18 CHARLOTTE IS NOT TOO PROUD—THE NARRATIVE BECOMES A BODICE-RIPPER—LEAP OF FAITH—A TRAITOR IS REVEALED—ALEX AND CHARLOTTE DISAGREE—DODO BONES AND DOOMED TREASURES—THE POINT OF NO RETURN A lady’s anger is very rapid; it jumps from annoyance to vexation, from pique to incandescent rage, in a moment. “Damn!” Charlotte swore, her internal Elizabeth Bennet combusting in one irate syllable. Alex released her hand, and Charlotte supposed he was disgusted by such an unfeminine outburst. Her heart cracked and fell heavily into her stomach. But it became apparent he had merely been freeing himself to pull a long-barreled pistol from a thigh holster and aim it toward Lady Armitage’s house. Charlotte did not even have time to question the sense in shooting a house before he did so. A thin dark streak sped through the air. The gun had fired what looked like a string that was now attached to the house by a small, deeply embedded hook. Alex caught Charlotte about the waist and pulled her close. “Hold on to me,” he said. “And perhaps give us a boost of magic in case the grapnel doesn’t stick and we plunge to our certain and horrible death.” “Um,” was all Charlotte had the opportunity to say before they began to lift off the ground, towed by the ascending house. Astonishment silenced her. Until a few days ago, the greatest height she had visited was the belfry of St. Stephen’s clock tower, where she inspected Big Ben (and stole a gold pocket watch from the tour guide as a souvenir). Now, it seemed, she spent half her life in the air. And while she liked to think of herself as an open-minded, adapting kind of person (which goes to show just how self-delusional even the most intelligent woman can be), suddenly finding herself swinging on a length of string beneath a house was rather unnerving. Seeking in her mind for the calm good sense of Elinor Dashwood or the capability of Anne Elliot, she was surprised to find instead images of her mother. Until now, Delphine Pettifer, née Plim, had been a whimsical creature in soft focus at the edge of Charlotte’s life, warm, cheerful, and doting for twenty minutes before supper or at bedtime. Charlotte had never thought of her as anything more than Mother. Now here were memories of Delphine surreptitiously reading a French novel. Slipping pepper into Miss Plim’s tea. Using Miss Gloughenbury’s taxidermied poodle in an impromptu game of toss-and-catch with the parlor maid when Miss Gloughenbury was not looking. Charlotte realized for the first time in her life that Plim did not only mean Aunt Judith, and tightly pinched lips, and going through life with a broomstick stuck up one’s opinions. It also meant writing a wicked, handsome pirate’s name on one’s dinner invitation list. “Aereo!” she said with her mother’s verve, and they flew up toward the red door. But Armitage House tipped abruptly, as if someone had hiccupped in the middle of incantating. It veered toward a rose-vined bungalow, carrying Charlotte and Alex in a long swoop to collide with the bungalow’s roof. Alex turned with both arms around Charlotte to protect her from the brunt of impact, an act of chivalry she suspected not even Mr. Darcy could equal. They scrambled to catch hold of the roof tiles with hands and boot heels. Armitage House veered again, and Alex tossed his gun aside before they were pulled in another wild course straight into a chimney or the hard-paved road. “That house is as mad as its owner,” he said. Touching Charlotte’s face, he seemed to draw her heart back up from the pit of her stomach, into her throat instead. “Are you all right?” Charlotte nodded, her voice tumbling over Latin words as she created a bolster of air around them. They were able to haul themselves to their feet, halfway up the roof (or halfway down, which they did not want to think about). Charlotte began tugging urgently at the tiny pearl buttons of her bodice. “What are you doing?” Alex asked, watching her in bewilderment. “I can’t move properly in this blasted thing,” she explained, grimacing as the buttons refused to cooperate. “Wait.” He brought out a large, serrated knife and set about efficiently relieving her of her dress by means of tearing it apart right down the front. Charlotte raised an eyebrow, impressed. “You’ve done this before.” “Maybe,” he said through a small smile. Charlotte pulled out of her sleeves and the dress fell away, tumbling down the roof like an errant cloud. Charlotte was left barely clad in a thigh-length chemise, a corset covered by a silk camisole, white lace drawers that reached below her knees, stockings that encased the rest of her legs, and ankle boots. Her hair swept in blushing, breeze-stirred waves against the shocking nakedness of her arms. She felt light, liberated—and ready to apply those boots to the posterior of anyone standing between her and her amulet. Alex was looking at her with eyes more vivid than the afternoon sky. Charlotte knew her own eyes held the same intense energy. He holstered his knife. She began to incantate. They ran along the slope of the roof. And leaped to the neighboring roof, the incantation propelling them smoothly over the intervening space. Armitage House was swaying as it tried to gain height under the influence of an apparently inept pilot. Racing