Ned did not answer, for he was still chanting the stanza, but his frown was eloquent. Cecilia paced away; rearranged a few books on the shelves; tapped her heel again. “Really,” she said, pacing back, “this is your top speed? A tongue-tied schoolboy translating from the original Latin could do better.”

“Why don’t you steer?” he suggested, stepping away from the wheel. She grasped it immediately and, alas, officiously. Ned tried not to laugh. “I’ll man the guns,” he said.

Cecilia stopped, tripping over the first word of the stanza. “Wait—what?”

Ned looked at her blankly. “The guns. To shoot him down. I assume we want to do that? What with him being an evil villain who must be stopped and all.”

“Of course,” she said, but her voice was as blanched as her face had become.

“Or perhaps not?” Ned added gently.

Cecilia hesitated. She watched the garden shed tilt and veer as it raced for the horizon.

His hair had been red when he was young.

Cecilia remembered him telling her that, although she’d never actually seen it herself, for he’d gone gray before she was born. Her mother told her he’d been so vain about those Titian curls, and worn little silver spectacles although his eyesight was perfect, and read literary papers he barely comprehended, all to be as much like Branwell Brontë as possible. His adoptive parents had named him George, after the old king, but when he learned the truth of his origins he changed it to Patrick, in honor of his Brontë grandfather, and found a sense of belonging at last in that noble lineage. Poet . . . pirate . . . dastardly villain.

One night he had shown Cecilia a portrait of himself as a youth, and he’d laughed delightedly at her wide-eyed reaction.

“But you’re prettier now,” she’d said, touching the silver strands of his hair.

He had laughed again, but this time it sounded sharp, like a sword brushing against skin. She had upset him, just like that. “Sorry,” she’d murmured, lowering her eyes.

“Men aren’t pretty,” he had explained. “Men are handsome or distinguished. And red hair is my Brontë heritage, as it is yours. That heritage is something to be proud of, Cecilia Patricia.”

She’d had no idea what he meant. She had been so little, her knees did not reach the edge of the sofa. So little she should have been in bed, with her dolls and her maniac cockatiel wallpaper, and her nursemaid embroidering the veil she planned to be married in just as soon as her fiancé returned from visiting a mysterious count in Transylvania. But Morvath, having drunk a little too much brandy that night, had been in a talkative mood.

“What is heritage?” Cecilia had asked him, the private dictionary in her mind waiting excitedly to add a new word.

“Heritage? Why, it is everything! My father, the great poet Branwell Brontë, has bestowed upon us all that is best about us. His imagination, his passion, his wild Irish spirit. It flows through me to you. I know that you will grow up to be a storm!”