2
alice visits her aunt—tea and apologies— an alphabetic surprise—the unusual suspects— alice is not who she seems—an engagement
Alice walked in beauty like the afternoon of cloudy climes over Westminster, where all that was the best of dark and bright met in a sky about to rain. She entered a rather dingy building whose bronze doorplate advised that the tenants were Bover & Sons, Brushmakers, est. 1785. Within could be found a small manufactory of brooms, dusters, and specialist brushes, which oddly enough had not been applied to the cluttered and dusty premises. An old man whittling a broomstick looked up and nodded as Alice entered.
A lady like her, dressed in a smart, dark blue walking suit with the merest hint of a bustle, and bearing a hat so discreet it could have been safely employed as an ambassador to France, did not usually patronize such an establishment. But this was no real manufactory. And Alice was not in fact a lady like her. She nodded to the old man, then strode across the room, her bootheels tapping smartly against its wooden floorboards.
Alice loved that sound. It made her feel like a capable woman. An intelligent woman. A woman who had this morning made an omelet without it turning into scrambled eggs!
Certainly not a woman who had tossed and turned all night, trying to ignore visions of a bespectacled butler straightening his cuffs after having bashed a man senseless.
She paused, looking around the manufactory. “You need a fan in here,” she informed the old man. “The air is decidedly hot.”
He nodded, since he was deaf and would have nodded even if she’d told him the place was burning down. Continuing on, Alice wondered what brand of starch Mr. Bixby used to get his cuffs looking so precise. The slide of crisp linen against his skin must be soothing indeed—although oddly enough her own clothes felt suddenly scratchy and constrictive. She would have to reconsider the ingredients of her laundry soap.
Arriving at a closet, she slipped inside, angling herself amongst its collection of mops. Shifting one to reveal a faded calendar picture of a woman in a bathing costume leaning against a horse-drawn carriage, she pushed against it. A panel swung aside to reveal another closet, this one empty. Entering, Alice closed the door and tugged on a clothes hanger suspended from the ceiling. The closet began to descend. Instantly bored, Alice took a small dictionary from her dress pocket to read.
Sensual . . . sensualism . . . sensualist . . . sensuality . . .
Well, that did not provide as helpful a distraction from thoughts of Mr. Bixby as she had hoped. Snapping the book shut, she returned it to her pocket just as the ground reacquainted itself with the spirit of its name. Before her stood another door. An abacus was set into its center panel, and Alice adjusted the beads along their horizontal tracks until the door clicked and swung open.
She stepped through to the headquarters of the Agency of Undercover Note Takers.
A.U.N.T. was England’s most secret intelligence agency, fortunately better at espionage than at naming itself. It had been established in the reign of Henry VIII, when his queens’ troubles led household servants to realize the tremendous power of gossip. Since then, the covert web of chambermaids and butlers, housekeepers and footmen, grooms and sweeps, had grown so extensive it had become in effect a downstairs government. With an information-rich net of service providers spread across the realm, A.U.N.T. ensured, amongst other things, that every scheme of the Wicken League was known, that pirates did not make too much trouble, and that spoiled rich girls were kept from killing one another on shopping sprees.
“It’s like one big family,” the man who recruited Alice had explained when he’d removed her from the orphanage where she’d lived for the first six years of her life. He’d given her lollies and set her inside a carriage with blacked-out windows, and Alice had thought she was going to meet her hitherto unknown aunty. She’d asked nothing, since she barely spoke in those days; she’d just hugged her battered volume of Alphabets and Pictures for Children (and hidden the lollies beneath the carriage seat cushion, since they were bad for one’s teeth). Only after arriving at the Academy of Household Management and being assigned her first broom had she finally realized the truth.
Mind you, considering her sole understanding of “family” up until then had come from fairy tales, she was just grateful the teachers and other students did not throw her down a well or cut off her head. Ten years of service training passed before she even met Chief Servant Mrs. Kew, and another two before she graduated as a lady’s maid and spy.
Now her friends (which is to say, people to whom she said a polite hello when passing, and watched laughing together at the agency Christmas party) knew her as A—ranked first, equal with the mysterious B, whose identity was kept secret even from her. Sometimes she almost forgot her Christian name, so seldom did she hear it. But that did not matter. Only service mattered. Well, that and returning library books before they accrued a late fee, of course.
“Don’t you ever wish for real friends?” Hazel Coombley had asked her once, soft-voiced and gentle-eyed, as they sat drinking tea.