toward it, boots smacking against the roof tiles and making the cottage’s occupants look up from their afternoon tea in confused horror, they leaped again. Soaring past chimneys and over the road, they landed with a thud on the roof of Armitage House. Laughing, Charlotte shook back her hair. She had never felt more alive. If someone handed her a first edition of Pride and Prejudice in this moment, she would throw it away just to watch it fly. They skidded down the slope of tiles, vaulted the gutters, and came down on a small, wrought-iron-framed balcony. Alex unsheathed his sword. Charlotte smoothed her hair, then opened the balcony doors. They stepped into Lady Armitage’s gilded, pink-walled sitting room. “Ah,” said the old lady from where she reclined on a sofa. “There you are.” She cast a smile at them, smug, disdainful: a reprobate needing only one fluffy white cat in order to reach arch-villain status. “Stand up, madam,” Alex ordered, brandishing his sword. Lady Armitage elevated her eyebrows but, alas, no other part of her body. “Why don’t you sit down, boy? Both of you, yes? We can have a cut-throat. No, wait, I mean chin-wag. Ha ha.” On the other side of the room, Tom Eames called out in a voice deprived of its vowels by the cloth tied about his mouth. In a fine suit, his hair slicked with pomade, a red rose in his lapel, and quantities of rope attaching him to the chair, he had been all dressed up and then given no place to go. Nearby, a vicar was also obliged to Lady Armitage’s unyielding hospitality. (The two men were, if you will, bridled.) A footman standing by the door had the stark expression of someone who knows that, if he does not obey orders, he’ll be married next. Alex glanced at the men, assessing the risk of the situation in one professional glance, but Charlotte’s attention was entirely devoted to the glass-and-gold pendant Lady Armitage wore against her breast. “I have come for my amulet,” she announced in a businesslike tone. “However, I do not wish to intrude, as I know this is not a proper hour for making calls. If you’ll just hand it over, please, we shall leave straightaway.” “And,” Alex prompted quietly out of the corner of his mouth. “Oh, yes. And kindly do not steal it again.” “I meant Tom,” Alex murmured. Charlotte blinked a few times. “Tom?” “Fellow over there all suited up for a wedding, albeit not to his actual fiancée?” “Of course. Tom. I beg your pardon, Lady Armitage, but in addition to my amulet I require you to hand over Tom Eels.” “Eames,” Alex corrected. Charlotte shrugged. Lady Armitage laughed merrily, a sound like rattling bones. “My, what a forthright girl. I like that. Won’t you stay and have some tea? We’ll discuss amulets and”—she flashed Alex a matrimonial glance—“other matters.” Charlotte set her jaw. “No, thank you.” “I insist, dear.” “And I insist on leaving.” “Ah, but my insistence comes with bullets.” She directed a significant look past them, her smile uncoiling once more. Charlotte and Alex turned— And sighed. Miss Dearlove stood by the balcony doors with a pistol in each hand, aimed directly at their hearts. Or, more precisely, given their height difference, at Charlotte’s heart and Alex’s stomach, although this seems a nitpicking detail under the circumstance of being held at gunpoint by a cold-eyed traitor. “You!” Charlotte said. “Who?” Alex asked. “Mrs. Chuke’s maid,” Charlotte explained. “The pretty girl.” Miss Dearlove gazed at them expressionlessly. “In fact, she is my maid,” Lady Armitage put in from the sofa. “Excellent servant, pours a perfect cup of tea. Perfect aim, too, so I suggest you don’t make any sudden moves. It has been most tiresome having her away spying on the Wicken League—although since it ultimately resulted in my acquisition of Black Beryl’s amulet, I ought not complain.” She caressed said amulet lovingly, and Tom squirmed in his bonds. “Such an elegant piece of work, and so rich with magical potential. I have been trying different words from the incantation to unlock it. Thus far all I’ve managed is to explode one little church.” She waved cheerfully across at the vicar, who glared back in a most unholy manner indeed. “I can feel the power within the glass. At first I was thinking it might help me destroy the Wisteria Society, but why aim so low? After all, we in England are blessed by the most delightfully flammable cities.” She paused to chuckle at the thought, her eyes brightening as if with a lit fuse. Then she shook her head. “But enough exposition of my wicked plans. It is most rude of me to keep you hanging around at gunpoint like this. Dearlove, kindly ring for tea and some poisoned bisc—” Suddenly the house reeled to port. Lady Armitage toppled off her sofa, hitting the floor with a twang of interesting undergarments. Miss Dearlove staggered. Immediately, Alex spun about, his foot rising to kick the guns from the maid’s grip. She tripped backward, hissing in pain. Alex completed the turn, double-punched the footman who had rushed forward, and strode over to capture Lady Armitage before the woman could retaliate. Hauling her up at swordpoint, he winced as she spat curses (and a fragment of boiled lolly) at him. At the same time, Charlotte incantated the guns from the floor into her own possession. “Nobody