The boy gave his sister a nasty stare.
“Pillover is terribly bad at being bad, if you take my meaning. Our daddy is a founding member of the Death Weasel Confederacy, and Mummy is a kitchen chemist with questionable intent, but poor Pillover can’t even bring himself to murder ants with his Depraved Lens of Crispy Magnification. Can you, Pill?”
Sophronia felt as though she was progressively losing the thread of the conversation. “Death Weasel Confederacy?”
Dimity nodded, curls bobbing. “I know—can you countenance it? I tend to look on the bright side; at least Daddy’s not a Pickleman.”
Sophronia’s eyes popped. “Uh, oh yes, rather.” Pickleman? What in aether is a Pickleman?
“But Pill here is a sad disappointment to poor old Daddy.”
The boy in question put down his book, clearly driven to defend himself. “I made the articulated hassock that moved when someone went to sit on it. And there was that custard pot that never got cool enough for the pudding to set.”
Dimity provided parenthetical information against this defense. “The hassock always ended up moving forward helpfully. And cook simply used the Custard Pot of Iniquity for keeping her buns warm.”
“Oh, I say. That’s not on. Telling family secrets like that!”
“Face it, Pill, you’re disappointingly good.”
“Oh, I like that! And you’re so evil? Why, you want to get married and be a lady. Who ever heard of such a thing in our family? At least I try.”
“Well, finishing school should help with being a lady. Shouldn’t it?” At least this was something Sophronia knew about.
The boy snorted derisively. “Not half. Not this finishing school. Wrong kind of finishing altogether. Or should I say right kind, but only on the surface? I’m sure you follow.” Pillover made a funny little leer at Sophronia, then, seeming to have embarrassed himself, resumed his book.
“What could he possibly be implying?” Sophronia looked to Dimity to explain her brother’s behavior.
“You mean, you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Oh my goodness. You’re a covert recruit? No family connection at all? I knew they took them, of course, but I didn’t think I would get to meet one. How charming! Have you been under surveillance? I heard they do that sometimes.”
Mademoiselle Geraldine interceded at that juncture. “That’s enough of that, Miss Plumleigh-Teignmott.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle Geraldine.”
The headmistress went back to ignoring them.
“So where are we traveling to?” Sophronia asked, figuring that was a safe question, since they clearly weren’t allowed to talk about the school itself.
“You don’t even know that much?” Dimity’s tone full of pity. “Why, to Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.”
Sophronia shook her head. “No, I mean, where is the location of this school?”
“Well, no one knows exactly, but to the south. Dartmoor, or somewhere around there.”
“Why so mysterious?”
Dimity shook her head, curls flying. “Oh, no, you see, I’m not meaning to be. It isn’t, you understand, at a fixed location.”
“What isn’t?”
“The academy.”
Sophronia imagined a building, filled with shrieking girls, scooting about the moor on tracks, like some massive, overexcited mechanical. “The school is mobile? What, on hundreds of tiny little legs?”
“Legs? Well, yes, moving, only not on legs. I think it’s, you know.” Dimity tilted her head back and looked to the ceiling.
Sophronia was about to inquire further when a terrific jolt shook them where they sat and the carriage came to a stop so abruptly that it pitched Dimity on top of Sophronia, and Pillover on top of Mademoiselle Geraldine.
Mademoiselle Geraldine screamed, probably upset by extended contact with Pillover’s grimy coat, and flapped her arms and legs to get the boy off.
Sophronia and Dimity untangled themselves, giggling.
Pillover extracted himself from the headmistress with remarkable dignity for a boy of his age and dress and retrieved his bowler from the floor.
“What on earth is going on?” Mademoiselle Geraldine banged on the ceiling of the cab with her parasol. “Coachman? Coachman!”
The carriage remained still. Or at least it didn’t appear to want to move forward. Every so often it would bob upward, as though it were afloat on the open sea.
The door to the carriage was yanked open to reveal not the coachman, but a bizarre-looking gentleman. He was dressed for the hunt in tweed jodhpurs, boots, red jacket, and riding hat, but he also wore goggles, with a long scarf of the type donned by arctic explorers wrapped around the lower part of his face.
The carriage lurched again. One of the horses neighed in alarm.
The strange man had a massive brass onion pinned to his cravat and was pointing a wicked-looking pistol at the occupants of the carriage. Sophronia’s eyes, once caught by the weapon, remained fixed upon it. Never before had she come face-to-face with an actual gun. She was shocked. Why, that thing could go off. Someone could get hurt!
“Highwaymen!” squeaked Pillover.
“No,” corrected Mademoiselle Geraldine, her teeth gritted. “Worse: flywaymen.” The was something in her tone, felt Sophronia, that suggested she was not surprised. Sophronia was instantly suspicious of both Mademoiselle Geraldine and the flywayman.