“I am wearing a dress, sir. I don’t want you to look up and see my underwear.”

“I’ve seen it before,” he reminded her with a grin. But she merely looked at him expressionlessly until he shrugged and began to climb. She tucked up her skirts and followed behind.

Upon reaching the cottage rooftop, they trudged over thatch to the front door of Darlington House. Cecilia opened it.

The foyer was a mess. Flower vases had tipped, spilling their contents. The Duke of Kent’s crystal bowl lay shattered on the floor. A trail of lace and ribbon emerged from the sitting room, only to end with pearl-handled scissors lying in a pool of blood on the parquet floor.

“Wipe your feet,” Cecilia told Ned. “The wheelroom is upstairs, at the end of the corridor. I’m going to check the doors are shut, then prepare the guns. You get us aloft.”

“Your wheel isn’t locked with a key hidden somewhere interesting?” Ned asked, eyeing her drawers.

Cecilia frowned, rearranging her skirts. “No. And stop smiling like that or I’ll make you walk the plank.”

Ned laughed and jogged up the stairs. Cecilia hurried into the Lilac Drawing Room, where a cataclysm of scrapbook paper and floral decals confronted her. Mr. Etterly had not been taken without a fight. She made certain the porch door was closed, then ran through the rest of the ground-floor rooms until she could call out to Ned, “Secure for flight!” Immediately the house began to rise.

Cecilia dashed to the attic. Darlington House had a fine selection of artillery, including a multibarreled gun, cannon, and harpoon. Cecilia chose the cannon without hesitation, even knowing the danger it presented to the Wisteria Society still within the abbey.

“God be with you, Aunty,” Cecilia whispered. Her heart clenched—but she had spent ten years repressing love even more fiercely than a patriarchal system could, and this was not the moment to stop doing so. She hauled the cannon to the window and began to load it.

19

explosions, yet again—the heir of boudicca—empress of the skies—blood and ghosts—pleasance becomes a heroine—pleasance becomes a mad baroness—an interlude—cecilia decides

A scientific woman ought to have no wishes, no affections, a mere heart of stone (and a good supply of ammunition). Constantinopla Brown prided herself on being scientific, piratic, a feminine creature; even so, she winced as the cannonball struck Northangerland Abbey. Somewhere inside that building were the venerable ladies of the Wisteria Society. Perhaps they’d even been in the corner of the west wing that had just exploded in a cloud of smoke and debris. Had Constantinopla brought the royal troops to rescue them, only to doom them instead to a horrific death?!

“Pass the chicken.”

Constantinopla was jolted from her troubled thoughts by Queen Victoria’s demand. “Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, and reached into the picnic basket for a leg of fried chicken. The Queen, seated on a stool invisible beneath her vast black dress, laid down her paintbrush to take the chicken. As she munched, she contemplated the watercolor she was painting.