Chapter Sixteen

Knowing, or at least strongly suspecting, that his youngest sister's new suitor was a bloodthirsty cultist who had already sacrificed at least one man to Poseidon was little help to Mr. Caesar, because he had no sense of how to appropriately act on the information.

Having left the room, he and the captain could not very well slink back into it without looking very obviously like they'd been having a secret confabulation, and Mr. Caesar at least had no faith in his skills as an actor.

So they pretended that they had been intending to go for a walk all along, a perfectly acceptable thing for gentlemen to do. Of course, generally gentlemen going for walks were not wearing clothes still damp and muddy from a dip in the Thames, but in that moment at least they had far weightier issues on their minds.

"Quick solution," Captain James offered, "we just get some of the lads together and kill him."

Mr. Caesar looked doubtful. "I was hoping for something a little less murderous."

"Such as?"

"We approach a magistrate and tell him what is happening."

The expression on the captain's face encapsulated I can't tell if you're joking with remarkable efficacy. "You want to tell a magistrate that a respected officer from a good background goes around sacrificing people to the old powers?"

"It has the advantage of truth."

"And the disadvantage of sounding like bollocks."

Mr. Caesar pursed his lips, not fond of disorder even when his family's lives weren't on the line. "There's a body, surely that constitutes evidence."

"There's a body. River police might find it, might not. And the god might have taken it; they do sometimes."

They had rambled, in the end, in the direction of Hyde Park, which made an incongruously pleasant backdrop for such sinister matters. Although given their recent experiences, the cool waters of the Serpentine looked far more ominous than they would on any other day.

"I had thought it bad enough to have one sister in unknowable peril," Mr. Caesar mused aloud. "Having two feels exceedingly unfair."

"Not a fair world," the captain semi-agreed. "But we do what we can. You should tell her at least."

Mr. Caesar gave a hollow laugh. "And from what you've seen of Anne do you think she'd believe me?"

"Your parents would, and they could watch her."

"I will inform Papa directly," Mr. Caesar agreed, "but for Anne I think it might be wiser to work through an intermediary."

Less comfortable in a ballroom than a battlefield, the captain looked uncertain. "Who?"

"She trusts Lizzie."

"The silly one?"

"Yes," Mr. Caesar conceded. "The silly one."

It was an apt assessment, but there is a time, reader, when silliness is called for, and that time is most assuredly when one is in deepest danger. The roots of silliness, after all, are prosperity, happiness, and good fortune. And in adversity, one needs all of those things.

The Bickle residence was an unfashionably furnished house in a fashionable part of town, filled with an eclectic mix of objects that passed for art and often ringing with the loudly declaimed words of the lyric poets. The captain and Mr. Caesar were met at the door by a footman in ill-chosen livery and shown through to the drawing room where Miss Bickle was playing an unrecognisable discord on one of two pianofortes.

There Mr. Caesar explained the overnight developments to Miss Bickle, who listened with her eyes and mouth growing gradually rounder in amazement until they were, at last, perfectly circular.

"Oh, but John," she exclaimed when he was finished, "this is remarkable. Are you truly being pursued by a shadowy cadre of masked strangers bent on your destruction?"

"I seem to be," Mr. Caesar replied. "But much like Maelys's experience with the goddess, it is far less amusing when one is directly threatened by it."

In abstract, Miss Bickle knew this. In specific, not so much. "But the intrigue, the romance, the danger. "

Mr. Caesar did his best to sound stern and didn't quite manage it. "Intrigue and danger are bad and romance can be achieved in safer ways. And now a man we know to be a murderer has set his sights on Anne and we don't know why."

"Perhaps he wishes to make her his partner in crime?" Miss Bickle suggested, treating the glass as half-full as always. Although possibly as half-full of murder in this particular case.

"Or to sacrifice her to one of the Olympians?" counter-suggested Captain James. "Like he nearly did with John?"

Miss Bickle's face fell dramatically. "Oh yes, that might also be a possibility. But I hope not. It would be terribly shabby of him."

"Yes," Mr. Caesar agreed, "the shabbiness of murdering my sister is my primary concern also. But I think she would listen to a warning if it came from you."

That made Miss Bickle, who was a generous being at heart, much as I am, profoundly happy. "Then I shall speak with her at once. Or"—she made a considering sort of face which, like all of her faces, typified the action to an almost unnatural extent—"perhaps it would be best to sneak it upon her under the pretence of some other matter. I have been meaning to invite her and Mary both to my avidreadermeets."

"Your what?" asked Captain James with the blithe innocence of somebody who did not know Miss Bickle at all.

