6
crash landings—in the parking lot—an alarming invention— mr. and mrs. blakeney are romantic— daniel faces temptation—an efflusive welcome— badly done indeed
Whatever pirates’ souls are made out of, theirs and their houses’ are the same. This notion explained why the Bassingthwaite clan, generally considered to be piratic royalty (i.e., pompous, boring, and good candidates for beheading), possessed a premises so grand, so unwieldy, that it took four people incantating in chorus just to get it off the ground. In other words, their souls were, in their opinion, “the most exalted object we are capable of conceiving”—and in everyone else’s, just bloody difficult to manage. In any case, Starkthorn Castle was the greatest man-o’-war in England.
Although its pink frilly curtains did rather ruin the effect.
The castle stood astride a leafy Hampshire meadow like a warrior-king who had decided this would be the perfect spot for a picnic. Its granite body, crenelated along the upper edge, bristling with chimneys and cannons, seemed to have been dropped into the lush countryside without aforethought or aesthetic consideration. Partly this impression was due to its bleak appearance, and partly because it had crushed two trees and a fence on landing.
Alice felt claustrophobic just looking at it. She tapped her fingers together in the pocket of the green velvet coat Miss Darlington had insisted she wear. The building itself was not the problem, but the thought of having to exchange polite, cheerful greetings with its owner. She’d rather wrestle an alligator.
Although considering she was about to join a pirates’ party, she might ultimately have to do both.
Miss Darlington’s house had landed about five hundred feet from the castle in order that the lady and her husband could enjoy a holiday away from home and still be within running distance of that home if there was a problem (such as being caught with the Ming vase in their hands). Several other houses were already parked there, including the conservatory that had attacked them. Slightly to one side stood the A.U.N.T. cottage—although to use the word stood was rather excessive. In fact, the cottage hunched. It drooped. It had all the structural integrity of a free verse poem in a popular magazine. No doubt Daniel would face hours of insurance paperwork upon his return to headquarters.
Alice would have pitied him were it not for the fact that doing so might lead to suggestions of her helping with said paperwork.
Daniel himself was leaning against the doorframe, arms and ankles crossed, as he watched Dr. Snodgrass screw something into the wall of the cottage. Everything about him seemed just as it should be: shirt neatly buttoned up; tie straight; hair tidy; body unbroken and strong, so strong, he could probably lift her with no effort, pinning her against—
Which is to say, Alice thought, throwing a stern frown at her imagination, he was thankfully unharmed. Not that she had worried for his safety. She’d merely disliked being unable to confirm his status, for the sake of the mission. And that was why, seeing him now, her heart danced (a mazurka—at double tempo—with her nerves shouting hey! at every beat). Because of the mission.
He looked up as she approached. “Ah, there you are,” he said mildly.
“What is Dr. Snodgrass doing?” Alice asked in a wary voice. “And do I really want to know?”
“This is an anti-theft device!” Snodgrass himself answered, turning to gesture excitedly with his screwdriver. Alice took a step back in case it exploded. “The small black box has been embedded with anchoring phrases from the incantation. All I have to do is press this button and—”
Eeeeee-ooooooo-eeeeee-ooooooo!
Alice and Daniel clasped hands over their ears at the sudden high-pitched scream emanating from the device. Frantic, Snodgrass smacked the button repeatedly, without success. Smoke began to gush from the box. The cottage shook. In the houses all around, faces appeared at windows, presumably shouting, although it was impossible to hear beyond the alarm.
At last, Snodgrass managed to restore silence. As the smoke dissipated and the air seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the cottage to collapse entirely from shock, Alice dared to lower her hands.
“Fiddlesticks,” she said, the word hissing at its end much like the fuse of a bomb hisses when lit. “Fiddlesticks. F-f-f—”
Daniel took hold of her, firmly clamping her arms, his expression impeccably sober. “Miss Dearlove,” he said in a voice as firm as his grip. “Willows whiten, aspens quiver.”
