Ambush or Adore: A Delightfully Deadly Novel Read online

  He never would.

  Pillover returned unharmed to Bunson’s (despite the vampires’ best efforts) with a weird ache in his throat whenever he thought about his sister’s redheaded companion. He also had a friend at last – a new evil genius student in the form of a girl pretending to be a boy. He got to help young Vieve disguise herself and infiltrate Bunson’s. It was fun, and he finally had a companion at school, but also it was evil to hide a girl from his professors, and he’d yet to do anything truly evil. He figured that if he were found out, he’d get top marks.

  Under normal circumstances, were they not evil geniuses and lady spies, Pillover’s first stirring of childish interest would have been doomed and deadened by distance and time. It would all have ended with that first dance. But Geraldine’s and Bunson’s were reverse sides of the same coin – tarnished and dented, but constantly flipping. He would see Agatha again and again over the years even after school had ended (or in the case of Geraldine’s, crashed) because it turned out that the friendship of girls was a strong and steady thing. Dimity would remain close to Agatha their whole lives, even after Agatha’s betrayal (maybe partly because of it).

  And Pillover?

  Well, Pillover was regrettably steady in all his interests. He was a creature of habit. He never gave up puzzling out the nuances of Latin verse, and he never gave up trying to understand the sadness in those celadon eyes.

  2

  Swath Cutting and Other Concerns

  February 1853 ~ Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality, somewhere over Devon

  Sophronia and Dimity were ribbing Sidheag about her obvious interest in Captain Niall and Agatha could not bear it. It was too humiliating to be teased about something romantic. It made her think about Pillover, whom she hadn’t seen in ages and which was terribly inappropriate given their age difference and social standing. She pushed the thought of him aside and really wished she could come up with a means of stopping the conversation in front of her.

  Sidheag, of course, was well able to defend herself. “He’s ten times my age!”

  Dimity was like a mouse with a tasty biscuit. “Immortals often are. He still cuts a fine figure.”

  It made Agatha feel hot. Surely not?

  Sophronia pressed. “And you know werewolves, Sid. I mean to say, you know them.”

  Sidheag, who was ordinarily stalwart, actually blushed at this.

  Agatha was moved to intercede at last. She did it by returning them to the subject of preparing for class. “I’ve misplaced my chewing tobacco for informant recruiting.”

  “Again? Really, Agatha.” Her tactic worked, as Sidheag forgot her embarrassment in annoyance at Agatha’s near constant missteps.

  Agatha pretended to bristle. “Yesterday’s lip tint dematerialization was due to the chaotic mess that is your side of the room.”

  “You canna blame me for your absent-mindedness.” Sidheag was gruff.

  “Yes, I can.” Agatha only really allowed herself gumption with Sidheag. With everyone else, she let her own natural timidity lead. But after living with Sidheag for a while now, she’d had to stick up for herself occasionally or she got railroaded all the time. It worked, because Sidheag was secretly a big softy. They now existed in a state of bickering equilibrium that was as close to that of siblings as Agatha would ever get. Mindful of Lord Akeldama’s instructions, she only allowed herself the luxury of a backbone with Sidheag.

  Preshea wandered over. Agatha watched her approach, but the others were taken unawares when the girl spoke. “Are you going to sit there gossiping all night?”

  The dining room had emptied out and the mechanicals were clearing the tables.

  Preshea’s voice took on the sickly-sweet tone that indicated she was about to say something mean. Agatha braced herself, since these barbs were often directed at her. She had set herself up as the weakest link and easy victim of the school. She didn’t mind – it deflected attention from the others. And it made her look unthreatening. Always unthreatening. If she couldn’t be invisible, unthreatening was the next best thing.

  Preshea’s clipped voice said, “Are you going to gather up the abandoned pikelets so that Agatha can eat them all later?”

  This was a dig at her chubby frame and Agatha could not deny that it hurt. She let herself tear up.

  Sidheag, no great wit, could come up with no rebuttal, but being Sidheag (a woman of action) she threw her uneaten pikelet at Preshea.