"It's short for avidreaderdom meetings, " Miss Bickle explained, "and an avidreaderdom is a group of—"

Mr. Caesar shook his head. "No time, Lizzie. Anyway, Mary surely won't wish to attend after you helped us try to capture the Lady."

With the sorrowful air of one who cannot fathom why those around her fail to grasp simple things, Miss Bickle laid a gentle hand on his arm. "Oh, John, you don't understand anything, do you?"

"I think I do, actually."

Partially gallant, Captain James nodded. "Some things, certainly."

"Mary isn't cross with you because of what we tried to do to the Lady. She's cross with you because you're her brother. I'm her friend. It's a very different thing."

"I have behaved towards her exactly as a brother ought," Mr. Caesar replied with a reflexive defensiveness. "If Mary finds that bothersome—"

"Then she would be entirely ordinary?" suggested Miss Bickle.

At this, Mr. Caesar frowned. "It seems there is something fundamentally wrong with the world when it is ordinary for a girl to resent her brother acting like her brother."

"I think …" Miss Bickle's tone was hesitant, almost awkward. "I think there might be something fundamentally wrong with the world. Actually. In fact."

Captain James shrugged. "World's a big place. Be strange if it weren't broken in parts."

Flopping with long-practised decorousness onto an ill-chosen sofa, Mr. Caesar let out a despairing exhalation. "Have I truly been that terrible a brother?"

"I don't think you've been terrible," replied Miss Bickle, whose reassurance was tempered in its reassuringness by the fact that she was congenitally incapable of thinking ill of anybody. "I just think that … well … maybe what qualifies as good brothering if your aim is for your sister to marry respectably and achieve the approval of men like Lord Hale might be different from what qualifies as good brothering if you … um … care whether she's happy or not?"

This was not entirely what Mr. Caesar wanted to hear. But as he looked up at the captain, who had listened to Miss Bickle with silent agreement, he began to suspect that it was what he needed to hear. "So what should I do differently?"

Miss Bickle smiled warmly. "I have no idea. I've never had a sister and I don't think having one is very easy. But for now we'll see if I can at least persuade Anne to stop accepting the attentions of a known murderer."

The fact that even this seemed likely to fail did not, Mr. Caesar reflected, bode well for his or anybody's wider relationship with his sister. Even so, the plan was agreed and the avidreadermeet was set for some two days' time. The delay rankled at Mr. Caesar, but he, the captain, Miss Bickle, and—when he revealed the danger to his parents—the elder Caesars all agreed that it was better to take things slowly and hope for a positive reaction than to rush them and risk driving Anne into the arms of a killer.

It was even, tentatively, agreed that Lieutenant Reyne would be permitted to keep visiting, despite the peril that clearly presented, in order that his suspicion might not be roused. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, depending on how one measured such things, the gentleman was playing his hand carefully, and did not visit the next day, nor the day after.

Mr. Caesar himself was absent from the avidreadermeet, since Miss Bickle had felt his presence wouldn't be conducive to the proper atmosphere, and he had agreed that in this particular situation he could best contribute by absence.

So in the end the gathering was smallish, intimate-ish, and slanted towards the distaff. Miss Bickle hosted with her typical enthusiasm, and guests included Miss Penworthy, Miss Mitchelmore, and both of the Misses Caesar. Since this was the first time Miss Penworthy had encountered the Beauty Incomparable at close hand, it made the beginning of the evening somewhat awkward. For the mortals at least. I was merely hoping for unexpected developments.

"Erica," Miss Mitchelmore chided, "stop staring, it's rude."

Miss Penworthy did not stop staring.

"Erica," Miss Mitchelmore repeated.

"Miss Caesar," Miss Penworthy began, "I don't suppose you would like to take a turn about the room? And perhaps stop somewhere discreet along the way?"

Seeing no alternative, Miss Mitchelmore retrieved a pin from a nearby cushion and jabbed Miss Penworthy on the arm. " Erica. "

"Sorry"—a shimmer was fading from Miss Penworthy's eyes, and she shook her head as if clearing water from her ears—"don't know what came over me. But you do both look lovely."

Conditioned to respond positively to any compliment, even from ladies, the Misses Caesar smiled and bobbed curtseys in response, and settled into the group, which was forming a rough circle around Miss Bickle.

"Ahem," she said. She wasn't actually clearing her throat, but she enjoyed saying ahem. "Welcome to the seventeenth Anonymous Lady Author of Sense and Sensibility Avidreadermeet. This is a space where we avid readers of the works of the anonymous lady author of Sense and Sensibility can share our thoughts, theories, and avrections."

