“Your aunt is fine,” Ned said from across the room.

She threw him a scowl. He smiled wryly in reply.

“She was in good health when I last saw her,” Miss Fairweather said. “Have you come to reunite with your father, my dear?”

“Miss Bassingthwaite was kidnapped, Grandmama,” Jane said, her tone suggesting that being kidnapped showed a failure of character on Cecilia’s part. “She did not wish to be here at all.”

“Oh dear,” Miss Fairweather murmured. “That is difficult indeed.”

“But we are blessed with her company,” Frederick said, his buttered mustache quivering above the words. “With all her loveliness she shines a gentle, beatific light into the dismal—”

“I was disappointed to be betrayed by someone I thought I could trust,” Cecilia said, absolutely not dignifying Ned with a glance. “But there is a certain convenience to being here. All the better to rescue you and the rest of the Society.”

Miss Fairweather perked up at this. “True, true. But how will you do so, my dear? Do you have a plan? Tell me all the particulars.”

“Well, I thought—” Cecilia began, but was interrupted by Jane taking a sudden coughing fit. Cecilia looked at her with a fierce blankness, then turned back to Miss Fairweather. “I thought—” she repeated, raising her voice, and was interrupted again by Ned’s dagger slamming into the wall beside her head.

Frederick squeaked. Jane choked on her coughing.

“Oops,” Ned said with false innocence. “Sorry, my hand slipped.”

Cecilia smiled apologetically at Miss Fairweather. Then she stood, smoothing her skirts, and turned to pull the dagger from the wall so she might return it, point first, to Captain Lightbourne.

She could not budge it at all.

She stared across the room at him, wide-eyed with disbelief. He stared back inscrutably. As tension flared between them, Frederick squeaked again. Jane covered her mouth with a napkin. Miss Fairweather looked from one to the other as if trying to decide which of them was best for her to settle her gaze upon.

And then someone laughed.

Cecilia turned to see a handsome silver-haired man thrust himself into the room. She dropped abruptly back into her chair.

“Cecilia!” he exclaimed, spreading his arms and smile wide as he stepped forward to greet her. “My lovely daughter! My, how you’ve grown.”

Cecilia swallowed a scream. She rose again from the chair—

And memory swept her away.

It had been a beautiful day.

She and Cilla had arrived early for the Wisteria Society summer gathering at Greenwich, and while they’d awaited the other ladies Cecilia had danced after the dandelions Cilla blew for her, seeing nothing but tiny white wishes until suddenly, inexorably, a shadow had blotted them out . . .

“Patrick!” Cilla had reached for a sword she remembered too late she’d left on the picnic blanket. Cecilia, acting on sheer piratic instinct, had drawn her own small dagger from a secret pocket in her dress, eliciting a grin from Morvath.