“No,” Alice had responded. And she would have given the same response even if Hazel hadn’t been the agency clinician undertaking a psychological evaluation of her.
The only person in whom Alice felt any genuine interest was B, whose reputation had developed over the years into something close to mythology. For example, it was said B had saved Princess Louise from assassination, thanks to being in bed with her at the time. From this, Alice, an exceptional intelligence officer, deduced that B must be a woman. After all, who else would have a pajama party with the princess?
She herself rather wished to attend such a party with B. Whispering together under blankets, sharing intimate secrets . . . she imagined this would be entertaining indeed. In a way, she felt closer to B than to anyone else in the world, for surely no other could understand better what it was like to be essentially unknown.
That thought veered close to an emotion, and Alice stopped, halfway across the A.U.N.T. lobby, beneath the rose painted on its ceiling and just past the statue of Queen Victoria’s butler. The threat of melancholia rattled around inside her, disrupting her tranquility and sending her pulse into free fall. Suddenly the whole world felt like it might break apart. Fiddlesticks!
Slipping one hand into a skirt pocket, she tapped her fingers against her thigh with a steady one-two beat. This calmed her, and she was soon able to continue on. In an office at the far side of the lobby, she found Mrs. Kew awaiting her.
“Come in,” the woman called as Alice knocked on the door. “You’re right on time.”
Alice entered the office and felt her calm instantly turn to the same color as Mrs. Kew’s walls—i.e., custard. Everywhere was white lace, cream lace, frothing pink lace, as if a maniacal bride had run amok with decorator tools. It framed the map of England on one wall. It wrapped around flower bouquets set on lace-clothed shelves. Even Mrs. Kew’s fluffy white cat wore a lace bow. Alice suspected one more delicate, finely spun ribbon set anywhere in the room would cause the whole place to collapse in a suffocating heap.
Tap tap went her fingers in her pocket.
“Sit down, dear, have some tea,” Mrs. Kew urged from a plump lace-trimmed armchair at one end of the room. Alice turned to offer the Chief Servant a curtsy—
And froze.
Mr. Bixby sat on a sofa opposite Mrs. Kew, holding a teacup.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
He looked back at her with a stare so void of emotion, Alice struggled not to dreamily sigh. A woman could never drown in eyes like that! She could stand on safely dry ground while other women flailed about in swooning, adoring gazes. His posture within his dark suit and black overcoat was rigid. He wore no hat, and Alice observed that, although his hair was cut to regulation in a short, precise style, near the back of his neck a tattoo could be seen rising an inch above his collar, suggesting some uncouth mystery seared into the naked skin below . . .
Goodness, but the air in this room was even hotter than that in the broom factory.
Belatedly performing the curtsy, Alice crossed the room, her bootheels smacking hard against the floor. As she sat beside Bixby on the plump, embroidered sofa, he blinked, and her heart blinked in response. Guard your tranquil layers, she chided herself.
“Remind me, dear,” Mrs. Kew said, leaning forward over an array of tea things, cakes, and roses on the low table before her. “Do you take sugar?”
Alice smiled politely at the Chief Servant—although not quite looking at her from sheer self-defense. Mrs. Kew was as decorative as her office, with lace and jewelry set upon every available surface of her soft, middle-aged person. But Alice had watched this same woman kill a man at ten paces with a Royal Jubilee commemoration plate and was not fooled.
“No, thank you, ma’am. Just milk. And please allow me to apologize for the disturbance on Bond Street yesterday—”
“I have already apologized for it,” Mr. Bixby interjected coolly. “It was entirely my fault.”
Alice bristled. “I beg your pardon, sir, but it was my fault. And furthermore—”
“Now, now,” Mrs. Kew said soothingly. “I’m sure everyone was to blame. I heard all about it from Lady Hassan’s butler. A fight in the street! Histrionic aristocrats! And a missed appointment with London’s most exclusive hairdresser! It sounds very dramatic. Really no sugar, dear?”
“None, thank you. I must insist on apologizing.”
“Oh good. After all, sugar makes one’s teeth sparkle.”
“I meant I am sorry about the Bond Street debacle.”
“Never mind, I was going to take you off that case anyway. Something more important has come up that requires your special skills.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, it’s— Goodness me, what is that?!”
