“Not much like her mother,” Miss Fairweather said in a pursed voice.

Out of the corner of her eye, Cecilia saw Olivia and Miss Brown make the sign of the cross.

“I was relieved to see you not joining the chase toward Northangerland Abbey, Jem,” Miss Brown added. “Imagine if Morvath got hold of her!”

Jane emitted a small sound that could not have been a snigger, for when Cecilia glanced at her she was once again occupied closely with her book. It occurred to Cecilia that, if Captain Lightbourne turned out not to be a double-crossing henchman of her father, but merely an innocent assassin after all, she could hire him to bash Jane Fairweather to death with that little book of battle poems.

“Cecilia will never fall into Morvath’s hands,” Miss Darlington declared, snapping her fan shut. “Nor will she be like her mother, who succumbed to the dubious charms of a handsome and mysterious pirate simply because he had a fancy sword and quoted poetry to her. Are we going for tea or not?”

Pleasance began propelling the wheeled chair fiercely along the road, stirring up enough road dust to make them all cough if they were so inclined. Olivia and Miss Brown stared with unfocused eyes into the middle distance, no doubt imagining fancy swords; Miss Fairweather kept looking over her shoulder as if expecting Morvath to leap out at any moment; Jane read; and Cecilia for her part was so bent on not recollecting Captain Lightbourne’s handsome face and enchanting smile that the company was at The Ancient Mariner, the teahouse at the heart of Ottery St. Mary village, before she even realized.

On the footpath outside they met with Essie and her husband, Lysander, each of whom was carrying a child on their back. They had been introduced a few years ago while tunneling out of a Turkish prison and were known to be the happiest married couple in the Society, to the regret of many who felt fine-boned, black-haired Essie would be particularly suited to an elegant suit of widow’s weeds.

“‘The guests are met, the feast is set,’” Lysander welcomed them, eliciting a smile from Cecilia. The other ladies stared blankly, not being acquainted with Samuel Coleridge’s most famous poem. Lysander winked at Cecilia (for he dimly remembered being Lysander the Lout beneath the polish of marriage, fatherhood, and routine villainy). “We have been exploring and are now regathering our breath before we enter the fray.”

At this, the children, being well-brought-up young pirates, shouted, “Weigh anchor!” and brandished small wooden swords in exuberant fashion. Miss Brown, never one to shirk an educational opportunity, promptly drew her own sword from the scabbard half-hidden among her skirts.

“En garde!” she cried, much to the horror of Miss Darlington’s sensibilities—“A lady should not use French on the street,” she admonished Cecilia, although Cecilia herself had said nothing—and a mock skirmish began. The children, directing their parents like battlehouses, giggled with delight. Olivia tried to confound them with the flapping of her fan, Miss Fairweather called out directions, and Miss Darlington, frowning, furled her parasol and jabbed it like a lace-swathed bayonet at the legs of the participants.