The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels Read online

  “Lamb,” she said with an effort at gentleness. Cecilia blinked, her eyes darkening to a wistful orphan blue. Miss Darlington frowned. “If it’s Thursday,” she elaborated, “luncheon will be lamb, with mint sauce and boiled potatoes.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Cecilia said, pulling herself together. “Also peas.”

  Miss Darlington nodded. It was a satisfactory end to the matter, and she could have left it there. After all, one does not want to encourage the younger generation too much, lest they lose sight of their proper place: under one’s thumb. She decided, however, to take pity on the girl, having herself once been as high-spirited. “Perhaps tomorrow the weather will be better fit for some perambulation,” she said. “You might go to the library, and afterward get a bun from Sally Lunn’s.”

  “But isn’t that in Bath?”

  “I thought a change of scenery might do us good. Mayfair is becoming altogether too rowdy. We shall fly the house down this afternoon. It will be a chance to give Pleasance a refresher course on the flight incantation’s last stanza. Her vowels are still too flat. Approaching the ground with one’s front door at a thirty-degree angle is rather more excitement than one likes for an afternoon. And yes, I can see from your expression you still think I shouldn’t have shared the incantation’s secret with her, but Pleasance can be trusted. Granted, she did fly that bookshop into the Serpentine when they told her they didn’t stock any Dickens novels, but that only shows a praiseworthy enthusiasm for literature. She’ll get us safely to Bath, and then you can take a nice stroll among the shops. Maybe you can buy some pretty lace ribbons or a new dagger before getting your iced bun.”

  “Thank you, Aunty,” Cecilia answered, just as she was supposed to. In fact she would rather have gone to Oxford, or even just across the park to visit the Natural History Museum, but to suggest either would risk Miss Darlington reversing her decision altogether. So she simply smiled and obeyed. There followed a moment’s pleasant quiet.

  “Although eat only half the bun, mind you,” Miss Darlington said as Cecilia took up Hiawatha and tried yet again to find her place among the reeds and water lilies. “We don’t want you falling ill with cholera.”

  “That is a disease of contaminated water, Aunty.”

  Miss Darlington sniffed, not liking to be corrected. “A baker uses water I’m sure to make his wares. One can never be too careful, dear.”

  “Yes, Aunty. ‘The level moon stared at him, in his face stared pale and haggard, ’til—’”

  Crash!

  The two women looked over at the window as it shattered. A grenade tumbled onto the carpet.

  Cecilia expelled a sigh of tedium. She snapped the book shut, wended her way through the furnishings, pulled back the drapes, and deposited the grenade through the broken windowpane onto the terrace, where it exploded in a flash of burning light, brick shards, and fluttering lavender buds.

  “Ahem.”

  Cecilia turned to see Pleasance standing in the drawing room doorway, plucking a glass splinter from one of the dark curls that habitually escaped her white lace cap.

  “Excuse the interruption, misses, but I have news,” she declared in the portentous tones of a young woman who spent too much time reading lurid Gothic fiction and consorting with the figments of her melodramatic imagination. “Luncheon is served.”

  Miss Darlington pushed herself up from the chair. “Please arrange for a glazier to come as soon as possible, Pleasance. We shall have to use the Lilac Drawing Room this afternoon, although I prefer to keep it for entertaining guests. The risk from that broken window is simply too great to bear. My own dear cousin nearly died of pneumonia under similar circumstances, as you know.”

  Cecilia murmured an agreement, although she recalled that Cousin Alathea’s illness, contracted while attempting to fly a cottage in a hurricane, had little real consequence other than the loss of a chimney (and five crew members)—Alathea continuing on in robust health to maraud the coastline for several more years before losing a skirmish with Lord Vesbry’s pet alligator while holidaying in the South of France.

  Miss Darlington tapped a path across the room with her mahogany cane, but Cecilia paused, twitching the drapes slightly so as to peer through jagged glass and smoke at the garden. The assassin was leaning back against the iron railings of the house across the street. He noticed Cecilia and touched one finger to his temple in salutation. Cecilia frowned.