  Preshea was shocked. “Lady Kingair, this is a new gown!”

  “Then dinna go around being nasty when some of us are armed with nibbly bits.” Sidheag was unrepentant.

  Agatha stifled a smile. She did love Sidheag so.

  Preshea flounced away like an affronted titmouse.

  Dimity patted Agatha’s shoulder softly. “Ignore her. That girl is walking, talking indigestion.” She turned to her best friend. “Sophronia, isn’t there something we could do about her?”

  Agatha was curious as to Sophronia’s response. As she had told Lord Akeldama, Sophronia had a natural talent for spycraft, and not just intelligence gathering, but also human manipulation. Sophronia not only saw the wheels in motion, she saw the road they traveled on and sometimes, she could change the direction of the trolley. Sophronia might become a very good intelligencer, perhaps one of the best, except that she was cursed with a code of ethics. Agatha recognized her own limits in that she would only ever be an observer of history, never an influencer. But as Lord Akeldama wrote back, observers were useful in their own right. So Agatha didn’t feel too bad about it.

  Sophronia considered Dimity’s suggestion. “I don’t know if it’s worth the risk. The teachers have been watching me since the Westminster Hive incident.”

  Agatha didn’t like to think about that. Pillover had been kidnapped as well as Dimity. Poor Pillover wouldn’t say boo to a goose. He didn’t deserve to be in danger. He didn’t deserve to be involved. He didn’t deserve vampires. Agatha had had rather strong words to say to Lord Akeldama on the subject – after all, his kind had been at fault. Lord Akeldama hadn’t apologized. He never apologized. But she thought maybe he understood. And, hopefully, it wouldn’t happen again.

  She remembered being startled by the strength of her own anger. As if Pillover’s being taken was a personal affront. She had been almost vampirelike in her possession of him. Perhaps she had already spent too much time with Lord Akeldama, that his idea of affection had transmitted to her. Or perhaps, even then, it had already been love. Her greatest failing all along, that she recognized love in others but never in herself. No wonder it had come to the surface of the child she was, as possession and anger.

  They abandoned the last of the pikelets and did not, in fact, keep them for snacks. They were heading towards their next class when they were waylaid by Professor Lefoux, the most fearsome teacher at the school.

  She stood blocking Sidheag’s way. “Lady Kingair, you have received a pigeon.”

  Agatha gasped. Pigeons were a serious business. They were for emergency use only.

  Sidheag began asking questions about her family – the werewolf pack back home, were they safe? Professor Lefoux clearly felt this was a private matter and led Sidheag away before answering.

  Dimity spoke into the ensuing silence. “This is bad. What could possibly require pigeoning?”

  Agatha exchanged glances with Sophronia. It must be werewolf business, which meant Lord Akeldama would want to know. She’d have to ask Sidheag about it later. Also, she cared for her friend and wanted to do what she could to help if possible. She wasn’t a monster.

  Sophronia got it, of course. “Must be problems with the pack. Only a crisis in the supernatural community warrants the pigeon.”

  Agatha nodded.

  “We’re going to miss class if we keep speculating and that won’t help matters.” Sophronia hustled them onwards.

  Later that day, Sidheag ended up consulting Captain Niall about the missive, not her fr
iends, which meant the pigeon had either come from or pertained to werewolves.

  Agatha asked Sidheag about it that night, when it was just the two of them in their sleeping chamber together.

  “Sid, that pigeon you got – is your pack well?”

  “It’s private werewolf business. I canna talk about it,” Sidheag practically snapped.

  Agatha immediately backed down. “Of course, I don’t mean to pry. I hope you know that if you confided in me, I would never tell.” The lie came too easily.

  “I know that, Ags.” Poor Sidheag. She was gullible – definitely not cut out to last long at their school.

