Cecilia smiled at him rather sadly, then turned to Charlotte. “Good day, Miss Pettifer. Please do call on me soon.”
“I will, thank you,” Charlotte replied automatically—and then realized not only did she mean it, but she was excited at the prospect of doing so. At the back of her mind, Elizabeth Bennet glanced up from a hammock where she was sipping lemonade and readingFrankenstein; she gave an encouraging nod and then vanished. Charlotte felt the swelling of emotion that she recognized now as friendship—true friendship for her own self.
She smiled at Cecilia as a purple-feathered hat cartwheeled past, throwing off sparks. “I hope you will come to my—er, that is, to any interesting events I may hold in the near future.”
“I already have my shoes picked out,” Cecilia replied. Noticing Miss Darlington looking about with a medicinal gleam in her eye, she began tugging at her husband’s hand.
“Hurry, Ned, or she will start prodding me again to make sure the baby is sitting up straight. I just know it.”
Ned slapped Alex’s arm in farewell. Alex punched Ned’s shoulder. Ned punched him back, and Alex reached for a knife. The ladies shared a dry look then drew the men apart. They headed in opposite directions along the road.
Alex gathered Charlotte against his side as they walked. “What happens now?” he asked, his tone light, careless.
“Breakfast,” Charlotte said. A witch ran past, swinging her reticule at a pirate. “A bath. Then home to London, I suppose. Mother will be wondering where I got to.”
“There will be an uproar when you return in a pirate’s house.”
Something exploded behind them. They stumbled a little at the force of it then kept walking. Charlotte smiled, although her heart trembled. “Yes. I’m expecting to make quite a mess indeed.”
Later that day, in the dusky calm of Pettifer House’s drawing room, Mrs. Pettifer looked up from her embroidery with a mild frown. “Dear, what light through yonder window is shining into my eyes in that aggravating fashion?”
Mr. Pettifer shifted the lace curtain and peered out. “It is the stagecoach, and Judith is the passenger.”
They sighed in unison. “She looks sick and pale as always,” Mr. Pettifer muttered. “I’m going upstairs. You deal with her.”
“Oh no, sir,” Mrs. Pettifer declaimed, thrusting down her embroidery and arising like a moon—bright, shadow-eyed, and capable of causing madness in otherwise reasonable gentlemen (and a certain amount of dancing around naked, although that was before she married). “I demand the equal right to be unsociable. Let’s both go upstairs, and leave her in Woollery’s capable hands.”
“But what if she is bringing news of the girl?” he asked as they hastened upstairs like furtive children.
“Lottie is perfectly well,” Mrs. Pettifer replied. “Not a scratch on her, I can feel it in my motherly bones.”
Woollery watched them disappear into the bedroom, then opened the front door even before Miss Plim did not knock. “Madam,” he said. “I am afraid Mrs. and Mr. Pettifer are not accepting visitors.”
Miss Plim glared. She was not a visitor. She was a Plim!Furthermore, she cared nothing about Delphine and—um, whatever his name was—the husband. She had come for Charlotte. When Woollery moved to close the door, she snapped a phrase of Latin that shoved him aside, then marched without a backward look toward the drawing room.
Woollery met her at its door in a show of butlering skill that verged on magic. “Madam, I am afraid—”
“Of course you are, stupid man,” she retorted. “I am going in to wait for Charlotte. I require tea. Snap to it!”
Woollery relented. Thus left alone, Miss Plim paced the drawing room with all the vigor of a woman who has just spent hours in a rattling stagecoach. She did not know if Charlotte would return tonight, but she intended to wait as long as required. Her fury knew no bounds. Indeed, it had been many years since she’d had such an exemplary outrage. Bad enough that Charlotte had spent several daysenjoying herself, but worse that she’d done so in the company of a man. If only she’d been able to convince Delphine that cold black tea and unbuttered toast were essential to the girl’s formation, they would not be seeing now this disastrous outbreak of individualism.
Miss Plim emitted a sigh tainted with incantation. Mrs. Pettifer’s volumes of Byron toppled from their shelf, making a loud clatter against the floor and riling up her nerves in a most pleasant manner. She was tired of everything. Charlotte be damned, Miss Gloughenbury and the orphans be damned—it was time for a new prophecy.
Woollery brought tea. Miss Plim poured herself a cup and was on the verge of drinking it when the drawing room door opened once again and a man stepped in unannounced. Miss Plim stared at him, cup halfway to her mouth. His magnificently chiseled face and pearl-colored eyes arrested any rebuke she would have made. Although he wore dusty clothes and two large bandages patched his temples, she had never before seen such an Adonis. Her spectacles fogged, andwithin her chest cavity came a peculiar sensation, as if she had already swallowed tea and it was heating her.
The man stopped abruptly to stare at her. The air between them held its breath.
“Madam,” he said finally, bestowing upon her a look so revolted, so soured with contempt, that Miss Plim almost gasped. Here was a kindred spirit indeed! “I am Detective Inspector Creeve. I have come to arrest Charlotte Pettifer on charges of witchcraft. I demand you surrender her to me at once.”
Miss Plim would have shaken back her hair if it hadn’t required a hammer to do so. “Witches do not exist, my good fellow. But you can certainly arrest Charlotte after I have finished lecturing her on her bad—although non-witchy—behavior. She is not here at present, but I await her return, and you may also. Will you have tea?”
He sniffed. His eyes glimmered as he looked her up and down. His tongue slipped out to lick what could be called his lips by only the most charitable observer.
Fortunately, Miss Plim was a renowned philanthropist.
“We have green tea,” she said in the same way another woman would have mentioned wine. Served in a slipper. In her bedroom.
He blotted moisture from one nasal cavity. The pallid gaze that had wandered all over her body lingered at the brittle line of collarbone peeking out from above her gray wool bodice, and he looked as if he would like to sniff it.