  “Don’t dawdle, girl,” Miss Darlington chastised. Cecilia lowered the curtain, adjusting it slightly so it hung straight, and then followed her aunt toward the dining room and their Thursday lamb roast.

  2

  the lady anticipates her caller—a disappointment—the plight of cecilia’s digits—another explosion (figurative)—whiskey at white’s—barbarous o’riley—the looming abbey—two captains confer—betrayal is exposed

  Isabella Armitage was no bird-brained girl; and no police force had ensnared her, despite their efforts over the years. Lately, however, she had found herself tempted to do something that would almost certainly see her imprisoned, regardless of her wealth and degree.

  The outrage of that Darlington woman displaying herself in plain view (that is, to anyone with binoculars) in such a noble district as Mayfair, when she was no better than a common fingersmith! Lady Armitage could not abide it.

  Granted, such outrages had been occurring for a decade, but familiarity was no impediment to Lady Armitage’s wrath. As a daughter of the Hollister family from York, none of whom had knowingly spoken to any denizen of Lancashire in the four centuries since the Wars of the Roses, she felt no difficulty sustaining a mere ten years’ indignation.

  Even so, she’d tried all she could to smooth troubled waters. But Darlington had rudely persisted in avoiding the knife (and gun, poison, rabid dog, fall from a great height, garrote, flaming arrow). The time had come for different tactics. As a daughter of the Fairley clan on her distaff side, Lady Armitage had all the wit and flexibility that had seen her ancestors survive the civil war by deftly switching sides, religions, and marriages, whenever circumstances required. She needn’t try a seventeenth time to exterminate the Darlington woman. She would transition promptly to a new plan.

  Killing Cecilia.

  The pirate had promised to help. “Just rest, and I’ll assassinate her for you,” he had said, smiling in a lithe, melting way that reminded Lady Armitage of her second husband before the slow-acting poison began bloating his tongue. She’d been wary about hiring an outsider, but within five minutes of their meeting, the pirate had filled her with murderous excitement. They’d sipped wine, exchanged a few jokes about poison, before getting down to business, and she’d felt deep in her heart (or at least somewhere) that he was the one for the job.

  “How would you like it done?” he’d asked. “Gun, garrote?”

  Lady Armitage had shrugged. “I leave that up to your artistic discretion, Signor de Luca. But killing only. Nothing impolite. I am an ethical woman, and Cecilia is after all innocent.”

  He’d raised an eyebrow in dispute of anyone’s innocence, and Lady Armitage had felt so gently chided, so tenderly assumed to be naive, just like a sweet and adorable woman, that she had actually blushed for the first time in seventy years. Murdering three husbands (and misplacing a fourth) tended to inure a woman to masculine charm, and yet as this man had looked at her over the rim of his wineglass, she’d found herself unexpectedly aflutter and trying to remember dizzily where she’d stored her wedding ring.

  “Miss Darlington will be prostrate with grief at the loss of her niece,” she’d said. “It’s even better than killing the woman herself. And then of course I’ll kill her too, but Cecilia’s death will soften her up for assassination.”

  “It’s an interesting plan,” the signor had agreed. “Tell me about Cecilia. What do I need to know?”

  “Oh, she’s a dear girl.” She’d sighed, re
membering a quiet, somber child who called her Aunty Army and was fascinated by her dagger collection. That was back in the good old days, down at the docks and along the golden shores, when the Wisteria Society still met regularly to discuss knitting patterns and the latest explosives catalog. How long ago had it been? Long enough that little Cecilia was all grown up and eligible for assassination.

  Thinking of it, Lady Armitage had sighed again, melancholic. And Signor de Luca had reached over, one strand of hair falling across his eye roguishly, and patted her hand with gentle sympathy.

  “Do it,” she’d said, staring at his long, swooping lashes, his curving lips. “Kill the girl. And then we’ll deal with Darlington.”

  He’d laughed and drunk a toast to her brilliance, and she’d spent that evening sewing rosettes onto a garter and dreaming of the Italian hills bright with summer’s sun as she toured them on her (fifth) honeymoon.