The shuddering of Alice’s senses was immediately diverted, easing into the course of Tennyson’s rhyme. “Willows whiten, aspens quiver,” she said.
“Little breezes dusk and shiver,” Daniel continued.
“Thro’ the wave that runs for ever.”
His expression softened; he released his grip. “By the island in the river.”
Alice resisted the urge to rub the tingling warmth in her arms where he had grasped her. “Flowing down to Camelot.”
Breath calmed, tossing back its metaphorical hair and brushing the wrinkles from its surface as if the momentary panic had been intentional, thank you—merely a test of the system. Her constitution reasserted itself without even one tap of a finger.
Behind them, Snodgrass tittered. “I say, say what?”
The agents ignored him. Daniel reached out to touch Alice’s hat.
“Your butterfly is wingless,” he said softly.
And just like that her pulse shook again. She swallowed, and Daniel withdrew his hand. They both looked away into the middle distance.
“All right?” he asked.
“All right,” Alice confirmed, and he smiled briefly, efficiently. As his expression shut down again like a library catalog card slotting back into place, Alice felt her heart give a dreamy sigh . . .
But her brain strode forth to stop that nonsense at once. It snapped out a ruler and pointed to the fact that not only had Daniel recognized her sensory crisis, he’d known the exact Tennyson poem guaranteed to settle her—the one Academy tutors had used for that same purpose when she was growing up. This suggested only one conclusion.
He had gathered a data file on her.
Alice’s heart gasped. The nerve of the man! She would have to punish him for such a breach of privacy! No doubt there was something in the data file she had gathered on him that would suggest a suitable penalty.
She narrowed her eyes to stare at him as if she might be able to discern the truth from his eyelashes and cheekbones and the perfect curve of his lips that must fit just right against a woman’s mouth—but even as she hastily looked away again, blushing, he himself turned with flashing eyes to glare at Snodgrass.
The scientist flinched. “Sorry. That was rather unexpected, what? But I say, no one will want to steal the house now.”
“No one would want to steal it in the first place!” Daniel countered with uncharacteristic anger. “It’s a wreck. We’ll be taking the train back to London.”
“Oh, jolly good! I love a train ride.”
The anger in Daniel’s mood cooled abruptly, hardening to ice. “Doctor, no. When I said ‘we,’ I meant the lady and I. Perhaps you can—I don’t know—invent a wheeled plank of wood to transport you back, or some such.”
Snodgrass caught his breath—but not in offense, Alice realized. He reached into his jacket pocket for a notepad and pencil and began writing furiously. She heard him murmur, “A board to skate across the ground . . .”
Daniel’s hand clenched. Turning away from the scientist, he caught Alice’s gaze unintentionally, and she blinked at the cold wrath in his eyes. But almost instantly expression faded from his countenance, leaving him inscrutable once more. She sensed Snodgrass had narrowly averted assassination for the third time that day.
“Do not worry, Miss Dearlove,” Daniel said, leaning a little closer so only she could hear him. “I am but mad north-northwest.”
Her heart swooned at the line from Shakespeare. “That’s fine,” she replied in the same conversational tone. “I’m sure there is method in it.”
He grinned, dazzling her with sudden beauty, and her heart promptly fell back in a swoon. Alice tried to haul it up again. This simply would not do! Feeling attracted to one’s husband was entirely—
“Scandalous!” supplied an appalled voice. Alice turned, instinctively reaching for a gun that was no longer in her skirt—or that in fact was, albeit several miles away.
Miss Darlington approached. She was applying a walking cane to the ground with one hand while her other rested on the arm of a woman wearing a dress more ruffled than the feelings of a Romantic poet. Two steps behind them came their husbands, laden with suitcases. The ladies critiqued each house as they walked.
“What was Olivia thinking, painting her door that color?”
“Good heavens, look at those hideous curtains in Miss Dole’s windows!”
“Does she call those spikes? Why, they are not even bloodstained.”