  Agatha really was only asking out of friendship. She had already managed to extract, read, and return the missive to Sidheag’s hiding place. That very night after Sidheag fell asleep, Agatha intended to write of it to Lord Akeldama. He needed to know that the Kingair pack was treasonous. She wasn’t sure whether her vampire patron would act on this information. To be fair, she wasn’t certain what, if anything, he did with any of the information she provided. Or what he did in general, for that matter. But he would praise her by return post, and most of the time that was all she really needed. Along with her allowance and the freedom it afforded her, of course. But the praise, it was something Agatha had come to yearn for. She was frightened by how much. No one had ever praised her for anything. Yet this one fancy vampire prince-god thought she was wonderful just because she was good at exactly the thing she’d been pilloried for all her childhood. It was heady – to be admired for one’s flaws.

  Sidheag softened enough to explain. “I don’t want to worry you. And what advice could you possibly offer concerning werewolves?”

  Agatha let her face fall and nodded. “True. But I can be a sympathetic ear.”

  Sidheag threw a long, bony arm about her shoulders and squeezed a little too hard. “Dinna fret yourself. ’Twill all be fine in the end.” Her brogue came through almost as strongly as her concern.

  Agatha wondered if she would ever become accustomed to the sickly feeling of having to betray her closest friends.

  Sidheag would vanish shortly thereafter to parts unknown and Agatha would miss her friend very much, but she would not miss the need for betrayal.

  Something changed during the course of that year. What Pillover remembered most was being hungry all the time. As if in response to this memory, his stomach growled. Now he was standing in the rain, nostalgic, top hat soggy beyond redemption, and hungry to boot.

  “You’re experiencing unprecedented growth,” Vieve had said at the time (he no longer had that excuse). It had sounded hilarious coming in a French accent from a diminutive girl dressed as a boy.

  Pillover hid a smile. “You make it sound as if I were a speculative investment of some ilk. Dirigible, perhaps.”

  Vieve frowned. “You should eat liver. Liver is just the thing for unprecedented growth.”

  Pillover wrinkled his nose. “I’d rather go hungry, thank you very much.”

  “Only trying to help.”

  “Well, stop it.” Pillover’s voice had started to crack and drop. He’d had to learn to shave, too. Things Vieve could not help him with at all and that would absolutely not be solved through the application of liver. Although she did assume a small, sparse fake mustache and a supercilious expression.

  Pillover started to see bits of his father in the mirror when he wasn’t expecting it as his cheeks thinned out. All these things contributed to the other boys teasing him even more than normal. He was gawky and awkward now, as well as scholarly and gloomy.

  He didn’t realize what kind of effect it might have on the fairer sex until he had to go to that ball at Sophronia’s house.

  His sister made him do it. His sister who didn’t notice that he was now taller than she, probably because he had a propensity to slouch.

  “Hoy up, Pustule.” Dimity greeted him in the usual manner when he arrived for transport to the event in question.

  “Hoy up, Petulance,” was his gloomy response as he climbed into the open cart in the rain. He wasn’t certain how he’d gotten himself into this. He didn’t even like his sister. Why did he allow her to drag him into these things?

  He looked around. “Agatha’s not with you?”

  Dimity tilted her head, big eyes mocking him.

  He realized he’d made a blunder. “I like Agatha.” He defended himself. “She doesn’t cheep-cheep on and on, unlike some people I know.” They were siblings, after all. It was required of him to go on the attack when put in a defensive position.

  Dimity lowered her lashes slyly. “She’s not attending the ball. I’ll tender your regards, shall I, brother dear?”

  Pillover backed off hurriedly. “No need to fuss.”

  Dimity sat next to him and bumped his shoulder. Then, showing unexpected kindness, she dropped the subject.

  Sophronia joined them in the cart (well, it was her cart). She brought along Lord Felix Mersey, which Pillover thought excessively unnecessary, not to say grotesque. Felix was one of Pillover’s sworn enemies. Not that Felix knew about it. Just that he was a revolting bully of a toffy nob, whom Pillover intensely disliked. Felix’s unpleasantness was the direct result of being both rich and handsome, a combination that made a mockery of fate. Felix could also be charming when he put his mind to it. Apparently Sophronia put him in mind. It made Pillover’s stomach churn. He very much wished to bury himself in a book, but it was raining too hard to read. It was particularly annoying because he had something important to tell Sophronia, yet through the course of the entire cart ride and the ensuing preparations for the ball, he was never able to get her alone. Felix was always there.

