“Don’t touch that sword! You’ll probably get tetanus.”
“I can’t touch it, can I? You’ve bewitched me. I can’t bloody move at all.”
“Oh dear.” Charlotte’s voice swayed in rhythm with her body as she crossed to where he was standing frozen. “Poor lad.”
“Lottie,” he murmured in warning.
She ducked beneath his arm and came up smiling. “Alex.”
Suddenly Daniel’s hand clamped over Alice’s eyes—but not before she saw Charlotte grasp hold of Alex’s shirt and tug him out of magic, into her wry smile. Furious, Alice tried to pry Daniel’s fingers away. He was not the master of her, to determine what she was and was not allowed to witness! He was—
Well, he was currently featuring in a mental vision of how precisely he might master her, and it proved a great deal more salacious than a husband and wife kissing. The fact that this vision also included his hand over her eyes only served to make matters worse. Alice began to perspire more than the autumn temperature justified. Finally, as she feared herself on the brink of hyperthermia, Daniel moved his hand away and started pulling her farther into the shadows. She frowned, and in response he put a finger against his lips, then pointed it to the ceiling. Glancing up, Alice realized she could hear shuffling footsteps and voices murmuring beyond the grimy plaster above.
Charlotte and Alex heard it too. They abruptly ceased their marital endeavors and ducked behind the coat rack, almost crashing into Alice and Daniel.
“You again!” Alex hissed.
“I beg your pardon,” Daniel said disapprovingly.
“What are you doing here?” Charlotte asked in a tone that would have seen A.U.N.T. offering her a job at once.
Alex clicked his tongue. “No doubt they’re searching for the weapon in efficient fashion—unlike you, who showed more interest in hanky-panky.”
Upon hearing this phrase, Alice’s inner dictionary opened its pages excitedly. “What does hanky-panky mean?” she whispered to Daniel.
“Witchcraft,” he whispered back.
“Oh.” Alice felt inexplicably disappointed.
“You have corrupted me,” Charlotte told her husband. “You are nothing more than a reprobate.”
“True,” Alex agreed. “And you’re a harridan.”
Alice gasped—but Alex had spoken in a genial tone and Charlotte was gazing at him with an expression Alice believed was Adoration (Female, Type Three: Married/Long-Suffering but Nevertheless Smitten). She began riffling through the aforementioned innerdictionary confusedly, but she was interrupted by laughter rippling out from the shadows behind them.
Immediately, all four drew their guns and aimed into the darkness. In response, a hand emerged, containing a bag of lollies.
“Peppermint?”
Two figures came forward, smiling cheerfully. Alice recognized Essie Smith and her husband, Lysander. They were a pleasant couple, notwithstanding a shared criminal record that would take hours to relate, and Alice felt appalled that they must have witnessed her and Daniel kissing. She tried to recollect if she’d said anything to jeopardize the mission but found only a haze of passion and poetry. Fiddlesticks!
“Have a peppermint,” Essie urged. “I don’t know a pirate who doesn’t love them.”
“Er,” Alice said. Her very soul shrank at the thought of eating something from a bag in which others’ fingers had been rummaging. She glanced at Daniel, hoping he would provide some clever excuse as to why she was exempt from peppermint consumption, but he appeared as horror-struck.
“ ’Scuse me,” Alex O’Riley said, reaching between them to scoop several lollies from the bag and deposit them in his mouth.
“Sh!” Charlotte hissed suddenly. “They’re coming.”
The group settled into cautious silence as a trapdoor flipped open in the ceiling and a ladder angled down. “Allow me to go first, precious petal of my heart’s summer rose,” came Frederick Bassingthwaite’s voice. “I will be your preservation should you fall, although it would mean crushing the very life from this meager but devoted body, a sacrifice I gladly—”
Shoe heels smacked against wood as Jane Fairweather descended the ladder. The hidden group shuffled back even more. Alice felt ripples against her skirts as the pirates reached around her to pick eachother’s pockets. Reaching the floor, Jane looked about with shrewd calculation.
“There must be enough saleable goods in here to pay for the new oven.”
The pirates exchanged confused looks.Pay?Alex mouthed; Lysander shrugged in bewildered reply.
Frederick joined his wife. “Whatever you wish, cream of my crop, it shall be—”
