“You invited yourself, Monique. You might have ordered your own transport. I suspect our carriage was needed for more important guests arriving from town at the station.”
Monique sputtered and, after much fuss, allowed Roger to haul her into the cart, only to sit with her back ostentatiously presented to all.
Sophronia looked back up at the school through her binoculars. She could just make out, peeking out a bottom hatch of the forward section, two small faces, one black and the other that of a grubby child, accompanied by madly waving arms—Soap and Vieve seeing her off in their own inimitable way. Well aware that they probably could not distinguish her in the crowd, she nevertheless waved gamely back.
Sophronia looked beyond the ship. She was certain the specks were closer, and equally confident they represented flywaymen.
“Ready, miss?”
“By all means, Roger.”
Dimity yelled, “Oh, wait, I forgot! Pillover. Can we bring him? I suspect Mama might have forgotten he needs a lift. She can be very absentminded when she’s being evil.”
Sophronia shrugged. “He’s small. All right with you, Roger?”
Roger was game. “The missus said to make certain to collect all of you, not that I couldn’t arrive with extras.”
Dimity scanned the crowd for her brother. “Oh, where is the furuncle?”
“Look for a crowd of Pistons,” suggested Sophronia.
“Oh, Pillover isn’t a member. He’s not dashing enough.”
“Did I say I thought he might be? There!” Sophronia pointed to one side, where a group of boys stood with indolent posture and dark attitude. They were all dressed in browns and blacks, their hair was slicked back with too much pomade, and there were evening top hats on their heads—even though they were not yet presented and it was not yet teatime.
“Who do they think they are?” wondered Sophronia.
“Pistons, of course,” replied Dimity.
Each boy wore a brass-colored ribbon about his hat and had a gear affixed to his waistcoat. One or two had some kind of decorative protective eyewear perched atop the brim as well. They all wore riding boots, although not a single saddle horse was to be found.
Sophronia said, in tones of mild shock, “Some of them look like they are wearing face paint.”
“Kohl, about the eyes,” explained Dimity.
“Roger, head toward those boys over there, would you, please?”
“The pansies, miss?” said Roger.
“I wouldn’t let them hear you say that if I were you.”
Roger guided the pony toward the group in question with an ill-disguised look of contempt.
Pillover was, indeed, at their center. He was sitting atop a small trunk, shrouded in his oversized oil coat and battered bowler, reading a grubby book while the boys around him heckled him as though he were an emu at the zoo.
Their behavior, however, altered drastically the moment a cart full of girls drew up alongside.
“Lord Dingleproops?” said Dimity in a very snooty tone of voice. “What are you doing to my brother?”
A lanky young man with ginger hair and a less than aggressive chin doffed his hat at Dimity and said, with a cheeky smile, “Simply having a bit of fun, Miss Plumleigh-Teignmott.”
His eyes scanned the cart, arrested briefly by Sophronia—who looked at him directly, without flinching, in a most unladylike manner—and then moved on to Monique. Monique, in the style of all older girls when faced with younger boys, pretended the entire crowd of Pistons did not exist. Her attention remained fixed on the road ahead, a pose that emphasized her fine features and the slenderness of her neck.
Sophronia remembered what Pillover had said about them. Nasty chaps. One or two of them were, unfortunately, good-looking. She exchanged glances with a dark-haired, pale-faced boy with sullen lips and a petulant expression. He met her gaze and then looked away, restless, like a wild creature. Sophronia thought he was beautiful. His almost gawky quality reminded her of Captain Niall. Was he what the scandal papers might call werewolf bait? She said nothing to any of them. They had not been introduced. Instead she smiled her prettiest smile at Pillover.
What Sophronia did not know, and had yet to learn to control, was that her smile was rather more powerful than most. The face she saw in the mirror each morning was passingly pretty, if not terribly thrilling, but when she smiled with the full force of her personality behind it, she came over vibrant and striking. It was one of the reasons Monique disliked her so.
Pillover responded to the smile by closing his book and grinning back. His own dour expression, so obviously a mask for worry, briefly dissipated.
“Coming to the ball, Mr. Plumleigh-Teignmott?”
“Ball? If you insist.” Pillover slid off his trunk, and Roger jumped down to help him load it into the cart.
“Ball?” said one of the Pistons with interest. “We like balls.”
Dimity gave them her best, most haughty look. “Yes, but are you certain they like you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sophronia whispered to her.
Pillover joined them, as confident in his new situation as if he had always expected to set off with his sister and two other girls in a farm cart.
“I don’t know,” replied Dimity as they drove away. “It sounded good at the time.”
Pillover pretended interest in his book until they were some ten minutes into the journey. “Where are we going?”
“My house,” replied Sophronia promptly.
“All righty, then.”
