Alice’s stomach did a small flip at this statement, and she immediately scowled in self-annoyance. Her stomach was not the flipping kind. It was the disinterested, unemotional kind, entirely professional. Her mind was well regulated. And her eyes did not keep glancing at a gentleman’s buttocks like some shameless hussy,thank you very much. She needed to pull herself together, or else by the time this mission ended she’d practically be a pirate.
“At least the ladies will be exhausted after this morning,” she said. “They’ll want to spend the afternoon resting on your bottom—er, on their—er, sitting down—which means we can continue our search.”
Bang!
A porcelain vase flew out of the dining room and shattered against the opposite wall. Hollers and cheers followed it.
“You were saying?” Daniel asked.
“Oh God.” Alice pressed a hand against her stomach, which had advanced from flipping to twisting. “It’s going to befun, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so.” Daniel tucked her arm in his, and they entered the fray.
12
semantics—it’s just not cricket—alice is in peril— daniel proves even worse than the most dastardly scoundrel ever to plague miss darlington’s life—explosions
One crowded hour of glorious life might be worth an age without a name, but Alice would gladly have traded it for even thirty minutes of anonymous, empty peace. Balancing on a high parapet of Starkthorn Castle, she breathed hard and fanned herself with a tennis racket while overhead several houses floated. On the roof of each stood a pirate, playing what they termed a “fun” game of aerial tennis. Alice considered this a crime against language.
“Look sharp, Mrs. Blakeney!” shouted Millie the Monster, pink skirts flouncing as she ran the length of her ridgepole to whack a ball in Alice’s direction. Alice raised her racket without much hope, but Millie’s aim was true—thankfully, considering the aforementioned ball was in fact a grenade. It bounced off Alice’s racket and flew randomly across the sky. Miss Darlington, seated on a wicker chair with a blanket over her lap and cup of tea in hand, pointed to it with her cane. Immediately her maidservant, Competence, jumped, racketswooping efficiently. There came a businesslikethwack, and the grenade-ball spun away toward Mrs. Rotunder’s conservatory.
Boom!
Glass exploded. Pirates cheered and then, as smoke billowed through the trembling air, began to cough. Alice ducked as something shot toward her. It clattered onto the walkway behind the parapet. Turning carefully, Alice looked down to see a wooden arm, splintered and flickering with flames, roll across the stone.
“Sorry, Mr. Rotunder!” Competence called out.
“No worries!” the gentleman replied sunnily from the conservatory’s shattered doorway, waving what remained of his limb. “I always bring a spare arm when visiting with the Society, just in case.”
“That was the last ball,” Mrs. Etterly announced from atop her chimney. “Shall we have a tea break?”
“Thank goodness,” Alice muttered.
“Excellent idea!” Mrs. Ogden shouted. “I’ll get my butler to bring up some old cups. But we’ll need bats instead of rackets.”
Alice groaned. While the pirates busied themselves changing equipment, she slipped down from the parapet and leaned back against its stone wall, hoping that out of sight would render her out of mind. The pirates’ minds, that is. Alice felt fairly certain she was already out of her own mind following an afternoon of aerial tennis, aerial calisthenics, and other mundane activities that became terrifyingly manic once the wordaerialwas attached to them. She could do with an actual tea break—preferably with wine instead of tea in the cup.
In fact, forget the cup. Just hand over the bottle.
Pushing back the wide-brimmed hat Miss Darlington had loaned her, she ran a hand across her damp face, not even bothering to tidy the strands of hair hanging loose about its edges. Remembering that Daniel still had possession of her hairpin from earlier, she closed her eyesand indulged in a small, pleasant daydream about reaching into his trouser pocket to take it back...
“Ahem.”
At the sound, her eyes flung open—then attempted to open even wider still as they saw Daniel walking along the battlement toward her, a mild expression of disapproval upon his face. Watching him, Alice realized she was probably going to have to report herself for mental dereliction of duty. Her secret thoughts about Agent B broke several rules of professional psychological conduct—then ground the pieces into the dirt and set them aflame. She knew she could not have him, knew equally that he did not want her, he was just particularly good at taking on the role of husband. But that did not stop her from fantasizing a great deal abouthaving, andtaking, and other risqué verbs.
She fanned herself vehemently with the tennis racket. Daniel, on the other hand, appeared utterly cool in a dark gray suit, his spectacles glinting with afternoon sunlight. Not a single crease blemished the trousers encasing his thighs.Six rules broken, Alice thought as she contemplated those thighs.Seven rules, as she imagined them between hers while he pinned her to a bed.
Fiddlesticks. She was approaching hooliganism with such speed she might as well just give up and become a politician.
“I trust you are not leaning while on duty, Miss Dearlove?” Daniel said as he drew near.
His expression was stone. His demeanor, controlled. And his voice, cold like something sliding against her skin—a chocolate-dipped strawberry, for example. Alice hastily summoned a frown. “Where have you been? And why is your jacket sleeve torn?”
He shrugged. “Someone shot a crossbow bolt at me from the shadows.”
“Someone tried to kill you? That is good news.”
“Indeed. It proves we have been accepted into the group.” He cocked his head. “You are in a most unseemly disarray.”
