“Well, well, what have we here,” he said with grim delight. “Miss Jemima Darlington.”

Fury erupted within Pleasance. It blazed through any last barrier she had between reality and interesting fiction and smoked her inner mad baroness out.

With a bloodthirsty scream, she leaped at Jacobsen.

Northangerland Abbey was breaking apart. Houses rose from its courtyard garden as pirates escaped the fight to join the greater action beyond. The abbey’s cannons roared and its machine guns clattered, but they could not angle up to shoot the houses swarming above, nor could they reach the royal troops, whose own cannons had a longer range. Fires grew. Gables shattered. Henchmen began running out, hollering their surrender, hands held high.

In the attic of Darlington House, Cecilia watched the destruction with a cold gaze. Almost everyone she knew in the world was in that building. Nonetheless, she dutifully aimed the cannon once more and fired—

A corner of the abbey’s west wing erupted. It was her most successful shot so far; with such a gaping hole in its side, the stabilizing component of the flight incantation would never hold. Northangerland Abbey was going nowhere. Cecilia took a deep breath of relief—

And her relentless composure finally cracked, sending emotion slamming through her mind. She stumbled back, gasping.

Had she just killed Aunt Darlington? What if the old lady had left the fight, crossed the abbey, climbed several stairs, and entered the west wing?

“Oh God,” she breathed. “Oh God.”

God, however, did not respond, and the ingrained dictates of piracy pulled her out of black panic. With a further deep breath, she forced down the terror, loaded another cannonball, and took aim.

And shook so violently she could not light the fuse.

Fire flew across her vision. Smoke poured out of the abbey’s facade. She might not be shooting, but other pirates were, in addition to the troops on the ground. It was all beyond her control. She could not stop trembling. Turning away from the cannon, she grasped the copper trumpet and shouted into it.

“Land the house!”

There followed a moment of astonished silence; then Ned’s voice echoed up from the wheelroom below. “Cecilia? Are you all right?”

No, she thought, scrubbing her forehead with both hands. No, she was not all right. She was frightened and lonely, and her heart ached with an unbearable longing for her mother’s wild and gentle smile. She wanted the shooting to stop. She wanted a cup of tea.

“I’m fine,” she said into the trumpet. “I need to go in and rescue my aunty.”

“But that’s—”

He stopped, but she heard it in his silence. That’s like walking into a deathtrap. Her heart thundered, panic surging once more. A deathtrap holding Aunt Darlington. And Pleasance. And all the mad, magnificent ladies of the Wisteria Society. She should never have left; she should have remained to fight at their side, regardless of what they ordered.