No, she thought, scrubbing her forehead with both hands. No, she was not all right. She was frightened and lonely, and her heart ached with an unbearable longing for her mother’s wild and gentle smile. She wanted the shooting to stop. She wanted a cup of tea.
“I’m fine,” she said into the trumpet. “I need to go in and rescue my aunty.”
“But that’s—”
He stopped, but she heard it in his silence.That’s like walking into a deathtrap.Her heart thundered, panic surging once more. A deathtrap holding Aunt Darlington. And Pleasance. And all the mad, magnificent ladies of the Wisteria Society. She should never have left; sheshould have remained to fight at their side, regardless of what they ordered.
She should have remained with her mother, so that Cilla had not died alone.
All her life she had run away, doing as she was told, escaping into emptiness and leaving death in her wake.
Suddenly the house swooped to avoid gunfire from the abbey, and Cecilia almost fell. She caught herself against the cannon, but her stomach seemed to keep falling, and she knew if she stayed in this room she would devolve into hysterics. So she gathered up her skirts and ran again—in the right direction this time.
Ned had done an excellent job with the stabilizing magic, but even so Cecilia bashed against the wall and the balustrade as she made an unsteady course downstairs. She stumbled into the wheelroom, and Ned looked at her with calm eyes that suggested he’d been expecting her arrival.
“I’m not letting you go back in there.” His tone was conversational, but final.
“Move away from my wheel,” she replied.
“Your aunt wouldn’t want you to risk— Wait, what is that?”
He stared at something out the window. Suspecting a trick, Cecilia grasped the wheel. But he did not let go, and his grip was so strong she could not move it even a degree.
“Look,” he said, nodding at the window.
Cecilia squinted through the bright morning light. “It’s a house,” she said dismissively. “Give me back my wheel.”
He shook his head. “Too small for a house.”
She tried to shove the wheel again but failed. The flying object caught her eye as it flashed with sunlight. She looked more carefully and identified it. “That’s a garden shed.”
“I think you’re right,” Ned agreed. “Someone’s escaping.”
They stared at the shed for a taut moment, then turned to each other.
“Morvath,” they said in unison.
“It could be anyone,” Ned added reasonably.
“But it’s him,” Cecilia countered. “I can feel it.”
“That’s a very Brontë thing to say.”
Cecilia arched an eyebrow. “Well then, allow me to consult my possible Darwin heritage instead.” She took the spyglass from a nearby shelf and held it to her eye. The world was a vast black emptiness, echoing like the mordant spaces between soul-wrought words...
Ned leaned across and removed the lens cap, and poetry became science again.
Cecilia adjusted the focus and saw a tiny window on the garden shed. More adjustments brought her through that to see a silver head inside. She immediately recognized her father.
“Er, are you all right?” Ned asked hesitantly.
Cecilia blinked and the world expanded. She realized she had thrown the spyglass across the room, shattering Countess Ambury’s stained-glass lamp.
“It’s him,” she confirmed, and pointed out the window. “Follow that shed, Ned.”
They flew after it, Ned muttering the incantation’s third stanza under his breath to increase their propulsion as the town house strained to keep up with the speedy little shed.
“Faster, if you please,” Cecilia said; and tapped her boot heel against the floor; and crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. “Faster,” she reiterated.
