“What are you doing?” Charlotte demanded.
“What does it look like?” Miss Dearlove replied in a quiet, even tone.
“Like you are carving your name on the wheel shaft in an act of petty vandalism common to household servants.”
Miss Dearlove and Alex stared at her incredulously.
“She’s sabotaging the wheel,” Alex said.
“I’m sabotaging the wheel,” Miss Dearlove agreed. She got to her feet, folding the screwdriver back into a besom. “Why are you up here? I left you a trail of rose petals leading to the sitting room, where Lady Armitage is preparing to hold a marriage ceremony.”
“Why did you help us?” Charlotte asked.
Miss Dearlove regarded her coolly, and Charlotte had a sudden, inexplicable desire to run out and pay taxes. She had never before given much attention to the bland little maid, not even when Miss Dearlove had been aiming a gun at her. She realized now the woman’s inconspicuousness had been a clever disguise.
“Lady Armitage will no doubt include the amulet in her bridalensemble,” Miss Dearlove replied. “I suggest if you want it, you hurry downstairs.”
“You sabotaged the wheel yesterday too, didn’t you?” Alex said. “Loosened its connections so the incantation pathway was disrupted and the house couldn’t be properly steered?”
Miss Dearlove ignored this question also. “Vicar Dickersley has agreed to perform the ceremony. Lady Armitage offered him a substantial compensation: his life. Tom Eames is in imminent danger. You really should make haste.”
“Just who are you, Miss Dearlove?” Charlotte demanded.
The woman sighed. “You people have the most confusing priorities. But why am I surprised? Pirates are mad; witches are lunatic. These past few weeks have made me want to join the circus for a rest. I recommend you two get married, so as to keep the insanity contained as much as possible. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere else to be.”
They stared in dumbstruck astonishment as she took up a plain, wide-brimmed hat from a table and, pushing ajar a window, stepped up onto the windowsill.
“You’re a witch!” Charlotte realized—for someone would exit from an upper-story window only if they possessed the facility to incantate (or had grandiose delusions of invulnerability, which is why so many pirates were injured doing it).
“I am not,” Miss Dearlove said, and stepped out.
With a gasp, Charlotte rushed to the window, only to see Miss Dearlove dangling beneath the hat, one hand holding its white ribbons, as she sank at a genteel pace to the ground.
Armitage House was parked beside a Bible bookstore, where the Wisteria Society would never look for it. Once Miss Dearlove set foot on the pavement, she folded the hat remarkably small, tucked it into apocket, and marched away down the street with the steely manner of a librarian who has just seen someone dog-ear a book’s page.
“Who is she?” Charlotte wondered aloud. “And where can I get a hat like that?”
“Why do you need one?” Alex asked. He leaned past her to take a pearl-handled penknife from a desk, tucking it into his boot. “You can levitate with a word.”
“But it seems to be operating on a hitherto unknown magic.”
“Don’t you have enough magic yourself to be going along with?”
“Do you have enough money?”
“Good point.” He found a chisel amongst the navigational array and tucked it into his other boot. “We should probably go get that damned amulet.” With a sudden pleased sound, he grabbed a long-barreled pistol that happened to be lying atop some unfinished knitting. After checking that it was loaded, he turned with a grin to Charlotte.
“Don’t say it,” she warned.
“Tal—”
“Don’t.”
“Tellme that you will come downstairs with me, sweetheart.”
She gave him a disgusted look and marched from the room, and with a self-satisfied smile he followed her, picking up a letter opener on the way.
It is a convention of adventures that the heroes will arrive in perfect time to save a wretched victim from their doom. Charlotte and Alex considered themselves the heroes in this instance—and certainly Tom Eames was about as wretched as it is possible to be without entering a darker genre of narrative. Therefore it was to general astonishment all round when they burst through the doorway to Lady Armitage’s candlelit sitting room just as Vicar Dickersley pronounced these words:
