Mrs. Highwood’s gaze fell on a book at the corner of the table. “I am gratified to see you keep Mrs. Worthington close at hand.”
“Oh yes,” Susanna replied, reaching for the blue, leather-bound tome. “You’ll find copies of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom scattered everywhere throughout the village. We find it a very useful book.”
“Hear that, Minerva? You would do well to learn it by heart.” When Minerva rolled her eyes, Mrs. Highwood said, “Charlotte, open it now. Read aloud the beginning of Chapter Twelve.”
Charlotte reached for the book and opened it, then cleared her throat and read aloud in a dramatic voice. “ ‘Chapter Twelve. The perils of excessive education. A young lady’s intellect should be in all ways like her undergarments. Present, pristine, and imperceptible to the casual observer.’ ”
Mrs. Highwood harrumphed. “Yes. Just so. Hear and believe it, Minerva. Hear and believe every word. As Miss Finch says, you will find that book very useful.”
Susanna took a leisurely sip of tea, swallowing with it a bitter lump of indignation. She wasn’t an angry or resentful person, as a matter of course. But once provoked, her passions required formidable effort to conceal.
That book provoked her, no end.
Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom for Young Ladies was the bane of sensible girls the world over, crammed with insipid, damaging advice on every page. Susanna could have gleefully crushed its pages to powder with a mortar and pestle, labeled the vial with a skull and crossbones, and placed it on the highest shelf in her stillroom, right beside the dried foxglove leaves and deadly nightshade berries.
Instead, she’d made it her mission to remove as many copies as possible from circulation. A sort of quarantine. Former residents of the Queen’s Ruby sent the books from all corners of England. One couldn’t enter a room in Spindle Cove without finding a copy or three of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom. And just as Susanna had told Mrs. Highwood, they found the book very useful indeed. It was the perfect size for propping a window open. It also made an excellent doorstop or paperweight. Susanna used her personal copies for pressing herbs. Or occasionally, for target practice.
She motioned to Charlotte. “May I?” Taking the volume from the girl’s grip, she raised the book high. Then, with a brisk thwack, she used it to crush a bothersome gnat.
With a calm smile, she placed the book on a side table. “Very useful indeed.”
“They’ll never know what hit them.” With his boot heel, Colin tamped a divot over the first powder charge.
“Nothing’s going to hit them,” Bram said. “We’re not using shells.”
The last thing they needed was shrapnel zinging about. The charges he prepared were mere blanks—black powder wrapped in paper, for a bit of noise and a spray of dirt.
“You’re certain the horses won’t bolt?” Colin asked, unspooling a length of slow-burning fuse.
“These are cavalry-trained beasts. Impervious to explosions. The sheep, on the other hand . . .”
“Will scatter like flies.” Colin flashed a reckless grin.
“I suppose.”
Bram knew bombing the sheep was reckless, impulsive, and inherently rather stupid, like all his cousin’s boyhood ideas. Surely there were better, more efficient solutions to a sheep barricade that didn’t involve black powder.
But time was wasting, and Bram was impatient to be moving on, in more ways than one. Eight months ago, a lead ball had ripped through his right knee and torn his life apart. He’d spent months confined to a sickbed, another several weeks clanking and groaning his way down corridors like a ghost dragging chains. Some days during his convalescence, Bram had felt certain he would explode.
And now he was so close—just a mile or so—from Summerfield and Sir Lewis Finch. Just a mile from finally regaining his command. He bloody well wouldn’t be thwarted by a flock of gluttonous sheep, whose guts were likely to burst if they weren’t scared off that corn.
A good, clean blast was just what they all needed right about now.
“That’ll do,” Thorne called, embedding the last charge at the top of the rise. As he pushed his way back through the sheep, he added, “All’s clear down the lane. I could see a fair distance.”
“There is a village nearby, isn’t there?” Colin asked. “God, tell me there’s a village.”
“There’s a village,” Bram answered, packing away the unused powder. “Saw it on the map. Somesuch Bay, or Whatsit Harbor . . . Can’t exactly recall.”
“I don’t care what it’s called,” Colin said. “So long as there’s a tavern and a bit of society. God, I hate the country.”
Thorne said, “I saw the village. Just over that rise.”
“It didn’t look charming, did it?” Colin raised a brow as he reached for the tinderbox. “I should hate for it to be charming. Give me a dank, seedy, vice-ridden pustule of a village any day. Wholesome living makes my skin crawl.”