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, racket swooping efficiently. There came a businesslike thwack, 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 word aerial was 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 eyes and 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 about having, and taking, 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.”
“I have been playing tennis. As you were supposed to be also. And yet you departed without notice after aerial duck-duck-goose, which you can be sure I will be mentioning in the mission report.”
He leaned close, his voice fluttering against her ear. “Go ahead, write me up.”
Crash! The pirates had begun breaking crockery. Or possibly Alice’s nerves were breaking like an explosion of rose-painted porcelain.
“You are living dangerously, sir,” she managed to say as she tried to push him away. Oddly, however, her hand seemed to have lost all understanding of force, and was instead lingering against his waistcoat buttons, thrilling at their texture.
“Living dangerously is the job description,” Daniel said. His gaze slid with languid slowness down her form. “What are you wearing?”
“Bloomers,” she said.
“There is no need to swear.”
“No, bloomers. Turkish trousers. Mrs. Rotunder loaned them to me so I could play tennis without the inconvenience of tripping over a hem and plunging one hundred feet to my death. And Miss Darlington gave me the hat, which apparently protects against the Great Peril. I have no idea what she meant.”
Daniel considered it with some bemusement. “Perhaps it’s a shield against aerial weapons?” He reached out and tugged it more properly into place. “I found a barricaded room on the second floor that we might be able to access via a window,” he said as he straightened the hat’s brim. “I also spoke with Agent M before she left to catch a train from the nearby village. I’ve requested new premises, which she can fly back along with Mrs. Kew’s message. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.”
Alice stared at him wide-eyed. “Why would you kill birds? That is despicable, sir! And where is this stone of which you speak?” She looked around for it without success; returning to his face, she found it perfectly inscrutable.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “It was merely an idiom.”
“Oh.” She sighed. “Sorry. This is why I work alone. Conversation is beyond me.”
“Don’t worry on my account,” he said, tucking a loose, damp strand of hair behind her ear. “God knows I often have my foot in my mouth.” And, as Alice drew breath to answer—“Idiom again.”
“You cannot be worse than I am,” she insisted. “For example, I once called Mrs. Kew ‘Mrs. Cute’ by mistake.”
Daniel did not look up from tidying a strip of lace that had become slightly folded on her bodice. “I once called a cutthroat band of smugglers ‘snugglers,’ and barely made it out of their company alive.”
“Oh dear.” Alice bit her lip in an effort to repress her amusement, but Daniel only stared at the lace strip.
“It would be nice to feel safe with someone,” he said quietly.
Alice’s heart stirred. “You—” she began.
Toot! Toot!
They jolted, reaching for weapons.
“Blakeneys!” Mrs. Ogden leaned out of her attic window to wave at them. “They’ve just rung the bell for afternoon tea! I’ll race you to the field behind the castle!”
Her house swooped away before they could answer, and Daniel and Alice both shook their heads in silent condemnation.
“I am not going to race,” Alice said airily.
“Nor I,” Daniel agreed.
They glanced at each other for half a second.
And then they were running along the battlement—vaulting a cannon—yanking open a door—clambering down a tower of stairs—avoiding servants wanting their autograph—pausing to check inside a sideboard for the hidden weapon—racing through the central hall—skirting a trolley of silverware—pointing out a cobweb to a housemaid—leaping over a sudden cat—and arriving at the castle’s main rear exit with only the merest acceleration of their breath. Dashing over the threshold, they scanned the collection of white-clothed tables and parasols that had been set up on the grass—
And stopped.
“There you are at last, Blakeneys!” Mrs. Ogden called from where she sat at a table with a plate of tiny sandwiches and cakes in front of her. She lifted a cup of tea in salute.
Alice and Daniel just looked at her.
“I am inspired to recollect paragraph seven in the mission dossier,” Alice murmured to Daniel as he took her by the arm and they proceeded across the grass toward Mrs. Ogden.
“ ‘Make sure you have a good view before you kill,’ ” Daniel recited.
“No, the second sentence,” Alice said. “ ‘Pirates always cheat.’ ”
Daniel huffed a dry laugh. “I didn’t need a dossier to tell—”
“Imposter!” came a sudden shout.
The agents froze immediately.
“Well I never!” Miss Darlington marched into sight across the grass, pointing her cane at Alice in an accusatory manner. “I am shocked, young woman. Shocked!”
