Berkley Trade Paperback Original |
On Sale: June 15th, 2021
There was no possibility of walking to the library that day.
Morning rain had blanched the air, and Miss Darlington feared that if Cecilia
ventured out she would develop a cough and be dead within the week. Therefore
Cecilia was at home, sitting with her aunt in a room ten degrees colder than
the streets of London, and reading aloud The Song of Hiawatha by “that American
rogue, Mr. Longfellow,” when the strange gentleman knocked at their door.
As the sound barged through the house,
interrupting Cecilia’s recitation mid-rhyme, she looked inquiringly at her
aunt. But Miss Darlington’s own gaze went to the mantel clock, which was
ticking sedately toward a quarter to one. The old lady frowned.
“It is an abomination the way people these days
knock at any wild, unseemly hour,” she said in much the same tone the prime
minister had used in Parliament recently to decry the London rioters. “I do
declare—!”
Cecilia waited, but Miss Darlington’s only
declaration came in the form of sipping her tea pointedly, by which Cecilia
understood that the abominable caller was to be ignored. She returned to
Hiawatha and had just begun proceeding “toward the land of the Pearl-Feather”
when the knocking came again with increased force, silencing her and causing
Miss Darlington to set her teacup into its saucer with a clink. Tea splashed,
and Cecilia hastily laid down the poetry book before things really got out of
hand.
“I shall see who it is,” she said, smoothing her
dress as she rose and touching the red-gold hair at her temples, although
there was no crease in the muslin nor a single strand out of place in her
coiffure.
“Do be careful, dear,” Miss Darlington
admonished. “Anyone attempting to visit at this time of day is obviously some
kind of hooligan.”
“Fear not, Aunty.” Cecilia took up a bone-handled
letter opener from the small table beside her chair. “They will not trouble
me.”
Miss Darlington harrumphed. “We are buying no
subscriptions today,” she called out as Cecilia left the room.
In fact they had never bought subscriptions, so
this was an unnecessary injunction, although typical of Miss Darlington, who
persisted in seeing her ward as the reckless tomboy who had entered her care
ten years before: prone to climbing trees, fashioning cloaks from tablecloths,
and making unauthorized doorstep purchases whenever the fancy took her. But a
decade’s proper education had wrought wonders, and now Cecilia walked the hall
quite calmly, her French heels tapping against the polished marble floor, her
intentions aimed in no way toward the taking of a subscription. She opened the
door.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Good afternoon,” said the man on the step. “May
I interest you in a brochure on the plight of the endangered North Atlantic
auk?”
Cecilia blinked from his pleasant smile to the
brochure he was holding out in a black-gloved hand. She noticed at once the
scandalous lack of hat upon his blond hair and the embroidery trimming his
black frock coat. He wore neither sideburns nor mustache, his boots were tall
and buckled, and a silver hoop hung from one ear. She looked again at his
smile, which quirked in response.
“No,” she said, and closed the door.
And bolted it.
Ned remained for a moment longer with the
brochure extended as his brain waited for his body to catch up with events. He
considered what he had seen of the woman who had stood so briefly in the
shadows of the doorway, but he could not recall the exact color of the sash
that waisted her soft white dress, nor whether it had been pearls or stars in
her hair, nor even how deeply winter dreamed in her lovely eyes. He held only a
general impression of “beauty so rare and face so fair”—and implacability so
terrifying in such a young woman.
And then his body made pace, and he grinned.
Miss Darlington was pouring herself another
cup of tea when Cecilia returned to the parlor. “Who was it?” she asked without
looking up.
“A pirate, I believe,” Cecilia said as she sat
and, taking the little book of poetry, began sliding a finger down a page to
relocate the line at which she’d been interrupted.
Miss Darlington set the teapot down. With a
delicate pair of tongs fashioned like a sea monster, she began loading sugar
cubes into her cup. “What made you think that?”
Cecilia was quiet a moment as she recollected
the man. He had been handsome in a rather dangerous way, despite the ridiculous
coat. A light in his eyes had suggested he’d known his brochure would not fool
her, but he’d entertained himself with the pose anyway. She predicted his hair
would fall over his brow if a breeze went through it, and that the slight bulge
in his trousers had been in case she was not happy to see him—a dagger, or
perhaps a gun.
“Well?” her aunt prompted, and Cecilia blinked
herself back into focus.
“He had a tattoo of an anchor on his wrist,” she
said. “Part of it was visible from beneath his sleeve. But he did not offer me
a secret handshake, nor invite himself in for tea, as anyone of decent piratic
society would have done, so I took him for a rogue and shut him out.”
“A rogue pirate! At our door!” Miss Darlington
made a small, disapproving noise behind pursed lips. “How reprehensible. Think
of the germs he might have had. I wonder what he was after.”
Cecilia shrugged. Had Hiawatha confronted the
magician yet? She could not remember. Her finger, three-quarters of the way
down the page, moved up again. “The Scope diamond, perhaps,” she said. “Or Lady
Askew’s necklace.”
Miss Darlington clanked a teaspoon around her
cup in a manner that made Cecilia wince. “Imagine if you had been out as you
planned, Cecilia dear. What would I have done, had he broken in?”
“Shot him?” Cecilia suggested.
Miss Darlington arched two vehemently plucked
eyebrows toward the ringlets on her brow. “Good heavens, child, what do you
take me for, a maniac? Think of the damage a ricocheting bullet would do in
this room.”
“Stabbed him, then?”
“And get blood all over the rug? It’s a
sixteenth-century Persian antique, you know, part of the royal collection. It
took a great deal of effort to acquire.”
“Steal,” Cecilia murmured.
“Obtain by private means.”
“Well,” Cecilia said, abandoning a losing battle
in favor of the original topic of conversation. “It was indeed fortunate I was
here. ‘The level moon stared at him—’ ”
“The moon? Is it up already?” Miss Darlington
glared at the wall as if she might see through its swarm of framed pictures,
its wallpaper and wood, to the celestial orb beyond, and therefore convey her
disgust at its diurnal shenanigans.
“No, it stared at Hiawatha,” Cecilia explained.
“In the poem.”
“Oh. Carry on, then.”
“ ‘In his face stared pale and haggard—’ ”
“Repetitive fellow, isn’t he?”
“Poets do tend to—”
Miss Darlington waved a hand irritably. “I
don’t mean the poet, girl. The pirate. Look, he’s now trying to climb in the
window.”
