“Certainly.” She threw it at his head.

“I have been interrogating that Jefferson fellow some more,” Lady Armitage said, mindless of Ned’s grin as he caught the salt canister and Cecilia’s scowl in response. “He agrees with you, Signor, that Morvath roves through the area. But I suspect we are not too far from his current hideout.”

“Interrogating?” Ned asked pointedly. Lady Armitage smiled and shrugged.

“I find myself quite undone lately,” she explained. Ned recollected the hiding place of her house key and almost choked on a potato.

“Why do you think the hideout is near, Aunty?” Cecilia asked.

“There is an inordinate amount of smoke coming from beyond the woods to starboard.”

“A farmer burning rubbish,” Ned suggested.

“Maybe,” Lady Armitage said. “Or a dangerous pirate in an abbey with many chimneys.”

“We should scout tonight, under the cover of darkness,” Cecilia proposed as she cut her ham into tiny, precise squares.

“Certainly not,” Lady Armitage replied. “A Darlington does not go about at night like some cheap footpad.”

Ned frowned. “But you are not a Darlington, Lady Armitage. In fact, you are the sworn enemy of the clan. So how can you tell her—”

Lady Armitage’s look was silencing. “Since Cecilia’s aunt is not present, and her poor mother is bewingèd in heaven, I must take on the responsibility of guiding her at this time.”

“She is an adult,” Ned pointed out. “And while I don’t wish to be repetitive, you did ask me two weeks ago to kill her on your behalf.”

“Ned,” Cecilia murmured. “One does not discuss attempted murder at the dinner table.”

“Cilla would be very proud to know her daughter was up for assassination,” Lady Armitage said, waving an impatient hand to dismiss the topic.

Ned shrugged and ate his dinner without another word while the ladies talked about the weather. When the meal was finished and Lady Armitage retired to drink sherry and smoke a cigar in the drawing room, the younger pirates took the dishes into the kitchen.

“I shall investigate that smoke tonight,” Cecilia reiterated as she stacked plates into the sink as preparation for a cleaning process she had no idea how to undertake, never having washed a dish in her life. “If it is Morvath, he might have noticed our approach and so by morning will be ready for us.”

Ned paused in scraping leftovers into a bucket. “Don’t you think it would be astonishingly convenient if, given the entire Blackdown Hills region, we chanced to land half a mile from where Morvath is hiding?”

“Indeed. It’s the sort of thing that would happen only in a badly written novel.”

“Or if Lady Armitage has betrayed you.”

Cecilia frowned. “She wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“She paid for your assassination.”

“Why do you keep raising that? We are scoundrels, Ned. We do not have polite, indoor disagreements. Besides, Aunty Army has always opposed Morvath. It would make no sense for her to betray me to him now.”