Mrs. Kew gasped, staring wide-eyed over Alice’s shoulder. Alice turned, reaching instinctively for the petite gun in her waistband, but saw nothing untoward. (Well, a statuette of Queen Victoria swathed in golden lace, but nothing else untoward.) As she turned back, she noticed a tiny, fleeting smile on Mr. Bixby’s mouth.
“Must have been just a shadow,” Mrs. Kew said, and handed Alice a delicate pink teacup.
“Thank you.” Alice took the cup and, lifting it from its saucer, sipped discreetly. Only years of training prevented her from spitting out the liquid.
“I went ahead and put just a speck of sugar in,” Mrs. Kew confessed. “For the sake of your health.”
“I see.” Clearly, her notion of a speck and Mrs. Kew’s diverged by several teaspoons’ worth.
“Now, regarding your new assignment,” Mrs. Kew said, easing back in her chair and smiling merrily at the agents. “A, I need you to—”
“Excuse me.” Mr. Bixby’s teacup went down in its saucer with a disapproving clank. “Did you just address Miss Dearlove as A?”
Mrs. Kew’s smile widened. “Of course I did. A for Alice, since our dear Mr. Digglesby-God-rest-his-soul will forever be Agent D. I thought that you knew this, B. When you—”
“Excuse me.” Alice tapped a fingernail against her teacup with an unhappy clink-clink. “Did you call Mr. Bixby by the name B? Mr. Bixby?”
“Yes, dear. Daniel Bixby, who has just come out of deep undercover as butler to the pirate Alexander O’Riley. He is our most reliable investigator. Daniel old chap, allow me to properly introduce Miss Alice Dearlove, our best fixer.”
Alice and Daniel glanced sidelong at each other, eyes not quite meeting, and gave a brisk nod.
“Don’t be shy,” Mrs. Kew urged. “Shake hands!”
Alice extended her hand reluctantly. Daniel hesitated the merest moment before taking it in his own with a firm grip. Just then an earthquake occurred in Whitehall, located directly beneath the sofa in Mrs. Kew’s office, and both snatched their hands back. Daniel drank tea; Alice rubbed at a crease in the lace cushion beside her.
“I’m glad to see you getting along so wonderfully,” Mrs. Kew said, showing a level of astuteness at odds with her position as chief of an intelligence agency. “This bodes well for your assignment together.”
Teacups rattled.
“I work alone,” Alice said.
“I work alone,” Daniel said at the same time.
Mrs. Kew smiled. “Of course. I appreciate how you feel, and it’s entirely fair. Just now I’d like to try unhooking you from that custom, and although you’re absolutely my star agents, nevertheless lifting you even higher, to a new level of professional—”
She stopped, her smile becoming stiff, as she registered their frowns. “Let me rephrase that. I need you to do as you’re told. We received warning this week that someone is planning to assassinate Queen Victoria.”
“Again?” Daniel said.
“I’m afraid so. Fifteen warnings, to be precise, but the one which concerns us most involves the pirate Frederick Bassingthwaite.”
Daniel stirred his tea in a manner that suggested he was laughing behind his inscrutable countenance. “I would not worry. Frederick Bassingthwaite is even greater a moron than Mr. Collins.”
“Who?” Mrs. Kew inquired.
“From Pride and Prejudice,” Alice and Daniel replied in unison. They very carefully did not glance at each other.
Mrs. Kew’s gentle confusion failed to lift. “Is that a crime-fighting duo?”
“No, ma’am,” Daniel told her. “It is a book.”
“I see. Well, where were we? Ah yes, murdering the Queen. Perhaps it is better to say that the danger is from Frederick’s wife, Jane Fairweather, a dastardly creature if ever there was one. Our intelligence network reports that she has come into possession of a new kind of weapon, which she plans to use on Her Majesty. Jane’s motive is, and I quote, ‘to prove once and for all she is as much a scoundrel as that revolting Cecilia Bassingthwaite.’ What this weapon is, we do not know. Where Jane obtained it, we do not know. Where she is keeping it—”
“Let me guess,” Daniel said. “We do not know.”
“Actually, this one we do. Inside Starkthorn Castle, ancestral battlehouse of the Bassingthwaites.”
“Where inside Starkthorn Castle?” Alice asked. “It is an immense building.”
“Ah. Well. That, we do not know. Frederick is holding a house party this coming week, and several Wisteria Society members will be attending. We do not know—but we strongly suspect!—that they too have learned of this weapon and intend to steal it. Your mission is to steal it first.”