Miss Anne looked grave. "Will it be terribly inconvenient if we haven't brought anything? I had only a little notice and wasn't quite sure what an avid reader fiction was meant to look like."

"It's all right," Miss Mitchelmore reassured her, "Lizzie and Erica will have quite enough material for all of us."

This was Miss Penworthy's cue to begin. "On which subject, I do indeed have a new story to share." She stood, collected a sheaf of papers, and began to read. "‘The Other Bennet Girl: Kitty-dash-Caroline, Kitty-dash-Charlotte, Kitty-dash-Original-Lady-Character, Cordial-Acquaintances-to-Intimate-Relations, Antagonistic-Acquaintances-to-Intimate-Relations.'"

"Is this preamble really necessary?" asked Miss Mitchelmore. "You do it every time and we're all here so I don't know who it's in aid of."

Miss Bickle gave her friend a look of endlessly patient incomprehension. "The categories make it easier to find stories you might like. So I could say to Erica, ‘I very much enjoyed your recent Antagonistic-Acquaintances-to-Intimate-Relations story, do you have any more like it?'"

"And I could say, ‘Yes, I have several,'" added Miss Penworthy.

Miss Mitchelmore looked at the piles of documents at Miss Penworthy's side. "That, at least, does not surprise me."

"You know." Miss Bickle was already drifting onto another tangent. "It is such a shame that Lady Georgiana has never been able to attend one of these gatherings. It's so queer that she keeps having other commitments."

Miss Anne, who had come to the avidreadermeet to hear stories, not to discuss her cousin's lover's social engagements, looked up at Miss Penworthy prettily. "Perhaps you could continue reading for us?"

And Miss Penworthy needed no further encouragement. "‘The distaste Miss Kitty Bennet had felt at Caroline Bingley's mistreatment of her sister,'" she began, "‘was matched only by the yearning she felt as …'"

I shall leave off the rest of this narrative. You are here for my definitely completely true story that I have compiled through great personal exertion. I will not share these pages with lesser scribblers. Suffice to say that Miss Penworthy's tale was carefully constructed, enthusiastically delivered, and contained a number of details that the anonymous lady author of Sense and Sensibility had necessarily elided for fear of the censors.

That tale was followed by the third story in Miss Bickle's Fanny Price Investigates, in which the eponymous lady, having successfully resolved the murder of George Wickham in the previous volume, was asked by a dashing Yeoman Warder to investigate the theft of the crown jewels.

I personally found the piece extremely entertaining, although Miss Mitchelmore declared it to be slightly overcomplicated, and Miss Caesar questioned its connectedness to the wider works of the anonymous lady author.

"I confess," Miss Bickle conceded, "that Fanny Price, Lady Investigator may have diverged slightly from her origins."

Seized by the instinct to say something more positive, Miss Anne observed that although she had found the plot a little hard to follow, the dashing Yeoman Warder had been exceptionally dashing, and that seemed to be the most important thing.

Mr. Caesar was absent, but in his stead I was forced to wonder if Miss Bickle was, perhaps, a secret genius. Because the segue from this into a wider discussion of gentlemen, dashing gentlemen, and at last military gentlemen was seamless.

"I think one of the more interesting things we might learn," Miss Bickle said, settling down in front of the unseasonably roaring fire that she insisted on having at every avidreadermeet, "from the works of the anonymous lady author of Sense and Sensibility is that gentlemen are not always to be trusted."

"Not worth the bother at all," agreed Miss Penworthy.

Miss Mitchelmore frowned. "Perfectly reasonable as a sex. Often unpleasant as individuals."

Unfortunately, Miss Anne took quite the wrong message from this. "Very true. For example, Mr. Bygrave proved very inconstant in his affections. But I have now caught the eye of a more seasoned officer, and I expect him to be much the better choice."

Miss Caesar glared at her sister as only a young woman made entirely from glass can glare. "Mr. Bygrave has proven very constant to me, Anne. Perhaps we simply have more compatible temperaments."

"Perhaps you placed him under an enchantment. " Miss Anne had been sitting quietly throughout the reading of the avrections and was now slipping into an airing of grievances.

Glancing at Miss Caesar across the drawing room, Miss Penworthy flushed slightly. "That does seem likely. You are quite enchanting."

"Erica," Miss Mitchelmore reminded her.

"Sorry."

Miss Bickle made a valiant attempt to drag things back to the topic at hand. "The thing is, Anne …" She cast a meaningful glance at Miss Mitchelmore.

"I say, Erica," Miss Mitchelmore volunteered entirely unprompted, "would you like to take a turn about the garden? I hear Mr. Bickle keeps an excellent gardener."

The look of excitement in Miss Penworthy's eyes was bright but fleeting.