Alice felt Daniel’s fingers tighten on her arm. But she just smiled in a mildly inquiring fashion. “Ma’am?”
“You presented yourself to me as a conveniently reasonable woman!” Miss Darlington declaimed for all to hear. And indeed, pirates began appearing from inside the castle and around various corners, bristling with fascinators, glinting with the swords and guns strapped against their bright dresses, looking altogether like elegant, gilded, and extremely well-armed vultures.
“Reasonable,” Miss Darlington reiterated. “And yet here you are, in broad daylight, being unreasonable indeed! Do you not care at all about the broad daylight, gel? The burning sunlight?”
“Um,” Alice said.
Miss Darlington gesticulated. “You are not wearing your hat!”
“Oh!” Alice lifted a hand to her head and discovered the hat Miss Darlington had loaned her was missing. “I beg your pardon, ma’am. I must have dropped it along the way.”
“I’m sure a servant will have picked it up,” Daniel said. “We can inquire later.”
“Later? Later!” Miss Darlington turned an incredulous stare at Mrs. Rotunder, who was just then coming up beside her. The lady gave an obliging murmur of disapproval.
“Even Ned understands that Cecilia must have a supply of three stylish hats for each day of the week if she is to protect herself from the Great Peril,” Miss Darlington told Daniel. “Perhaps you ought to read a book on husbandry, young man.”
“That would inform me about farming, ma’am,” Daniel answered—and did not die on the spot only because Miss Darlington’s stare was not literally a flaming sword.
Alice hastily intervened. “What exactly is the Great Peril?” she asked.
The pirates answered in fervent accord. “Freckles!”
Miss Darlington bustled her away from Daniel, tucking her into a chair at Mrs. Ogden’s table, sheltered by a large parasol. An emergency hat was brought forth and a footman established nearby, his purpose being to stand at any angle necessary so as to block the slightest hint of sunlight attempting to fall upon Alice’s skin.
“There,” Miss Darlington said finally as she sat. “We have you nicely undercover again.”
Alice tried to thank her but could not summon words. No one had ever before cared that she might freckle in the sun. No one had fussed over her in this manner—or indeed any manner, unless “caning with a birch rod” constituted fussing. It felt decidedly strange. Not helping matters was the mysterious watering of her eyes. Perhaps she was developing spontaneous hay fever. Frankly, she would not be surprised—she’d put nothing past this mission.
“Pardon me infiltrating the conversation,” Mrs. Rotunder said, sliding into a chair beside Alice, “but you don’t want to be a sleeper when it comes to the Great Peril, my dear. While no one is suggesting you act like a mole, you should nevertheless conceal your delicate skin at all times.”
Alice could only smile, still too dazed (and cold in the shadows) to reply.
There followed a pleasant chat over tea and cake about the latest guns being imported from America. Alice knew she should subtly interrogate the ladies about what they might do with those guns, but could not judge how to enter the conversation without literally shooting her way in. Waiting for pauses, starting a question only to find someone else starting their own more quickly, and trying to keep up with a barrage of idioms made her so tense that, when Frederick announced a game of croquet had been prepared—“fair ladies, come and join me in a stirring contest of brain and balls . . . O! croquet, once a sport of kings, now beloved by the most discerning of lawn athletes!”—she could have employed herself as a mallet.
The game led to wholly expected results, i.e., several smoking craters in the field, the entire set of mallets broken, and Frederick being rendered unconscious when three croquet balls and a hoop struck his head at the same time in a remarkable coincidence that absolutely astonished the entire company. By the time darkness and dinnertime brought a halt to the violence entertainment, Alice was exhausted, but she barely had time to wash, change her clothes, and read a page of Prometheus Bound for some light comfort before being faced with the arduous trial of eating stew despite not knowing exactly what it contained.
After dinner, the ladies sat around on sofas, drinking sherry while Mrs. Etterly tried to persuade them to buy a collection of nifty storage containers for their grenades and knuckle-dusters. Meanwhile, in another room with the men, Daniel suffered being blinded (for a jolly game of pin the tail on the donkey) and beaten (in several rounds of chess, which he lost on purpose for the sake of the mission). Finally, Alice pleaded a headache and thus effected her escape. She found Daniel already in their bedroom, muttering “pawn to queen bishop four” furiously as he did one-armed push-ups.