“Why would Frederick and Jane risk inviting the Wisteria Society to their house when they are keeping a secret weapon there?” Alice asked.
Mrs. Kew winced slightly. “I am going to say again that we do not know, but you cannot blame me this time. No one understands why pirates do anything.” Leaning forward, she took up a porcelain sugar canister and lifted its lid to her ear before speaking into the bowl. “You can come in now.”
Four clerks carrying large, gilt-framed paintings entered the room, lining up against a wall. Mrs. Kew waved a finger, and one of the men closed the gas tap for the overhead light. As darkness filled the room, Mrs. Kew angled a lamp on the tea table so its light shone directly at the paintings.
“The Bassingthwaite fortune has diminished in recent times,” she said, “but Frederick and Jane still have high regard for themselves.” She waved forth one of the clerks, who held a portrait up to the light. In it, a bony young man with sleek black hair and mustache sat primly on a golden chair; standing beside him, one hand clamped to his shoulder, was a bespectacled woman whose posture suggested she stored a number of officious opinions up her proverbial.
“Neither Frederick nor Jane can be trusted, but we do not believe they are the greatest danger. It is the other Wisteria Society members with whom we are most concerned.”
The clerk stepped back and another advanced. “Elizabeth Boffle,” Mrs. Kew said, frowning at the new portrait. “A wicked villain and odious blight on England’s fair shore.”
Alice regarded the plump, smiling face and puffed white coiffure of an elderly lady dressed in so many pink flounces Dahlia Weekle would have swooned at the sight. Every instinct of her orphan heart suggested this was a woman to whom one could go for baked goods and cozy bedtime stories.
“Also known as Bloodhound Bess,” Mrs. Kew said. “Both of her husbands were found floating in the Thames with pillowcases over their heads.”
“That doesn’t seem like a very safe way to swim,” Alice remarked.
Daniel choked on a mouthful of tea. Mrs. Kew raised one eyebrow. “They were less swimming and more sleeping with the fishes, dear,” the Chief Servant said.
Alice frowned. “How—”
“Dead,” Daniel told her. “They were dead.”
“Oh.”
“This portrait is somewhat outdated,” Mrs. Kew continued. She waved her finger again, and the man holding the painting took out a pen knife and slashed Bess’s face. “That’s better. She was scarred during a vicious skirmish with the chairwoman of the East Anglia Potted Flower Club. Very passionate about her oleanders, is Bess. Next, we have Verisimilitude Jones.”
“Millie the Monster,” Alice and Daniel said in dire tones as a third portrait was brought forth.
“You know of her?” Mrs. Kew inquired.
Alice looked at the painting of the tiny, eye-patched woman. “Only one pirate lady has a more alarming reputation than Millie.”
“Funny you should say that,” Mrs. Kew murmured. The fourth clerk stepped up with a portrait that trembled slightly in his hands as he lifted it for view. Represented there in oils was an elegant older woman wearing a fur coat, scarf, and gloves and holding a sun parasol. In her free hand she aimed a pistol at a thin, red-gowned lady whose hair stood erect like a fan and whose actual fan bristled with iron spikes.
“Miss Darlington,” Daniel said, his voice so dire this time it ought to have been surrounded by yellow tape and skull-and-crossbones signs.
“Indeed,” Mrs. Kew confirmed. “Seen here in conversation with her old chum, Lady Armitage, whose recent fall from grace made quite the splash.”
Alice frowned again. “Lady Armitage toppled out of her house into the harbor and drowned.”
“Yes, dear, that’s what I said. With Armitage out of the picture—”
“She is right there,” Alice pointed out. “In the picture.”
“I mean, with Armitage dead—”
“Presumed dead,” Daniel corrected.
“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Kew said through gritted teeth. “With Armitage presumed dead from drowning and therefore being out of the picture, so to speak, Darlington is the most significant piratic threat. She is also Frederick Bassingthwaite’s great-aunt, and therefore has been invited to his house party.”
“Will Cecilia Bassingthwaite be attending too?” Daniel asked. At his question, one of the clerks set down his portrait and rummaged through a sheaf of unframed images before presenting a rather blurry watercolor of a young, red-haired woman that had been re-created at larger size from a locket portrait.
“That’s her,” Daniel said. “I know she’s not a Wisteria Society member, but she is an infamous pirate and the rightful owner of Starkthorn Castle.”