  The whole debacle lived on in his memory because it was his first exposure to girls of the nondirigible type. Normal girls, not spies, who had an interest in such things as marriage and curling tongs. Well, marriage that was not for political gain and curling tongs that were not for assasination.

  He remembered numerous pretty girls twittering and fluttering about when he entered a room. And he remembered the exact moment when he realized it was because of him. There was something about him that they liked, for some reason. Not because they were obligated to pay him attention because of his sister. They did not even know he had a sister.

  He overheard one of them say to another, “Don’t you want to pet his head and coddle him? Poor boy, he seems so moribund.”

  “Do you think he writes poetry like Lord Byron? He looks like he might be a poet.”

  “He looks like the kind of boy that Mama would very much object to,” giggled another.

  Pillover was startled to realize this was a good thing.

  “Perhaps he has had his heart broken.”

  “Or perhaps he wants to have it broken.”

  “Oh, and you think you’re just the girl for it, do you, Amaryllis?”

  When Pillover finally did manage to get Sophronia alone, that caused him even more problems. Later on in his life, he was to look back on that ball and the year that followed as the year of troublesome females.

  He had a message from Sidheag for Sophronia that explained her whereabouts and why she’d disappeared all of a sudden. It came via Vieve, because Vieve was like that. Pillover was delivering it because Vieve had pointed her fake mustache at him in just such a way as to make his life miserable if he didn’t do what she wanted. Vieve was dangerous when armed with a fake mustache. (Or should that be lipped with a fake mustache?)

  Apparently Sidheag’s werewolf pack had been disgraced for planning to kill Queen Victoria. Sidheag had gone to London to try to sort things out. Pillover found it all rather dramatic and mostly uninteresting – a bunch of supernaturals he cared little for. Certainly, if modern society had taught him nothing else, it was that supernaturals were best avoided (rather like girls). But he liked history and he knew that these kinds of incidents shaped it. So he managed a private consultation in the gazebo with Sophronia, to tell her everything. Plus there was Vieve’s mustache
to consider.

  Pillover hadn’t considered appearances. After all, he’d never been considered much of a threat to feminine virtue before, as a small, glum child with a head full of Latin.

  He might still feel like a small, glum child, and his head was still full of Latin, but in outward appearance he was no longer so innocent a creature. Sophronia’s mother found them. Together. Compromised.

  “Sophronia Angelina Temminnick, what are you doing alone in a gazebo with a boy?” she screeched.

  Both of them were rather dumbfounded. Pillover looked at Sophronia in surprise. Did she count as an actual girl? He supposed she did. Sophronia seemed to be looking at him with the same kind of mystification.

  Mrs Temminnick, however, had kittens. “Mr Plumleigh-Teignmott, this is too bad! I’m shocked. Shocked, I say! After we welcomed you into our home. I trust you will make an honest woman of my daughter?”

  “Mother. Pillover is barely fourteen.”

  Pillover frowned. Then realized he’d had a birthday recently. Goodness, fourteen. Seemed very old, all of a sudden.

  “You’re using his given name?” Sophronia’s mother was even more aghast. “What have they been teaching you at that finishing school? Meeting a gentleman. In a gazebo. Alone and unchaperoned!”

  “Really, Mother! He is a child. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Pillover could have told Sophronia that defensiveness was never a good tactic with mothers.

  Also, he found it somewhat insulting to be so entirely dismissed. “Thank you kindly, Sophronia.”

  Sophronia continued to defend herself, which her mother took entirely amiss.

  Eventually, Mrs Temminnick declared she would look into Pillover’s family and arrange a match if she found his lineage suitable. Mrs Temminnick had a large brood, and being of only middling income, a vested interest in marrying off her daughters as quickly as possible. Pillover understood perfectly. He also understood that, on paper and without the evil genius component, he would present a tempting prospect – his parents were landed and he the only heir.