The trip began pleasantly enough. For the first few hours, Sophronia and Dimity chatted idly about what they might wear and how they might wear it. Pillover rolled his eyes and tried to behave in as dignified a manner as possible under the circumstances of girlish prattle and open-air transport. Monique ignored them. Roger paid attention to the road.
Sophronia thought she spotted a carriage following them, a high flyer. But it stayed well back and might have simply been utilizing the same byways.
The pleasantness was marred only by Bumbersnoot. Sophronia had tucked her mechanical pet, after some debate, into a hatbox for transport. She’d given him a small lump of coal for a travel snack and strict instructions not to stain the interior with smoke, or to singe it, or to catch it on fire. He did, as it turned out, all of these things, but that is not what disturbed the drive.
Sophronia was not aware that anything was amiss until she looked up in the midst of an entertaining debate with Dimity over the relative merits of pearls versus diamonds for a ball to find that Monique’s blue eyes were fixed in horror upon the luggage pile. Sophronia’s eyes followed the older girl’s gaze, coming to rest on her paisley hatbox, which was vibrating rather more than any of the other luggage.
Sophronia put the hatbox next to her on the bench and put a hand firmly atop it.
Bumbersnoot, as it turned out, might have been trying to tell her something, for moments later, out from behind the hedgerows, they caught sight of an approaching airdinghy.
“Oh, goodness, look,” whispered Sophronia. “Flywaymen!”
Dimity let out a gasp.
Pillover closed his book with a snap. “What is it now?” Upon following their pointed fingers, he added, “Here we go again,” in tones of the deeply put-upon.
However, the flywaymen only kept pace with them for a long time, apparently content to watch from several yards away to determine whether they were worth approaching. Sophronia suspected the pony and cart of throwing them off. As a rule, such a contraption wasn’t worth attacking, given the general quality of the merchandise within. Unless, of course, they had determined that Monique was the one worth following in order to regain the prototype.
Roger, slumped and staring at the road before them, finally noticed they had company. He pulled the pony up.
“Don’t do that,” said Sophronia.
“Miss?”
“If they are going to leave us alone for now, then there is no point in delaying our travel. They will come at us if they want something. Otherwise, keep driving. I think we may have additional followers, as well.” She gestured at the carriage behind them.
“If you say so, miss.” Roger gave her a look that said he thought she had changed a good deal while she was away at school, and not for the better.
Sophronia turned back to Dimity and Pillover. “What kind of defenses do we have this time?”
Dimity canvassed her options. “Handkerchiefs, fans, two parasols, assorted hatboxes, hats, gloves, and jewelry—although I’d rather not use that.”
“Much better equipped than before.”
Dimity grinned. “And better able to make use of what we have.”
Pillover looked resigned. Then he reached inside the pocket of his greatcoat and produce the Depraved Lens of Crispy Magnification. “Still got this.”
Dimity glanced at Sophronia expectantly. “So what’s the plan?”
Sophronia looked through her binoculars at the airdinghy. “Three of them. Four of us. Five, if you count Monique. Unless the carriage following us is also flywaymen.”
“More likely Pistons,” said Pillover in a resigned tone of voice. “You told them about the ball. They like to go to events uninvited, put gin in the punch, and steal all the spoons. Stylish shenanigans like that.”
“Charming,” said Sophronia.
“Not Lord Dingleproops,” protested Dimity.
Pillover turned a disgusted look on his sister.
Monique had wrapped herself in a velvet shawl and was staring at the surrounding countryside, ignoring them, the Pistons, and the flywaymen. It seemed she was secure in her own scheme, confident in Sophronia’s ability to handle the situation, or simply uninterested.
Sophronia continued planning out loud. “Roger really has to keep his attention on the road. Too bad we haven’t any good projectiles.”
“They’ve not actually done anything against us yet. Remember what Lady Linette says; never engage first unless absolutely necessary,” protested Dimity.
“I should say they started it by attacking us last time,” said Sophronia. “Not to mention the two times they threatened the school.” Monique probably figured they were following her with no intention of engaging. An open confrontation had yielded up nothing substantial the first time around, after all. Sophronia, however, had no intention of letting either them or Monique dally along without interference.
The flywaymen continued to track them for another hour, giving Sophronia and dimity ample opportunity to discuss defensive maneuvers, until a break in the hedgerows allowed the airdinghy a mooring point with easy access to the road. Evidently having decided that the cart was indeed worth their attention, now that they had spent the better part of the afternoon alongside it, the flywaymen lowered their airdinghy, lashed it to a tree, and leapt out to stand before them.
CONDUCTING ONESELF PROPERLY AT A BALL
The flywaymen approached with ready smiles and half-cocked pistols, in the manner of gentlemen highwaymen since the dawn of time, or at least the Middle Ages. They seemed, as before, interested mainly in dismembering luggage. This time, however, the girls would have none of it. As soon as the two flywaymen were close enough, Sophronia gave the signal, and she, Dimity, and Pillover threw hatboxes at them.