Mrs. Kew chuckled. “I don’t believe I’ve ever before heard the term ‘rightful owner’ used when referring to pirates. No, apparently Miss Bassingthwaite’s response upon receiving the invitation was, ‘Over Jane Fairweather’s dead body.’ I’m afraid her housemaid took this rather seriously, and we only just caught up to her half a mile from Starkthorn Castle with a crate of gunpowder. But Miss Bassingthwaite would not attend anyway, considering she has a new baby. The worst you’ll have to contend with is Miss Darlington.”
“Sounds simple,” Alice said.
“Not really,” Daniel argued. “Even Rotten O’Riley fears Jemima Darlington. If she doesn’t assassinate you directly, she will do you in with terror stories about scrofula and rabies.”
“Nevertheless,” Mrs. Kew said, “contend with her you must. You and Alice will be attending the party at Starkthorn Castle. We have several underservants already assigned, but for an assassination plot this serious we require our best agents on-site. Naturally I thought of you.”
Daniel leaned back, crossing one leg over the other and resting his arm against the rim of the sofa behind Alice in a pose that plainly said, “A.U.N.T.’s best agent, at your service.” Alice went taut—but since she was already so taut one could have safely balanced a full teapot on her head, nobody noticed.
“I will need a new set of correct butler attire,” Daniel informed Mrs. Kew. “A goat ate mine.”
“A goat?” Mrs. Kew’s eyes widened with astonishment.
“O’Riley’s household was an interesting place. On another occasion a woman ate my—actually, never mind.”
Alice was fascinated to see a blush stain Mrs. Kew’s face. Why would a culinary anecdote embarrass the Chief Servant?
“Leave us,” Mrs. Kew said to the clerks, all of whom were smirking. As they departed, they turned the light back on, and Alice winced at the sudden brightness. When she could see again, Mrs. Kew had recovered her composure and was cutting slices in a large cream cake. “I will have you meet with Snodgrass after this to be fully outfitted,” the Chief Servant said. “But you won’t be needing a butler’s getup. Cake?”
“No, thank you,” Daniel said. “Why not? I hope you aren’t suggesting I pose as a footman.” Disapprobation shadowed his face.
“Cake?” Mrs. Kew offered Alice.
“No, thank you. If Mr. Bixby has associated with pirates, won’t there be a danger of him being recognized? Should he not be withdrawn from the case on that basis, and I do the mission solo?”
“That is unnecessary,” Daniel answered as Mrs. Kew busied herself plating two plump wedges of cream sponge. “O’Riley strove to avoid the Wisteria Society as much as possible; consequentially, I never met any of them. On the other hand, your work last year brought you in extensive contact with pirates, Miss Dearlove. I fear you’ll be in danger, and therefore the mission should be mine alone.”
“They will not remember me. I am a master of disguise.”
“You look exactly as you did last year in Clacton-on-Sea.”
She turned to him. Focusing on where his hair angled neatly at the edge of his face, she softened her expression, relaxing its mouth and half lowering its eyelashes to cast a softness over the eyes. She hunched a shoulder slightly and tipped her head toward it in a gesture of obsequiousness so repellent, one’s gaze naturally wanted to turn away from it, forgetting what one had seen. The brisk, competent woman who had been sitting a moment before on the sofa was replaced with a girl whose self-effacement rendered her practically faceless.
“Fascinating,” Daniel said.
Shrugging, Alice allowed her regular countenance to settle once more upon her. “God has given me one face, and I make myself several others.”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “You are paraphrasing Shakespeare,” he said in a tone that teetered between disapproval and respect.
“How clever of you to notice,” Alice retorted in a tone that did not so much teeter as ricochet between disdain and sarcasm.
“So we’re all set, then!” Mrs. Kew beamed as she held out the plates. “Now, are you sure you won’t have cake? I made it specially for this meeting.”
Alice eyed the frothy confection. For the first time, she noticed two tiny gold bells set atop the icing. “Do you mean for me to be a chambermaid?” she asked with horror.
“I am too old to be a footman,” Daniel argued.
“You are only twenty-seven, dear,” Mrs. Kew said. “But fear not. And Alice, you won’t be a chambermaid. You two will attend the party as a married couple.”
Alice and Daniel stared at her.
“See, you’re the perfect choice! Just keep looking like that and people will absolutely believe you’re married. Oh, don’t be so glum. After all, you’re about to join a pirate’s house party—most likely you’ll be dead within a week.” She grinned. “More tea, my dears?”