Beside him, Cecilia looked out through the telescope. She had said little since the explosion. Her calm was brittle, eerie, and Ned waited nervously for her to begin crying. But as they approached Northangerland Abbey she merely laid down the telescope and took a deep breath.

“Turn the house around,” she said.

Ned frowned at her, certain he’d misheard.

“I have seen my aunt through the telescope,” she explained. “I cannot ascertain her condition, but she is out of the abbey and alive. Now turn the house around and land it beyond the woods, if you please.”

“But—” Ned said, and would have added further expressions of bemusement had Cecilia not taken a pistol from a nearby shelf and directed it at his head.

“Kindly do as I ask.”

He laughed. “Are you hijacking your own house?”

“I am hijacking my life, at least for a little while. Please, I don’t want to shoot you. It would make kissing you decidedly unpleasant.”

Ned promptly wheeled the house around and muttered so fast through the landing stanza, the house trembled. As they glided down over treetops toward a meadow that lay between woods and hills, Cecilia alternated between scowling and hyperventilating. Ned did not know whether to be frightened of her or for her. He decided his safest option was simply to focus on setting the house down and reciting the anchoring stanza in the correct order.

“We cannot stay in this room,” Cecilia declared once they had landed. She gestured with her pistol at the elegant furniture and polished floor. “It will be far too uncomfortable. You will have to come into my—er—where I sleep—”

“Your bedroom?” Ned asked, more confused than ever.

“Exactly.” Her expression was so rigid it might at any moment crack. “Although you will have to excuse the mess. I was not expecting company.”

“Why are you even inviting company into your bedroom?”

She glared across the room at a book slightly misaligned on a shelf. “Soon we must return to the battlefield. I will reunite with my aunt, and I suppose you will report to the Queen. Since you have confessed yourself not truly an assassin, I won’t see you again. My life will resume its normal pattern. Tea parties. Bank robberies. Long evenings spent reading to my aunt until she falls asleep. This is—”

She stopped, swallowing some unspeakable word. But Ned had no intention of letting her get away with it this time. “Is what, Cecilia?”

She shrugged one shoulder, still not looking at him. “Regrettable.”

“I see.” And he did see—behind her stringent manner she was frightened. Within the taut, bristling posture of her body, she was trembling with vulnerability and grief. He stepped forward, took the gun, and tossed it on a chair. Then wrapping his arms around her, he drew her close.

“It’s all right to cry,” he whispered. She tried to pull away, but he went on holding her, determined not to let go even if she turned into a sea monster, a screaming mare, a Lady Armitage spitting poison. He stroked her long, beautiful hair. She smelled of roses and cannon smoke, and his body ached for her in a way he knew he could not satisfy.