Ned studied the miniature portrait of the woman. It matched that which he had found in Miss Dole’s sitting room and carried now in his own coat pocket. “Yes,” he said.

“My beautiful Cilla. She was the most perfect example of womanhood, and mine—all mine.” His breath reeked of whiskey, but Ned did not dare move away. When drunk, the Captain became even more egocentric in his attitude toward reality, and more than one man had died for taking a step in what Morvath deemed the wrong direction. Ned was still not sure how someone with such a twisted mind managed to handle a building as big as the abbey in flight when even simple truths seemed beyond him.

“I’ll never forgive those Wisteria women for my loss,” Morvath went on, unconsciously proving Ned’s point. “If they hadn’t turned Cilla’s heart against me with their poisonous ideas about women’s rights and dignity, I know she’d never have left me. But it’s not only them. Even my own mother thought she could treat me like a nobody and just discard me, although I have the blood of genius running through my veins. Genius! You know, you’ve read my poems.”

“Indeed.”

“Women took my name, my heart, my love, from me. Well, by the time we’re finished, the Wisteria Society, the Queen, every damned Englishwoman, will have nothing left except what I deign to give them.”

“Yes, sir,” Ned responded as he was supposed to.

“Or you’ll die trying.”

“Understood,” Ned replied.

Morvath laughed, slapping him on the back. “Good. Now, on to stage three of our plan. Are you ready?”

“More than you can know,” Ned answered—thinking, You bastard.

Literally as well as vulgarly, he added, and tried not to smile.

Morvath snapped shut the locket and held it to his breast. “Oh, Cilla,” he moaned. “Forever my dearest ghost. It hurts unbearably to be parted from you!”

Then you probably shouldn’t have killed her, Ned commented silently.

“Come on, lad,” Morvath said, tucking the locket away again. “Let’s go burn the world.”

7

tea—the accoutrements of a strolling lady—an exotic recipe—mary shelley’s example—miss brown’s observations—a skirmish (mock)—the great peril—cecilia seeks direction—a skirmish (real)—calamity!

If a woman drank tea with all the powers of her puny being, she couldn’t drink as much in eighty years as Miss Darlington did in the following week. There was the everyday routine to be upheld—tea, and tea-with-biscuits, and a quick cup, and medicinal tea, and tea-before-bed, et cetera; but there was also an endless round of tea drunk in various houses with other ladies of the Wisteria Society as they strategized their response to Morvath’s piracy. Friday afternoon they even went into Ottery St. Mary to have tea in a little teahouse where the tablecloths were pink and the spoons were stealworthy.

On this occasion, Miss Darlington, Cecilia, and Pleasance walked into the village with Olivia Etterly, a lady of forty years’ age (and some more she did not acknowledge) who was infamous for having once made Lord Byron cry. Miss Darlington took the journey seated beneath a parasol in a wheeled wicker peacock chair pushed by Pleasance. As they went, she fanned herself so as to protect her lungs from the diseases exuded by hedgery, and at regular intervals warned Cecilia about the breeze (“don’t breathe too much, it will chill your heart”), a passing sparrow (“they’re wingèd mice, you know”), and the perils of walking faster than a gentle stroll (“alack, slow down, you will break your ankle at that intemperate pace, my dear!”). Pleasance kept glancing back, for she was anxious leaving the house. In fact, before setting out there had been a fervent discussion about it between her, the pirate ladies, and the monsters in her head.