Page 77 of Confounding Oaths
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 theintrigue,theromance,thedanger.”
Mr. Caesar did his best to sound stern and didn’t quite manage it. “Intrigue and danger arebadand romance can be achieved insafer 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 foravidreaderdom meetings,” Miss Bickle explained, “and anavidreaderdomis 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 theremightbe 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 withsilent agreement, he began to suspect that it was what heneededto 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 fornowwe’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 somewhatawkward. For the mortals at least. I was merely hoping for unexpected developments.