move,” she said in a tone that might have been more compelling had she remembered to put her fingers on the gun triggers. “You!” Alex snapped to the footman. “Go and tell whatever idiot is trying to pilot this house to bring it down at once. Carefully.” “Or else?” the footman inquired, scowling as he clutched his reddened jaw. “Or else you’re the first one I kill on my way up to the cockpit to take the wheel for myself.” The footman came to attention, ankles clapping together smartly. “Right you are, sir,” he said, and dashed from the room. “This is insufferable!” Lady Armitage declared. “How dare you come in here and interrupt my evil plotting to behave in such a—a—piratic manner!” Alex laughed, but Charlotte was less amused. “Excuse me,” she said, the words bristling with offense. “I am in no way piratic. I am merely hijacking your house, holding you and your servant at gunpoint, and preparing to steal that jewel around your neck. Captain O’Riley, please take the amulet from Lady Armitage and hand it to me.” “Don’t try anything foolish,” Alex advised the lady as he attempted to lift the amulet on its chain over her stiff hair. “I say, is that musk cologne you are wearing?” she murmured in a caressing tone. Alex replied in kind by yanking on her chain. It snapped. “Thank you, madam,” he said, smiling as he dangled the amulet before her face. “You’re going to regret this,” she warned him gleefully. Alex shrugged. “Do I look like the sort of person who has regrets?” (A statement he immediately repented as Lady Armitage stroked his body yet again with her gaze.) “Captain,” Charlotte said impatiently, taking a step forward. “If you just pass the amulet to me, we can depart forthwith.” “Mmph,” Tom interjected, but nobody noticed him. Alex was regarding the amulet with a slight frown, and Charlotte was regarding Alex with a sterner one. “Captain,” she repeated. He looked across at her, and a lovely, tender smile touched his lips, but his eyes were oddly dimmed, as if he saw something through her and far away. “You know, we probably should have paused for a real conversation at some point over the past few days.” Charlotte frowned. “What do you mean?” He tipped his head to one side, taking the smile with it into an emotion more aslant of tenderness. “We have to destroy this amulet, Lottie.” “Destroy?!” she and Lady Armitage echoed in matching tones of horror. “I understand you have beautiful ideas for its use, and I admire you for that. But no woman should possess such power.” “No woman?” Charlotte felt her eyes—and her heart—narrowing. “Ignore him, dear,” Lady Armitage advised. “Every man is a chauvinist at heart. Or at another part of their body they treat as their heart. Better just to shoot him. Go on; no one will blame you.” Charlotte did not even hear the old pirate’s words. It seemed as if the entire world had shrunk down to Alex standing opposite her, holding Beryl’s amulet. “We cannot destroy it!” “Why not?” he asked. “Because . . .” She gestured rather aimlessly with the guns. “Because. It is mine. Even if I had not stolen it, thus making it my property—which I did—but even if I had not—although in fact I did—then it would still belong to me by reason of my being the Prophesized True Heir of Beryl Black.” “You know that’s just an invention to keep your family in power.” “Ooh,” Lady Armitage said. She grinned, looking from Charlotte to Alex as if watching an exciting theater production. “Of course it was invented,” Charlotte replied with a dignity so stiff, Miss Plim could have used it to prop up her topknot. “That doesn’t devalue its effectiveness. A prophecy is something a witch intends to make true.” “Fair enough,” Alex said, and Lady Armitage’s hair vibrated as she turned back to him. “But that only supports my argument. And for all that I trust you, darling, I do not trust your aunt. There can be no risk of her getting hold of such power. We have to destroy it. You know that’s the right thing to do.” Charlotte did not care to know what she knew. “You’re a pirate,” she retorted. “What do you know about the right thing?” He shrugged. “I certainly know enough about the wrong thing. I know what a witch is capable of when she has no limits on her behavior. No empathy. No one who will rouse themselves to stop her. I know, sweetheart, and I won’t let anyone else experience that if I can help it.” Silence hung between them. Alex’s face was stony, but Charlotte saw bruised memory in his eyes, and felt decidedly unwitchy tears rising to her own. Lady Armitage looked like she would murder someone for a bag of popcorn—literally. On the other side of the room, Miss Dearlove was creeping sidelong toward the bound men and, beyond them, the sitting room door. “Tell me what’s in your heart, Lottie,” Alex said in a soft voice that might as well have been full of daggers and spikes, considering its impact. Charlotte flinched with unexpected pain. No one had ever asked her that question. They had regulated her life, her dreams, even the words she spoke—and she’d striven to be exactly what they required. She’d tried so hard, even when it had confused her, even when she had to plagiarize novels to furnish the proper response—because, after all, what else was there? Beneath the prophecy and the rules and the old Latin magic, did she even really exist? Damn the pirate for believing that she did. She took a deep breath to answer him, and the world flickered with shadows at the edges of her vision. Raising the guns, she shouted. “No!”