  The very next day, he’d set her plan into action. And it worked! Lady Armitage watched with bated breath, but after the dust of the explosion settled, she could discern no movement from the Darlington drawing room. Maybe a twitch of the drapes, but that would only be natural considering the great rush of air. On the street, neighbors were gathering in a state of panic, not so much from the explosion as from the realization that there were two pirate houses in their midst, but Lady Armitage had no interest in them. After all, pirates did the civic thing by displaying a black flag from their roof whilst going about pillaging and blowing things apart. If the public failed to look up, whose fault was that?

  She turned away from the window, allowing herself a satisfied nod. Poor Cecilia, dead so young. And yet, the chit had been half a ghost already, pallid and quiet: a faint remembrance of her mother.

  The thought tossed a memory up with it, a vision of bright billowing hair, flashing eyes . . . and a sword-pierced breast soaked in blood. Lady Armitage shuddered.

  Then smiled. This was no time to be maudlin. She’d just killed a girl! Already the air seemed brighter (if literally darker, due to smoke from the bomb). Sweeping herself down upon a pink velvet divan, she reclined sensuously to await Signor de Luca’s arrival.

  A moment later she sat up to be sure her stockings were taut before easing back once more. With a careful hand, she smoothed the high plume of her snow-colored hair (it is entirely possible snow in parts of the north country could be gray) and settled her expression into elegance.

  Several minutes passed without action. Lady Armitage was yawning, scratching at an itch within her ear, when her butler, Whittaker, finally ushered in the pirate.

  “What took you so long to get here?” she demanded querulously.

  He bowed. “I beg your pardon. I had to climb a drainpipe to reach the front door. It seems your house is currently sitting atop the roof of another.”

  “We are experiencing minor technical difficulties.”

  Ever since her lady’s maid had thrown all good sense to the wind and run away to become a librarian, Lady Armitage had been forced to fly the house herself. Clearly, however, her brilliant mind overpowered the ancient flight incantation. Last month, she’d bunny hopped the house into the Avon River and had to replace all her carpets; this week she’d aimed for Chesterfield Street and ended up on a rooftop instead. Alas, the perils of genius. A town house was simply too light; no doubt some castle or cathedral would better contain the forces of her great intellect. Besides, she’d always fancied having one of those portcully thingies at her front door.

  She ought to train one of her other servants to fly the house, but they were all men, and Lady Armitage doubted their mental strength. Oh, they looked robust enough in their elegant livery, but could they keep it up all night? In her experience, they could not. At least two of her husbands had put it into quagmires, and a third landed it on Queen Victoria’s head (the head of the royal statue in Exeter, that is). Lady Armitage thought she was better off managing things herself, and if that meant perching on the occasional rooftop—well, she could simply call it a penthouse.

  “Besides,” she said to Signor de Luca, “I should imagine climbing is no problem for an Italian.”

  His expression went momentarily blank as he tried to parse this logic. Then he smiled again. “Half-Italian, ma’am.”

  “Never mind your preposterous heritage, is the deed done?”

  “Yes,” he said, and her spirits rose so high they burst forth as a smile from her thin, creased lips.

  “That is to say,” he added, and her spirits drooped again, as did her mouth. “Not quite yet, my lady. But we have them on the run.”

  Lady Armitage smacked her hand against the mahogany rim of the divan and tried not to wince as pain shot through her bones. “On the run? On the run? The house is still standing right there!” She gestured to the window, through which the Darlington house could be seen if one walked over and looked out (and down).

  “I meant their blood, ma’am,” he answered smoothly. Lady Armitage began to suspect his pretty smile was mocking her. “Their pulses will be racing with fear.”

  “Ha. That is no accomplishment. You might have as easily sneezed in Darlington’s direction and achieved the same result. I do not want them running; I want that girl lying still, motionless, dead, and Darlington destroyed by a grief that will end only when I literally destroy her. You have failed me, Signor de Luca!”

  She would have swooned in despair, but the divan was rather narrow and she did not trust that a faint wouldn’t see her toppling onto the floor.

