
Of course, she would not be trudging through them had the house gone into the actual city of Bath as it was meant. Pleasance could not explain what had happened.
