“Top speed.” The butler made it sound as if Alex had asked him to handwash his grandmother’s undergarments.
“If you catch that house, there’s a new duster in it for you.”
“Hurrah,” Bixby proclaimed dryly.
Alex snatched the gun and holstered it in his waistband, then tipped his head toward the steering wheel. Bixby did not sigh, but his entire posture, and the manner in which he tucked the tray beneath his arm, elocuted long-suffering disapprobation. He marched over to the wheel, sonorously intoning the pilot phrase as he went, and for one moment the cottage seemed to come to attention like a footman who knows who’s really boss in a household.
Alex left him to it. Heading down the hallway, past crates of sugar waiting to be smuggled into Ireland, he tried to calm the tumult of thoughts suddenly overwhelming his mind. How had Charlotte Pettifer got into the house? And how could he get her out again, considering they were in hot pursuit, hundreds of feet off the ground? He could throw her out the door, but no doubt she’d just fly back up on that little metallic broom of hers and pester him by rapping at the windows.
With luck, she’d fainted at the mess in his sitting room. Then again, the way his own luck was going, she’d probably give him onelong, slow-blinking look with her smoky green eyes and he’d be the one fainting instead.
Ha, he didn’t mean that seriously, of course. He wasn’t scared of some witch woman who barely came up to his chin.
Even if she was standing in the middle of the sitting room with a pistol in one delicate gloved hand pointed directly at him.
No, not scared, Alex thought as he looked at her.Nor in any way stirred.
Her hat was missing and her hair had escaped its bindings. It poured over her shoulders and down her back in an abundance of fine, soft waves that looked like they were getting their first experience of freedom in years and were making the most of it. Alex wrestled with a sudden strange compulsion to gather that hair in his hands and—
“Stop right there, if you please,” she said archly, making his thoughts crash against each other:gun, hair, such an elegant neck, yes butgun, neck again, do you think she’d shoot you if you tried to lick...
“I said stop,” she reiterated, holding the pistol a little higher, and Alex realized he’d continued walking toward her. He stopped, but his smile kept on going, budging up against her comfort zone. She took a step back.
“I have a gun,” she said unnecessarily.
“And you’re not afraid to use it?” he guessed.
“No, I am afraid to use it. But that won’t prevent me, should you come any closer.”
“I believe you.” He held up both hands to show he was no threat. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
“You know perfectly well. I intend to retrieve my stolen amulet.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Youramulet? I’ve heard of reincarnation, but I always thought if Black Beryl came back to life it would be as a tarantula, not a London girl who doesn’t even know how to release the safety on a gun before pointing it at someone.”
She stared coldly at his smile, but her face was beginning to heat. Alex could not decide if that was due to anger or embarrassment, and he suddenly worried—for he might be a rogue, and making her walk the plank was still an option, but he never wanted to actually hurt her. His mother would have raised him better than that, had she lived beyond his first five years. Instinctively he took half a step forward, an apology forming in his mouth.
Miss Pettifer released the safety and shook back her hair, and he felt himself begin to heat too. Their eyes met.
Ah,said his brain, erasing the apology.So it wasthatkind of heat.
The air seemed to sizzle. Alex could not stand still, but did not want to risk rushing her. He made a careful sidestep.
She did the same in the opposite direction.
“I am the true spiritual heir of Beryl Black, prophesized by generations of witches,” she said. “Therefore, the amulet is rightfully mine.”
“Generations, hey?”
Her jaw twitched. “Well, two generations. But the principle remains.”
“Fair enough. But I’m afraid you won’t find any amulet in this house, darling.”
He stepped; she stepped—circling each other.
“I doubt I could find an elephant in this house,” she retorted, “considering the mess.”
Alex smiled. The room was cluttered with boxes, treasures, piles of tarpaulin, all the usual detritus of a busy pirate. As he took another step he had to kick aside an old holster; as she did, she veered around a crate of gold cups. Only a sofa and low wooden table offered the suggestion of this being a home, although both struggled to serve their purpose, being as they were covered in books, dishes, laundry. And only the painted marble statue of the Virgin Mary, stranded with his mother’s rosary and bolted to a little shelf halfway up one wall, was clean and polished.