"An actual turn," Miss Mitchelmore clarified, "about an actual garden."

"Oh." Miss Penworthy's face fell. "Well then, I suppose yes, but under sufferance."

Smiling as sweetly as only a woman from a society in which sweetness is an economic necessity can, Miss Mitchelmore turned to Miss Caesar. "Mary? Join us."

There was, I am sure, some part of the heart Miss Caesar no longer had that yearned to know what salacious thing Miss Bickle wished to share with her sister, but Miss Mitchelmore was her elder and at least loosely socially associated with a duke's daughter, and so she acquiesced regardless.

And I shall break here, reader. For although the question of Lieutenant Reyne's murderousness (or unmurderousness; one should not jump to conclusions, after all) was a pressing one, the gardens were fine indeed.

Being a Romantic at heart in the capitalised, yearning for bucolic simplicity sense, Mr. Bickle had arranged for the gardens of his London townhouse to look as wild, free, and natural as possible, and his landscape gardener had executed that brief with merciless diligence. Every innocent flower was in its artfully chosen spot, and the bowers beneath which the Misses Caesar, Mitchelmore, and Penworthy now walked had been twined ruthlessly with ivy to give them a false impression of antiquity.

"It is such a beautiful night," observed Miss Penworthy. "Such a night, in fact, that one's mind turns to—"

" No, " insisted Miss Mitchelmore.

Miss Penworthy pouted. Her time associating with Miss Bickle had seemingly enhanced her pouting abilities substantially. "You're no fun."

"What do nights like this turn one's mind to?" asked Miss Caesar, all innocence.

Starlight gleamed in Miss Penworthy's eyes. "Romance."

"Erica," Miss Mitchelmore warned. "I am in a perfectly satisfying relationship with a woman who only probably won't have you killed for flirting with me. And Mary is courting an officer."

Miss Caesar did not sigh. Lacking lungs, she lacked the reflex. Instead she froze a moment, and with her animating spark abated. Even her gown grew still and solid, so she became for the passing of a few seconds a statue in earnest.

"Mary?" With an expression of concern, Miss Mitchelmore brought her face close to her cousin's and scrutinised it for signs of life.

Brought back to herself, Miss Caesar blinked, and the suddenness of the motion made Miss Mitchelmore start backwards. "I'm sorry," Miss Caesar said, "I was distracted. I am not—I think I am finding courting less pleasant than I expected."

Miss Mitchelmore frowned. "Less pleasant how?"

"Don't mistake me," protested Miss Caesar reflexively, "it is very flattering to be so … to not be overlooked. But I think I was hoping there would be more."

"More?" asked Miss Mitchelmore, holding up one finger to silence Miss Penworthy, who had been about to launch into a longish explanation of the more that could be offered to any lady willing to have an open mind.

"We walk, and it is … perfectly nice. And we talk. But … I asked him if he had read The Wanderer and he said he had not."

Miss Mitchelmore bit her lip. That the younger women saw her as an experienced lover and the kind to offer advice was pleasant in some ways, intimidating in others. "You cannot expect a gentleman to have read every book, Mary."

"No," Miss Caesar agreed. "But that was all he said. And I think—if you were to ask such a question to Lady Georgiana, what would she say?"

The swiftness with which Miss Mitchelmore answered was, in some ways, an answer of its own. "She would say, ‘Maelys, I hope you aren't going to recommend me something sentimental.' Although actually I think she's rather an admirer of Burney. But in general that's what she'd say."

Miss Caesar took this in resignedly. "That's what I thought. I mean, not that exactly. Just—it's hard to explain."

Knowing the importance of encouragement but also the dangers of pressure, Miss Mitchelmore made a very supportive but very nonspecific go on kind of sound.

"I think what I wanted … when I"—Miss Caesar held up one hand to the sky and let the starlight sparkle through it—"when I asked for this … what I wanted was to be looked at like other girls."

Miss Penworthy, who had kept her flirtatiousness under a bushel for fifteen whole seconds and was feeling the effort acutely, could keep silent no longer. "I look at a lot of girls, Mary. I don't think I look at any of them as I do you."

"But you would," Miss Caesar replied, "if they were"—she made a fluttering movement with her fingers, and light danced about her hand in gold-and-silver motes—"like this."

"Well, yes." Miss Penworthy nodded. "But they aren't. "

While Miss Penworthy seemed not quite to have grasped the thrust of the argument, Miss Mitchelmore was more understanding. Then again she usually was; it was one of the things I liked least about her. "You mean that to him you could be any girl. As long as she was—" She imitated the fluttering, although the light did not respond in the same way.