“And here is Mrs. Blakeney from Amsterdam,” Miss Darlington said upon arriving at the A.U.N.T. cottage. She gestured as though Alice were a vaguely interesting specimen in a zoo. “Charming girl, rather odd sense of fashion. Mrs. Blakeney, have you met my dear friend Gertrude Rotunder?”
The insufferable woman with no shame? Alice wanted to reply, but worried this might be somewhat inappropriate. Besides, she had indeed met Mrs. Rotunder while on assignment in Clacton-on-Sea last year, and was now keen to make the most commonplace impression possible.
“How do you do?” she said, nodding.
“I know you!” Mrs. Rotunder snapped her fingers and pointed at Alice, who very carefully raised her eyebrows in mild inquiry. From the corner of her eye she saw Daniel shift his hand toward the pocket inside his coat where he kept his gun.
“I noticed you fall out of your cottage during our playful skirmish. Such fun! We should do it again soon.”
“Er, yes,” Alice said.
“You took some good shots. Luckily I didn’t bring my actual house with me, or else imagine the state of my carpets right now!”
(“Our house,” Mr. Rotunder murmured, but no one paid him any attention.)
“Is this your husband?” Miss Darlington asked, perusing Daniel with a cool eye. “He appears to be free of disease, at least. How ecstatic he must have been to see you safe and sound.”
“Indeed,” Daniel said, reaching out awkwardly to pat Alice’s arm. She tried not to flinch at the light touch. “I’m glad she survived her fall.”
“Petticoat,” Alice told him, and he nodded.
“Petticoat?” Miss Darlington repeated confusedly.
“It is a term of endearment,” Alice said, thinking fast. “In Amsterdam a wife will commonly refer to her husband as ‘my petticoat.’ ”
“Oh?” the pirates inquired politely.
“He in turn calls me his jockstrap.”
Daniel choked on his breath. The pirates’ husbands glanced wide-eyed at each other. Even Dr. Snodgrass covered his face with his hands.
“I see,” Mrs. Darlington replied.
“How long have you been married?” Mrs. Rotunder asked.
“Three years,” Alice replied.
“Three months,” Daniel said at the same time.
They frowned with bemusement at each other.
“Are you sure?” Daniel said.
“Of course I’m sure,” Alice told him, affronted. “It is written clearly in the—” She stopped, recollecting their audience, who were watching with fascination. “Er, in the wedding album. Three years this coming January.”
“Oh yes. It only feels like three months due to the profusion of romance.”
“A veritable excess of romance,” Alice agreed. Daniel reached out to pat her arm again and she sidestepped before he could do so.
Miss Darlington’s mouth twitched. “Well, goodness. I suspect this will be an intriguing week after all. No doubt we will spy some charming interludes and uncover many secrets of our hearts. Coming, Gertrude?”
With a parting nod, the pirate ladies proceeded together across the grass toward Starkthorn Manor, trailed by their husbands.
Alice shook back her ruined hat feathers. “Well,” she declared, “that was a success.”
“Hm,” Daniel said, frowning.
“You doubt it?”
“I doubt we will be alive by the end of the day.”
“Nonsense. I survived chatting with Miss Darlington in her sitting room. You kept Mrs. Rotunder from completely destroying our house. And it took no effort whatsoever to convince them we are a happily married pirate couple. I am entirely confident all shall be just fine.”
Never had things been worse.
Daniel stood in the grand entrance hall of Starkthorn Castle, surrounded by pirates, and drew upon all his training as a secret agent in order to remain calm. His spectacles fogged with the effort of breathing regularly. Every instinct in him ached to retrieve both guns from inside his coat and fire until all their bullets were spent—a move that would see him dead within seconds.
Mind you, death might be preferable to spending one moment more listening to Frederick Bassingthwaite speak.
“. . . And so with all my warm, palpitating heart I welcome you, Aunt Darlington, Mrs. Rotunder, Mrs. Blakeney, and associated gentlemen. Long have I yearned to see your dear and handsome visages, and I beg you find comfort in this my most humble and unworthy abode, from which the scions of Bassingthwaite have . . .”