“All well?” he asked, jumping to his feet and looking around for his spectacles.
“The ladies are still downstairs, but I could not bear another moment,” Alice confessed.
“I felt the same way.”
The expression of empathy took Alice by surprise. Her heart softened, and she began to think herself removed from the verge of combustion—albeit still within walking distance.
“It’s just all the noise,” she said. “You know?”
“I know,” Daniel said, and her heart softened even more. He put on his spectacles, and his fingers lingered against his brow. “The different perfumes.”
“Frederick Bassingthwaite’s laugh.”
“You win,” he said wryly, and Alice’s heart grew so soft it was almost easygoing. She found herself smiling at him. The realization shocked her, and she quickly straightened her expression back into professional sobriety.
Daniel sighed. “This mission is exhausting. Miss Darlington has diagnosed me with both rabies and a fatal case of tinnitus in my liver. Someone stole my pocket watch. And there were raisins in the ice cream tonight.”
“We are also still getting comments about our relationship,” Alice said. “At dinner, Mrs. Etterly declared herself amazed I managed any sleep with a husband like you. I think she was suggesting you might try to assassinate me in my bed.”
“Hm,” Daniel answered in such a bland tone it could have been served for dinner in a hospital.
“Perhaps we ought to choreograph some marital gestures,” Alice said, “to strengthen our disguise.”
“What exactly do you mean?” Daniel asked, caution shadowing his eyes.
“I noticed the Rotunders holding hands earlier today.”
“Holding hands.” He made it sound as if she had asked him to unblock a lavatory.
“It should be easy enough.” Advancing her right hand, she waited, and after a moment of reluctance Daniel took it with his left.
“Er, I think the palms go together,” she said. “And you should probably not brace yourself in that manner, as if you are about to pull me into a headlock.”
He released her hand, tried again.
“There,” she said, nodding in satisfaction. Something a little wilder than satisfaction shivered through her body, but she ignored it. “Now we look entirely married.”
Daniel considered their clasped hands with some doubt. “There may be more to it than this.”
“Try holding a little tighter.”
He obediently hardened his grip. “I am not hurting you?” he asked, hearing her breath catch.
“No.” She inhaled more carefully. His hand was larger than hers, stronger. She could see faint scars across his tanned skin, and the wedding ring on his finger thrilled her inexplicably. Deep inside came a tug of sensation, as if he was pulling dreams out, old secret dreams she had long forgotten. Withdrawing her hand carefully, she curled its fingers. Daniel pressed his own hand against his midriff as if it burned.
“That’s probably sufficient hand-holding practice,” Alice said rather faintly. “What else can we try?”
Daniel frowned in thought. “Perhaps some mild caressing?”
“I am unsure what you mean. Please demonstrate.”
He lifted a hand toward her again, and Alice had all she could do not to catch it, twist it around his back, and force him to his knees until he begged for mercy. But she restrained her professional instincts, staying still—at least until he brushed a stray lock of hair from her temple. Then she shivered all over.
“I’m sorry,” he said, jerking his fingers away. “No light touches.”
“It’s all right, I accept this is necessary,” she said. “Husbandly. It did tickle, but this is why practicing is a good idea. I can build up my endurance. Ultimately, I should feel nothing when you touch me.”
“I’m not sure that’s how it works between a husband and wife. You should probably always feel something.”
“Are you certain? That doesn’t sound very comfortable.”
“From my observation, marriage seems to have little to do with comfort. Anyway, I think we’ve done enough for—”
“You need to kiss me.”
Tilting his head, Daniel gave her one of his gorgeous smiles, tender, quizzical, all too brief. “I beg your pardon?”
Alice gestured vaguely. “In case of further parlor games.”
Daniel considered this, then nodded. “Seems sensible. Very well, then.”
“Wait.” She rummaged in a skirt pocket for pen and notebook. “I should take notes.”
An odd noise emerged from Daniel’s throat. “That is probably not necessary.”
“What if I forget how it was?”
He looked at her intently. “I promise you will never forget how it was.”
“Huh. Very well, shall we proceed?” Clasping her hands together before her, she presented her face for kissing. “And not another a peck on the cheek. Something marital.”
Daniel gave a brisk nod. “I am at your service, madam.”