“Captain Alex O’Riley, madam. Which, may I add, ismyreal name.”
So he was Irish, as suggested by his mild accent. An Irish pirate in London. Charlotte could only imagine the unbridled poetry he was leaving in his wake. “I cannot say I am pleased to meet you, Mr. O’Riley. But if you leave me your card, I’m sure I’ll acknowledge the acquaintance should we happen to encounter each other again at some public ball or soiree.”
“Or,” he countered, “I could just knock you unconscious, take back my briefcase, and kiss you before I leave.”
He smiled wickedly. Charlotte almost gasped for the second time in twenty-one years. Her outrage was so great, she struggled to summon a witty retort. Elizabeth Bennet, consulted urgently, could only suggest that his arrogance, his conceit, and his selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to bypass her disapprobation and move straight to dislike! But Charlotte did not have time to express all that before he spoke again.
“Forgive me,” he said without the slightest evidence of remorse. “I’m not usually quite so rough. But what else can a pirate do when he meets a lady of the Wicken League?”
He gave her a smug, challenging look.
“I have no idea what you mean,” Charlotte replied.
“No?” He tipped his head to one side as if he might see her better crooked. “I once knew a lady with a similar bracelet featuring bees.”
“It is a common symbol.”
“For her it showed she belonged to a covert league of women skilled in the cunning arts. That is to say, although I believe it must never be said—” Glancing around to be sure no one could hear him, he leaned so close Charlotte could see the sparks of mockery in his eyes. “Witchcraft.”
Charlotte considered this for a moment, then discarding Elizabeth Bennet in favor of Lydia, she stomped down hard on his foot.
Purple smoke burst from her heel. Bother—wrong shoes! The churl might sicken if he breathed in that smoke, but since it was some six feet below his mouth and nose, the risk of even that was minimal. She herself was in more danger, being shorter than him. Luckily, surprise had caused him to weaken his grip, and Charlotte yanked free, bashed him in the gut then under the chin with his own briefcase, and made a run for it.
“Stop!” he shouted, but did not follow, on account of being hunched over, clutching at his stomach. Charlotte knew, however, that he’d soon recover and catch up to her. Escaping on foot was going to be impossible. Almost without thinking, she grabbed hold of the delivery boy’s bicycle and clambered on as quickly as her skirts would allow.
The machine wobbled as she began to ride it across the cobblestones. She spoke rushed words under her breath. A lady hurried out of her way, a cry could be heard from what she guessed was the delivery boy, and she went on urgently muttering, muttering, until all at once the bicycle lifted from the footpath into the sunlit air.
Alex grinned through his pain as he watched the witch take flight. Pedestrians were gasping and pointing at the sight of a woman on an airborne bicycle—or perhaps because her lace drawers were made visible by the billowing of her skirts. She really was rather magnificent, he conceded, with her rich strawberry blonde hair and her eyes like tornado weather, not to mention her delightful willingness to maim or kill him. Her manner, though, reminded Alex a little too much of his childhood nurse. The thought of kissing her, mingled with the recollection of Nanny smacking his bottom, made a man more flustered than he wanted to be on a public street.
Besides, Alex disliked witches on general principle. While he’d only ever known one before, that had been one more than enough.Even the memory of her made him wince, and he hastily transformed the expression into a brooding scowl, in case someone was watching.
The Wisteria Society, leaders of the pirate community, considered witchcraft déclassé,and Alex tended to agree with them, although he preferreddevious, destructive,and other alliterative words he could not think up just at that moment. Although the Wicken League employed the same magical incantation as pirates, they chose to do so subtly. Alex found this suspicious. What kind of person preferred to trifle with minor things—pumpkins, people, bicycles—when they could fly actual buildings? And why do it secretly, when infamy was possible?
On the other hand, he also agreed with the witches when they called pirates unjustifiably arrogant. He himself was entirely justified in his arrogance, but some pirates he knew could benefit from the Wicken League’s assessment. Not that such a thing would ever happen, since the two societies took such mutual pleasure from hating each other that they never willingly met. Alex would not have chased the woman today had he realized she belonged to the League. He might be a nefarious privateer, but he did not generally ask for trouble.
Mind you, the witch was the one heading for trouble now. Flying a bicycle over a crowded street was rather inconducive to the League’s precious secrecy, and when her fellow witches learned about it, she was going to be in more danger than she ever would have been with him.
At the thought, he smiled and waved up to her. Losing his briefcase was a nuisance, for he’d come up to Town for a spot of blackmailing, maybe a swindle or two, and her robbery had mucked that up. But mostly he just felt glad to see her go. Never mind that he could still smell her enticingly puritanical scent of plain soap, nor that his—er, hisfootwas throbbing from her impact on him. Alex respected women enough to know when to keep the hell away from them.
But goodness, those certainly were very pretty drawers.
Charlotte frowned as she pedaled upward. All her life she had been bound by one rule. Well, that is to say, several dozen rules, such as never put the milk in before the tea, never slouch on the sofa, and always brush one’s hair a hundred times before bed. But beneath the petty requirements that governed women’s existence, there was one particular to the circumstances of a witch.
Never do magic in public.
Oh, she might fling a book and make it seem that she’d used her hand to do so. She might stop a wagon, toss its produce to create a diversion. But obvious magic—that was strictly forbidden. Not only might she be burned alive if caught, but she endangered the entire League. Just because no one had encountered a witch hunter in more than a century didn’t mean they weren’t out there, stalking the streets and haunting the nightmares of decent, law-breaking witches. Charlotte had been raised better than to break a rule, take a risk.
And certainly Elizabeth Bennet would never do it.
Yet here she was, riding a bicycle above a busy London street at noon while a crowd of pedestrians stared up at her in horrified amazement.
Stupid,Charlotte castigated herself. Some man grabs your arm, smiles at you like he’s slowly unlacing your brain, and you panic and throw twenty-one years of scrupulous caution to the winds—literally. The briefcase’s contents had better prove worth it.
Her hat feather fluttered in the breeze as if from memory. Her skirts billowed around her knees. Charlotte pedaled hard to gain height. If she could just surmount the rooftops, she’d be away free. Unable to resist an anxious glance down at the street, she saw Captain O’Riley waving cheerfully to her. There was something in his hand—
Bother! He’d stolen her purse.
“Odious churl!” she shouted, and shook the briefcase at him. He laughed. The bicycle wavered perilously, and as Charlotte tried to grip its handlebars with both hands, the briefcase’s latch snapped. Before she could do anything, it tipped open.