Alex jolted, but it was too late. Miss Dearlove had tossed a dagger to Lady Armitage, and the old pirate, catching it expertly, had grabbed him, yanking him back against the groaning structure of her gown and pressing the blade to his throat before he could even blink. “Let this be a lesson to you, boy,” she said, her breath hot against his ear, as she snatched the amulet away from him. “I always say that nothing is to be done in robbery without steady and regular attention. If I had known your mother, I should have advised her most strenuously to engage a burglary tutor for you.” “You criminal!” Charlotte exclaimed, the pistols trembling dangerously in her grip. “You are mangling Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s words most dreadfully!” Alex gave her an incredulous look; blushing, she added, “And you are wicked indeed to hold Captain O’Riley at knifepoint! Let him go or I will shoot you!” Lady Armitage smirked. “And risk hitting him? I don’t think so. For people who are ‘not together,’ you two certainly have a fine repertoire of passionate looks. Besides, there are no bullets in those guns.” Charlotte regarded the weapons with frustration, then tossed them aside. Alex saw the magic flare in her eyes and he grasped hold of Lady Armitage’s hand with both of his, clenching it so tightly he heard the bones grind together a moment before she yelped and dropped the knife. “Aereo!” Charlotte snapped, leaping into the air. Magic propelled her higher, and as she cartwheeled forward, angling her elegant and explosive boot toward Lady Armitage’s head, Alex ducked, escaping the pirate’s clutches effortlessly. He heard a loud twang, and turned to see Charlotte being flung backward as she bounced off the solid fan of Lady Armitage’s hair. Alex caught his breath, but she spun with practiced ease and came down on a sideboard. Its display of dodo bones went flying in a bittersweet moment that had Lady Armitage squealing, and Alex took advantage of her distraction to snatch back the amulet. Lady Armitage immediately lunged for him. He stepped away, holding the amulet high out of reach, but the woman kept coming, heedless fury blazing in her small dark eyes. Every instinct in him suggested drawing a dagger or sword and ridding the world of her wickedness once and for all. But in front of every instinct stood a nun in a black habit, smacking a ruler against her hand and frowning. Do we hurt frail, elderly ladies? each demanded in a strident Irish accent. No, he answered obediently—and winced as they whacked him anyway with their rulers for the inconvenience of having had to ask the question. So he retreated until his back met the sofa, and then realizing himself trapped between a rogue and a hard place, he drew a breath— And without further thought threw the amulet to Charlotte. She was so astonished by his trust in her, she missed the catch. As the amulet fell to the floor, their eyes met, and the wry humor in his countered the wonder in hers. Before either of them could blink, Miss Dearlove had appeared between them, calm and quiet as if strolling in a rose garden. She gave one efficient sidelong kick, and the amulet scooted across the floor to disappear beneath the sofa. “Ha!” shouted Lady Armitage and punched Alex hard. Then winced as her bones shuddered against his abdominal muscles. He pushed her away and turned to shove at the sofa even as he heard Charlotte’s voice crackling through the room. “Proximare!” She pointed to the sofa, presumably aiming her magic at the amulet beneath. But the sofa, already in motion, responded instead. It lurched violently into the air, rocking back and forth as its sedentary nature vied with the magic, and then shot toward Charlotte. Instinct had Alex running for her even though he knew he could not outpace speeding furniture. Charlotte jumped from the sideboard just as the sofa smashed into the wall above, and Alex grabbed her, throwing them both aside. The sofa tumbled to earth with a bone-shaking thud. Clinging to each other, they inhaled shakily, and Alex rolled so they could more easily get to their— “Stop right there.” Looking up, he saw a gun barrel, and behind it the sharp red smile of Lady Armitage. His arms tightened around Charlotte. “It has been a long and tiring week,” the pirate complained, “between organizing my trousseau, blowing up the church, and kidnapping the vicar. I appreciate the entertainment you have provided here, but that’s enough now. Time to bring an end.” “There are no bullets in that gun,” Charlotte reminded her. Lady Armitage’s smile quirked. She pulled the trigger. Alex hunched over Charlotte protectively as the floor next to them exploded in a screaming shower of sparks and wood chips. “I am a pirate,” Lady Armitage said coolly. “You didn’t think I was telling the truth, did you? Dearlove, kindly go and dust the torture chamber. I do believe I shall give myself a hen’s party before my wedding tomorrow.” She chuckled as she kicked Alex with her booted toe. “Although these two will be the ones squawking.”