Lady Armitage had locked herself in the cockpit. He could hear her voice declaiming the incantation and he winced, for she sounded like an opera singer with laryngitis. She was also mispronouncing the incantation in a manner that would be funny had she not just saidaccendoinstead ofaccedo,thereby causing the fire to further inflame. Alex began to kick the cockpit door with his boot heel.
“I am not taking callers at the moment, thank you!” Lady Armitage called out.
“But I think you’ll really appreciate what I have to tell you about life insurance!” he called back.
The door proved more durable than he expected. Smoke thickened the air. Suddenly the house rocked, almost tipping him off-balance, and Lady Armitage’s chanting devolved into a mad cackle. Damn. She was going to crash the bloody building—amulet, him, and all.
He kicked more urgently at the door. It swung open suddenly,causing him to stagger through, falling to his knees. In his surprise he dropped the gun Kitty, and it scattered away across the tilting floor.
Lady Armitage, holding the door ajar, looked down at him with the kind of smile that really ought to be put in a straitjacket. “You needn’t kneel to me, sir,” she said. “A mere bow would suffice.”
Alex clenched his teeth so as to prevent a reply that probably would have doomed them both. Out the cockpit window he could see the town’s rooftops bobbing like boats on a smoke-colored sea. Keeping Lady Armitage as stable as possible was his best chance of keeping the house stable until he could take charge of its steering.
He pushed himself upright, inhaling heated air, groping for calm inside himself. His makeshift weapons would be inadequate against a wily old villain like Isabella Armitage, but he did still have one powerful force in his array.
He was smiling even before he turned to face the old pirate.
“Madam,” he drawled charmingly.
She punched him in the mouth.
“It’s a disaster!” Tom wailed, clutching at his hair. “An absolute disaster!”
Charlotte frowned. “Pull yourself together, boy. I’m sure Constantinopla will forgive you.”
Tom laughed with such a violent hysteria that Charlotte turned away from the swaying, smoke-belching house to stare at him. “No, no, she most definitely won’t,” he chattered, clutching at his hair. “I married another woman, three weeks before our own wedding!”
“For heaven’s sake.” It was all Charlotte could do to not slap him. Cecilia Bassingthwaite had been right, a statement she never thought she would make, but it was irrefutably true—men could not be relied upon for rational behavior. “I am certain the marriage was not even legal. Did you say ‘I do’?”
“Yes!” he wailed.
“Oh.” Charlotte bit her lip. “Well. You shall simply have to not tell Constantinopla.”
Tom gaped at her. “Not tell?”
“That’s right. Keep it a secret. No one is going to believe Lady Armitage, and I’m sure the vicar can be convinced it was a delusion caused by too much smoke inhalation.”
They looked down at the man who lay sprawled unconscious on the footpath.
“Won’t I get in trouble?” Tom asked anxiously.
Charlotte shrugged. “I would count it as the merest of sins, under the circumstances.”
“I didn’t mean with God. I meant with”—his voice lowered—“Oply.”
“Not if she never finds out.”
He drew in a breath to argue—then comprehension began to dawn. Charlotte watched as his expression of dazed misery slipped into a new wonderment. She would have feared what this portended for Constantinopla but at that moment her attention was diverted by a sudden gasp from the crowd of residents who had gathered in their dressing gowns and slippers to watch the dramatic scene. She turned back toward the house just as something exploded in its sitting room. Flames burst from a window. Charlotte’s heart felt as if at any moment it would burst too.
“No,” she said. “This is not acceptable.”
She was no heroine, bravely facing whatever life sent her way. She was a witch, capable of inverting the laws of physics to get things done.
She began striding along the road, half-undressed and splashed with blood, her deadly boots clicking against the road like atsking tongue, her eyes as fiery as the hovering battlehouse overhead. All her life she had tried to restrain herself, to be like a woman in a paper world: a Plim with a teacup and impeccable posture; a nice, properlady. But now she felt only a bone-deep relief to be Charlotte Pettifer, wicked witch. She did not even care that, as she walked, people scampered away from her, recognizing power when they saw it.
Life had become messy, and Charlotte was going to clean it.
Alex waited to drop dead. He was sure it would happen, for striking a woman was a crime punishable by immediate divine retribution. Never in his life had he even contemplated doing such a thing. He may have sparred with Charlotte, but that was almost like dancing, and he certainly intended her no harm. But when Lady Armitage punched him, instinct responded faster than thought, and he smacked a fist into her midriff so hard, the old woman stumbled backward.