At Daniel’s side, Alice leaned close to whisper, “Do you think we can just blow the whole place up and be done with it?”
Daniel considered this suggestion. A few sticks of dynamite beneath the Corinthian columns and—
Wait. She was probably not serious.
Thud!
He jolted out of his thoughts to see a dagger reverberating in a portrait of Black Beryl that hung on the wall directly behind Frederick.
“Sorry,” Mrs. Rotunder sang out. “My hand slipped.”
Frederick’s face had turned as white as the pearl handle of the dagger, but he nevertheless managed to trill a laugh. “Dear lady, allow me to declare there is no—”
“No need to apologize,” interjected his wife. She smiled with such determination Daniel feared she would do an injury to her facial muscles. Marriage to Frederick would strain anyone, but Jane Fairweather seemed so tense she probably needed no weapon to assassinate the Queen—one curtsy and she might just explode. “The rest of the party are partaking of tea in the Orange Drawing Room,” she said. “You are welcome to join us, or the servants will escort you to your rooms for a rest first. I know travel can be wearisome for the agèd.”
Silence sharper than any dagger followed this statement. Daniel and Alice glanced nervously at each other.
But Miss Darlington only laughed. “I see marriage has improved you, Jane. That was almost nasty. Well done, dear!”
Jane nodded in receipt of the compliment. “But is dear Cecilia not with you, Miss Darlington? I am looking forward to seeing my darling chum!”
“She sends her regrets,” Miss Darlington said.
“How disappointing,” Jane murmured. Daniel regarded her thoughtfully, for her facial expression did not seem to quite match the words. He tried to compare its various microfeatures to those on his internal checklist of A Disappointed Countenance Type One: Female, but before he could begin, Jane was already smiling. “Well, I am glad you at least are here.”
Miss Darlington frowned as she scanned this for insult. “I feel quite parched,” she replied, as if the state of her throat was Jane’s personal fault. “Come along, Mr. Darlington.”
Behind her, Jake Jacobsen rolled his eyes fondly. Miss Darlington laid her hand in a queenly manner upon his offered arm, and they began to cross the hall toward a distant sound of laughter. Mrs. Rotunder and her husband hurried after them before Frederick could speak again, and Daniel began to follow.
“Ahem.”
Glancing back at the pointed sound, he realized he had forgotten his wife. She looked at him with a placid expression, but her eyes conveyed an urgent speech, complete with diagrams and flowcharts.
“I was thinking, Mr. Blakeney, that we might visit our room before meeting the company,” she said aloud.
“But, Mrs. Blakeney,” he replied, “we do not want to appear unfriendly.”
“We also don’t want to make a poor first impression, Mr. Blakeney,” Alice countered. “And I would like to point out that I am not exactly dressed for tea.”
“Oh?” As far as Daniel could see, she was thoroughly covered—although he did vaguely recollect that her skirt had been a different color before she exited the cottage. “Well then, you go off and get changed while I join the rest of the company.”
This sensible suggestion was met with audible inhalations from Frederick, Jane, Snodgrass, and whoever was spying on the company behind a portrait of Sir Francis Drake.
Alice herself merely blinked at him.
Daniel winced. “I beg your pardon. Allow me to escort you upstairs.”
(No one could ever fault him for being a slow learner.)
Alice smiled nicely. The witnesses exhaled. Daniel offered her his arm, she refused it, and they ascended the stairs, trailed by suitcase-lugging servants.
“That was badly done, Mr. Blakeney,” Alice whispered as they followed a housemaid along a lamplit corridor. She did not look at him, but he felt her attention poking his heart. “It is not pleasant for you to hear, I’m sure, although it is pleasant for me that I must tell you: badly done.”
“Oh?” he said, his own eyes focused straight ahead.
“You argued with me. It was inappropriate. Married couples never argue.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Of course I am sure,” Alice retorted. “The wife is always right.”
She marched ahead of him down the corridor, and suddenly Daniel began to feel very married indeed.