  “Ma’am, I assure you not,” the man said. He took a step toward her, his smile rising at one tip in much the same way a shark’s might when trailing its prey. Lady Armitage watched warily as he knelt on one knee beside the divan and grasped her hand. It was the left hand, with its pale band around the third finger where her ring had been (the same ring with each marriage, for while husbands were easily discarded, a really nice ring, flattering to the finger, was not). He kissed it, then gazed up at her over her knuckles, through his eyelashes. She almost slid right off the velvet into his lap; only her corset, which was too tightly laced for sudden movements, saved her.

  “I will admit I like to play a little with my quarry,” he said in a wry, murmuring voice. “As you know, a pirate’s life can be tedious, and we take our fun where we can.”

  She sighed. “Eduardo, Eduardo, what shall I do with you?”

  “Oh, anything you like, ma’am,” he answered, grinning.

  She snatched back her hand and scrambled off the divan before she really did find herself in a compromising position. After all, it was nice to dream, but there remained some legal doubt about the vitality of her lost fourth husband, and she could hardly point to the particular heap in the dust-yard that would settle the matter once and for all.

  Behind her back, Ned rolled his eyes, but when Lady Armitage glanced his way again he was smiling sweetly as he got to his feet.

  Charming boy, she thought. Far too charming for anyone’s good. Probably best not to look at him. “Well now,” she said briskly, pacing the room, pausing here and there to stroke a stuffed peacock, stare at a portrait of a noble ancestor, shift a chimpanzee’s skull slightly on its doily. “I appreciate your jovial manner, Eduardo, but I do so want the girl dead. Perhaps you could, for me, try a little solemnity? A little stabbing, or suffocating her in her—um, chair? Not in her bed, of course, that would be scandalous. And no more incendiary devices. There are treasures in that house to be scavenged once Darlington is dead, and a bomb might damage them. When you have completed your task, bring me the girl’s smallest finger, or perhaps a toe or two, and I will pay you our agreed amount.”

  She risked another glance, and her pulse faltered as she saw a sudden coldness in his eyes. But the next moment, without even blinking, he was returning her gaze with pleasant equanimity.

  “Her smallest finger,” he said, and bowed. If he was down there a
touch longer than ordinary, Lady Armitage thought nothing of it, except perhaps that he meant to show her respect. When he straightened, his hair had slipped down, and he seemed younger—yet more dangerous to her heart, both in terms of sentiment and in regard to its inability to function with a knife impaled in it.

  “I shall retire to Lyme Regis. When you have killed the girl, you will find me situated on Marine Parade. I have a mind to walk the Cobb and feel the sea breeze through my tresses.”

  His gaze flicked to the erect fan of her hair, but otherwise his expression did not alter. “That will be a long journey from London. You might have to wait awhile for your digitus truncatum.”

  “Oh yes, I forgot you lost your house and are reduced to traveling by mere horse. Poor boy, less a pirate these days than a highwayman.”

  He said nothing in quite the most disturbing manner, and Lady Armitage found herself reaching for the locket she kept on a fob chain at her waist. Its cool gold surface always eased her thoughts, despite the heated memory it contained. Oh, Cilla, she thought, what has the world come to, without you in it? Pretty boys with provocative smiles, sweet girls who will not die. It is almost more than a poor, frail woman can bear!

  She turned to look again at the assassin. “I want her dead, do you understand? Dead. And I want proof. You have seven days.”

  “Your wish is my command.”

  She extended her long white hand, fingers draping from their bones, rings glinting in the light of the chandelier above. She applied the steely will of her Thorvaldson heritage (from her grandmother on her father’s side) and absolutely did not allow the hand to tremble, no matter what her heart was doing within its secret cage.

  He crossed the room, took her hand—but then unexpectedly lowered it, and, leaning closer, he kissed her mouth instead.

  It was as if he had tossed another of his bombs; heat wishes and desiccated flowers exploded in her brain. Shifting back, he gave her a thoroughly piratical grin, then departed the room without further word.