“I like being uncivilized,” he replied, grinning. And he sold the bangle to buy her a pair of embroidered ankle boots and several darts to weaponize them.
“Besides,” he added later, as they sat with Bixby in a tavern booth, quenching their thirst after a long day’s futile searching. “I’m a pirate and smuggler. It’s my job to be uncivilized.” He had his feet on the table as he drank beer. Charlotte sat primly beside him, sipping tea. Bixby, on the other side of the booth, with his fingers propping up his chin and pressed against his mouth, was gazing at something across the room.
“I believe the Wisteria Society would disagree with you,” Charlotte said.
Alex grinned at her sidelong. “Are you complimenting pirates, my darling?”
“Certainly not. They are uncivilized to an extreme degree. However, within that context, they have their own simplistic notion of manners. They would not put their feet up on a table.”
“Only because their clothing won’t allow it.”
“Bixby is a pirate and he manages to sit with appropriate decorum.”
“He’s a butler, not a pirate. And his elbow is on the table.”
“Your behavior is corrupting him.”
Alex laughed. “Daniel, old chap, Miss Pettifer just called you corrupt.”
“I did not,” Charlotte retorted, but Bixby didn’t notice in any case. He remained focused on the distance. Frowning slightly, Alex glanced over his shoulder to see what had transfixed the man. A young, brown-haired woman in a plain dress was walking quietly across the room toward the door.
“Pretty,” he said, shrugging his mouth. “You should go and say hello.”
“One does not just ‘go and say hello’ to a lady,” Bixby murmured reproachfully.
Alex laughed again. “Of course one does! Granted, she doesn’t look your type, since she’s not a diagram in an etiquette manual, but you might get lucky. Go, say hello. I dare you.”
“Oh well then, if I have beendared,I should of course immediately act in a manner contrary to all my education and character,” Bixby replied, deadpan.
“Yes,” Alex said. They gave each other looks that would have involved tongues sticking out were they twenty years younger.
“I was not even looking at her,” Bixby said.
“Sure.” Alex hid a disbelieving smirk by drinking more beer.
Charlotte leaned forward with a frown, judging thisprettywoman for herself. “Good heavens!” she remarked. “That is Miss Dearlove.”
“Who?” Alex asked.
“Mrs. Chuke’s maid.” She looked anxiously about the room. “Mrs. Chuke is here?”
“Mrs. Chuke being a witch, I presume.” Alex slipped his feet down from the table as if expecting trouble at any moment. “Well, the jig had to be up sometime, I suppose. It’s been fun, darling, and if you need a lift home—”
“I beg your pardon?” Charlotte stared at him, bewildered.
He shrugged, not quite meeting her eye. “I assume you will join with this Mrs. Chuke to continue chasing the amulet.”
Charlotte felt suddenly as blank as the space at the end of a chapter in which the heroine has been left in exciting circumstances, but one’s visitors are due any moment now, so reading on is impossible. Both men looked at her, and she swallowed dryly.
“Why would I join with Mrs. Chuke?”
“Well, she is a witch; you are a witch,” Alex reasoned. “You are in league with each other, literally.”
“Yes, but—” She frowned, unable to explain why her heart was pounding. After all, while the past few days had been, as Alex put it, “fun,” her goal remained to retrieve the amulet for the Wicken League. It did make sense to reunite now with her own people. “But—”
“But Miss Pettifer must remain in temporary alliance with you,” Bixby supplied in the calm, reasonable voice Charlotte herself could not manage, “because a flying house may still be needed in the pursuit of Lady Armitage.”
“Exactly!” Charlotte smacked her hand against the table for emphasis, causing her teacup to rattle and pain to shoot up her arm. Alex raised an eyebrow; Bixby almost smiled. Fiends, the both of them! (Her foolish heart tried to budge anrinto that word, but she ignored it.) “However, I would not call this an alliance. We must never forget, gentlemen, that I have kidnapped you.”
