Ned did not answer, for he was still chanting the stanza, but his frown was eloquent. Cecilia paced away; rearranged a few books on theshelves; tapped her heel again. “Really,” she said, pacing back, “this is your top speed? A tongue-tied schoolboy translating from the original Latin could do better.”
“Why don’t you steer?” he suggested, stepping away from the wheel. She grasped it immediately and, alas, officiously. Ned tried not to laugh. “I’ll man the guns,” he said.
Cecilia stopped, tripping over the first word of the stanza. “Wait—what?”
Ned looked at her blankly. “The guns. To shoot him down. I assume we want to do that? What with him being an evil villain who must be stopped and all.”
“Of course,” she said, but her voice was as blanched as her face had become.
“Or perhaps not?” Ned added gently.
Cecilia hesitated. She watched the garden shed tilt and veer as it raced for the horizon.
His hair had been red when he was young.
Cecilia remembered him telling her that, although she’d never actually seen it herself, for he’d gone gray before she was born. Her mother told her he’d been so vain about those Titian curls, and worn little silver spectacles although his eyesight was perfect, and read literary papers he barely comprehended, all to be as much like Branwell Brontë as possible. His adoptive parents had named him George, after the old king, but when he learned the truth of his origins he changed it to Patrick, in honor of his Brontë grandfather, and found a sense of belonging at last in that noble lineage. Poet... pirate... dastardly villain.
One night he had shown Cecilia a portrait of himself as a youth, and he’d laughed delightedly at her wide-eyed reaction.
“But you’re prettier now,” she’d said, touching the silver strands of his hair.
He had laughed again, but this time it sounded sharp, like a sword brushing against skin. She had upset him, just like that. “Sorry,” she’d murmured, lowering her eyes.
“Men aren’t pretty,” he had explained. “Men are handsome or distinguished. And red hair is my Brontë heritage, as it is yours. That heritage is something to be proud of, Cecilia Patricia.”
She’d had no idea what he meant. She had been so little, her knees did not reach the edge of the sofa. So little she should have been in bed, with her dolls and her maniac cockatiel wallpaper, and her nursemaid embroidering the veil she planned to be married in just as soon as her fiancé returned from visiting a mysterious count in Transylvania. But Morvath, having drunk a little too much brandy that night, had been in a talkative mood.
“What is heritage?” Cecilia had asked him, the private dictionary in her mind waiting excitedly to add a new word.
“Heritage? Why, it is everything! My father, the great poet Branwell Brontë, has bestowed upon us all that is best about us. His imagination, his passion, his wild Irish spirit. It flows through me to you. I know that you will grow up to be a storm!”
Cecilia had tried to be tempestuous for him, but it always gave her a headache. She’d been relieved when Aunt Darlington took her in hand. Even readingWuthering Heightshad proven a trial—she’d kept wanting to edit it.
But in this moment, standing in the Darlington House wheelroom watching Morvath escape the consequences of his evil yet again, she felt a tempest raging through her. The man deserved to die! He had slaughtered her mother—Ned’s mother—perhaps even Aunt Darlington. He had kidnapped the Wisteria Society and plotted to overthrow the rightful queen. She turned to tell Ned yes, shoot him down.
Ned waited quietly for her response. His face was wan, his eyes tired, but Cecilia saw him for a moment as she had when he first knocked on her door in Mayfair, dressed in a ridiculous coat, trying to make her believe something impossible. The mix of sweetness and danger was still there now, tilting his smile even though he was trying to keep his expression gentle. And she felt the same certainty she had all along—that despite calling himself an assassin, he wanted to make the world better, a little brighter, a little more amusing, if he could.
She smiled back at him.
“No,” she said. “Shoot him down for yourself if you will, to avenge your mother, but I won’t ask you to be a killer.”
For the briefest moment his complacency fractured, revealing the grief, loneliness, vulnerability, beneath. And then he shrugged.
“I’m in favor of not wasting ammunition,” he said. “Let’s just follow. He’ll have to land sooner or later.”
Their gazes held, their souls reaching out to share a moment of deep, wordless understanding. Then Cecilia nodded.
“Good,” she said briskly.
They turned back to the window and watched the shed slam into a hillside and explode in flames.
20
triumph—a lack of spirits—through the looking glass—inconsolable—near death by door slamming—special hugs—little deaths—the first good-bye
If Ned had his life to live over again, he would have made a rule to never read Morvath’s manuscripts or listen to his poetic accounts of his various murders, not even once a week. The past two years had been excruciating. But it was over now. As he flew Darlington House back toward the battlefield, he could see in the distance houses cluttered on the ground between Northangerland Abbey and Windsor Castle. Ned smiled. Morvath’s grand misogynist dream to conquer the world had met the full force of ladies and collapsed in less than an hour. Morvath himself was dead.
That’s natural selection for you.
