Ned worked to smile in response. He knew the stories about Starkthorn Castle. Its owners, the merchant family Bassingthwaite, had been on the up and up (i.e., the British definition: “becoming successful,” not the American one: “honest and sincere”) even before they learned how to fly their premises. No haberdashers were more elegant or more ruthlessly ambitious; piracy was almost an easing back of operations for them.

He’d also heard endlessly from Morvath about how Cecilia Bassingthwaite’s mother, also named Cecilia, ran from that castle one night into Morvath’s arms, escaping her repressive mother Cess (Cecilia) and grandmother Sissy (Cecilia), renaming herself Cilla, and swearing she would not return to Starkthorn again unless to burn the place down.

And he’d heard from everyone else how Morvath found her in the garden that night and snatched her away against her will.

Ned guessed something between those versions was true. Cilla had ever been an enigmatic figure. She had renounced her proud pirate heritage to marry a man whose only crime up until then had been the composition of a novel so bad publishers had him threatened with legal action if he ever submitted to them again. But by the time Cilla left him, Morvath had gone from dreaming about literary fame to amassing a Gothic abbey, a great stockpile of weapons, and several notebooks filled with plans to destroy England.

Ned was unsure if Cilla had encouraged Morvath’s decline or if she had merely been one of the treasures he’d always intended to capture along the way. After all, she was a Darlington on her mother’s side, and Morvath hated that family with a passion. Eloping with her had been the perfect way to hurt them.

But as a Bassingthwaite on her father’s side, Cilla was practically a pirate princess. Ned could not help but wonder—although Cilla was universally mourned as Morvath’s victim, just who had taught him the flying spell and where to get a good deal on machine guns?

It was all as melodramatic as a Brontë story, and it certainly involved as many ghosts. Cilla and her foremothers, Morvath’s adoptive parents (who had perished in a mysterious fire while punting on the Avon River), and all the other people he had gone on to kill. Thinking about it, Ned’s smile flattened, and he had to glance away before the captain noticed.

In truth, Morvath probably would have become an evil mastermind regardless of who his parents or wife had been. There was a madness in him that need not be traced any farther back than his own broken mind. And now he had a full fleet of battlehouses at his command. He could move forward with his dream to burn down Parliament, seize the throne, and usher in a new age of tyranny, awful poetry, and boring fashions.

All with Ned as his trusted right-hand man.

There was only one apparent flaw in this plan—and it was currently running down the lane in a light blue dress, hat askew and face bared recklessly to the elements.