Innocent, at least, until Miss Dole and Muriel Fairweather both tried to take the same seat during musical chairs. The resultant dispute had brought an end to that game, primarily due to the fact every chair had been smashed.
“Oops,” Mrs. Rotunder had said when the literal dust settled. “It seems we got a little overenthusiastic.” She’d dropped the chair leg she had been whacking over Bloodhound Bess’s head and had smiled sheepishly at Jane and Frederick. “Terribly sorry.”
“It is of no concern,” Jane had said, although her smile had been so sharp she was in danger of putting her own eye out. “We had far too many priceless Chippendale giltwood chairs anyway, and could certainly afford to lose them. As you know, the Bassingthwaite family are tremendously, fabulously rich.” This last word had come out like the crack of a whip, and Alice, from the corner of her eye, had seen Frederick flinch. “Having said that,” Jane continued, “perhaps we should try a quieter game now? Pass the Slipper?”
“Jolly good!” the ladies had agreed with a worrying enthusiasm that was explained with explosive clarity when the slipper turned out to contain a bomb.
Now Alice stood on a pouf at the edge of the still-somewhat-smoky room, trying to calculate how long the afternoon had gone on thus far. Two, three years? All perception of time had long since fled for its life, taking with it a large proportion of her sanity. She was forced to concede herself bamboozled.
Although she had experienced pirates before, it had never been in such quantity. One Lady Armitage was a drain on the senses; fifteen Wisteria Society ladies together were a sinkhole—in a typhoon—during a tsunami. All the hours she’d spent learning parlor game rules in preparation for this mission had gone up in smoke—literally. Every muscle in her body was clenched, and the resultant tension sent a constanttwangthrough her.
She’d always believed Wisteria Society ladies were dignified, elegant, and exquisitely well-mannered (when not robbing banks and blowing things up). But this afternoon proved that they certainly liked to party. Alice had hoped an energetic game of The Floor Is Lava would tire them out. However, despite much leaping, clambering, and breaking of sofas, the trepidation on their husbands’ faces suggested further mayhem remained likely.
Indeed, with the very next word spoken, Alice discovered the depths to which the Wisteria Society would sink.
“Charades!”
Several cheers arose at this suggestion. Alice stared wide-eyed and white-faced in horror across the room at Daniel. He just happened to be looking her way (as he had been each time she’d glanced at him, which was a convenient coincidence), and he grimaced in reply.
Suddenly, one pirate lady standing atop an armchair began tappingher wineglass with a dagger. “Not charades!” she shouted. “I have a better idea!”
“Mrs. Ogden! Mrs. Ogden!” the group chanted. Miss Darlington, thus far silently dignified in a corner, drummed the floor with her cane.
Alice warily eyed the plump, froth-haired woman. Her embroidered cardigan and plaid skirts suggested more of a granny than a grim reprobate, but Alice knew from A.U.N.T.’s database that, in the past year since being inducted into piratic ranks, Ogden the ’Orrible had catapulted herself to the heights of infamy, primarily by catapulting bombs into the depths of rich viscounts’ houses. Most pirates did not attack civilian buildings, but Mrs. Ogden’s motto was “robbers can’t be choosers,” and no one had the courage to explain that she’d heard it wrong.
“I shall spin around and point to someone,” she declared, “and they must complete the dare I set them!”
“It’s rude to point,” Bloodhound Bess called out from a corner, where she was slipping a gold statuette of a Bassingthwaite ancestor into her skirt pocket.
Mrs. Ogden only laughed and began rotating herself unsteadily upon the chair.
Alice felt a sudden chill of doom. She was tensing even before Mrs. Ogden pointed directly at her.
“Mrs. Blakeney!” the old lady shouted.
Such a cacophony of applause, whoops, and whistles followed that Alice nearly burst into overwrought tears at the sound of it. But she was a professional, and ostensibly a pirate, and neither of those cried in public. So she took a deep breath, tapped her fingers against her thighs, and stepped down off the pouf.
“What is your dare?” she asked calmly.
“Goodness, how temperate,” Mrs. Ogden remarked, shrugging her mouth with admiration and nodding around at the crowd, who smirkedin reply. “You have a remarkably cool character, Mrs. Blakeney. But I know just the dare to heat you up.”
“Yes?” She was ice, she was midwinter snow, nothing could trouble her.
“I dare you to kiss your husband.”
And just like that she became a bonfire.
8
the first kiss—the pirates dine out on alice’s marriage— a captivating conversation—getting to business— daniel leaves—alice makes a new enemy
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden requirement to kiss. The sun might shine or the clouds might lower, but nothing could appear to Alice as it had the moment before Mrs. Ogden’s dare. No creature had ever been so miserable as she.
With the possible exception of Daniel Bixby.
As she watched him being gently jostled and outright shoved across the room by pirates, his face calm but lamplight flashing wildly against his spectacles, Alice recalled a memory from her early days in the Academy. Forced into the center of a classroom with a dozen other children staring at her, she had been asked to demonstrate the basic first position for sweeping. Her small pale hands had clutched the birch broom at random. Her gaze had ranged unseeing around the room. She’d not spoken anything more than echoes of other people’s words since being taken from the orphanage, and still screamed and flailed when anyone touched her without warning—so the concept of holding a broomcorrectly while a small crowd observed had overwhelmed her mental processing capacity and rendered her almost catatonic.
The instructor, exasperated, had demanded again—first position!—but had not dared to approach. The year before, a student had been pushed too far in the same situation and used the broom to damage every piece of furniture in the classroom. The teachers, if no one else, had learned their lesson well that day.