Miss Caesar nodded. "‘I hope you aren't going to recommend me something sentimental' is something only Lady Georgiana could say to only you. And I think that's—I suppose that's what I want love to be."

"I think that is very wise," said Miss Mitchelmore. "But just because you do not find what you are seeking with the first gentleman who shows an interest does not mean you will never find it."

"No, but"—Miss Caesar cast her eyes down—"before the wish, all people saw in me was my heritage. Now all they see is the magic. At least the first of those was my own."

Perfectly contented to be seeing the magic, Miss Penworthy gave a sharp grin. "If it helps, love isn't the only thing in life. After all, it is the nineteenth century, ladies are doing all sorts of things now."

Miss Caesar lifted the hem of her skirt and showed her friends the spiderweb of cracks that were spreading across it. "How many of those things," she asked, "can you do in a body made of glass, that is slowly breaking?"

And to that, neither Miss Mitchelmore nor Miss Penworthy had an answer.

With my usual impeccable timing, I returned to the drawing room just as Miss Bickle fixed Miss Anne with her gravest, most urgent look and said, "Anne, Lieutenant Reyne is a murderer."

Thunder crashed outside. Which was unusual, because as I had established previously it was a fine evening. But, well, I am not sometimes above providing a little ambiance.

Miss Anne shuddered. "Oh, how thrilling."

I could see, from my vantage and with my mysterious senses, every strand of Miss Bickle's reason fighting against the instinct to agree. "I think he might have tried to murder your brother."

That appeared to strike Miss Anne as rather less thrilling. "That seems very unlikely. I know him well."

"How well?" asked Miss Bickle, looking disarmingly innocent.

"We have danced several times, and he has visited me on more than one occasion."

This was, even by the standards of a society that expected men and women to interact occasionally and cordially, not any great standard of intimacy.

"I know it is hard to countenance," Miss Bickle offered, "but I think perhaps it is possible to dance with a gentleman without knowing that he has attempted to kill one's brother." It may surprise the reader a little (although it did not surprise me in the slightest) that Mr. Caesar had indeed chosen his messenger well. Miss Bickle lived in a world of bright colours and high dramas, but she inhabited it so fully that it was hard for others—especially those others who were fourteen—not to be drawn into it.

Thus, for Miss Anne, uncertainty began slipping slowly into denial on the way to getting a clue. "He is of good character, and good family."

"Oh, but the worst villains always are," pointed out Miss Bickle, now on slightly firmer ground. "After all, a villain who one knows to be a villain is scarcely a great villain at all. Why, look at Mr. Wickham. He was very plausible in his manners, but he treated poor Lydia quite cruelly."

That analogy, at least, got through. "But surely even Wickham would not have murdered anybody."

"Well, no," conceded Miss Bickle. "The anonymous lady author is rather reticent about such matters. But I certainly would not put it past him."

Miss Anne had grown quiet. She was staring down at her hands and looking a little closer to weeping than she had a moment ago. "You must be mistaken," she said without conviction.

"And if I am not?"

Long, pretty eyelashes blinking back tears, Miss Anne looked up. "Do you think he will try again?"

"I do not know. I just want to make sure that you are being safe."

Belatedly, a thought occurred to Miss Anne. "How do you know this?"

"Captain James told me. He recognised his voice."

Old aristocratic instincts flared, and Miss Anne huffed. "Captain James is a—"

"Is a man of low birth who rose through the ranks by his own merits and served heroically against Napoleon." Miss Bickle clasped her hands to her bosom ever so slightly rapturously. "Were I not certain he favours gentlemen I would marry him myself at once."

This framing forestalled many of Miss Anne's misgivings about the captain, and by extension validated Miss Bickle's warnings about the lieutenant. There was, after all, only room for one villain in a story. "So what should I …"

Once again I saw a war raging inside Miss Bickle between the part of her that was addicted to whimsy and the part of her that sincerely wished to advise a young girl well. "Be cordial," she suggested, "and continue to accept his visitations unless your parents object. But—and I want to make this very, very clear—on no account elope with him."

Miss Anne nodded. "I shall not."

"Or go anywhere secluded with him," added Miss Bickle. "Or accept any letters or tokens."

Miss Anne nodded again with the conviction of the young and impressionable.

"Splendid." Miss Bickle beamed her most changing-the-subject beam. "Now, what do you say we go fetch the others, and then I believe Erica might share with us her latest updates to The Unbelievably Secret Diaries of Georgiana Darcy. "

This notion appealed to Miss Anne very much. It appealed rather less to me. I have limited patience for mortal storymakers. So I took this opportunity to fade into the darkness and attend to other business.