53 pages • 1 hour read
India HoltonThe Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 20-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 20 Summary
If Ned could live his life over, he would never have read the writings of Morvath that he studied to gain his trust. Now, his affiliation with Morvath is over, with Morvath’s plans crumbled and Morvath dead. Cecilia tells Ned to turn the house around, as she sees her aunt has escaped the abbey. Ned turns the house and initiates the landing incantation.
Cecilia then tells Ned that they need to go to her bedroom. When they get to Cecilia’s room, she initiates sexual intimacy with him. They kiss passionately before Ned throws Cecilia on the bed. While they are intimate, both of them realize they are in love with each other. Afterward, Cecilia is heartbroken, as she believes this is the last time she will see Ned. Ned, however, plans to marry Cecilia, even if Aunt Darlington or the Queen disapproves.
Chapter 21 Summary
As Darlington house lands, Ned sees Constantinopla, Tom, and Queen Victoria having a picnic near Windsor Castle. Cecilia finishes cleaning the downstairs of the house, and Ned holds her for a moment before they approach the Queen and Constantinopla to find out what has happened. A group of the special service try to arrest Cecilia, but Ned outranks them and brings her directly to the Queen. Cecilia makes the Queen’s introduction and asks about Miss Darlington. The Queen tells her that her doctor is tending to Miss Darlington in Windsor Castle, so Cecilia hurries to see her while Ned chats with the Queen.
Inside the castle, Cecilia finds Miss Darlington recovering from the doctor’s visit. The doctor tried to give her morphine, and Miss Darlington stabbed the doctor with the needle instead. Jacobsen enters the room and reveals that he is also a member of Her Majesty’s Special Service, assigned to spy on Ned. He also tries to collect a debt from Miss Darlington, so Miss Darlington knocks him unconscious with her cane. She’s recovered well from Morvath’s stabbing, and Cecilia tells her that Morvath crashed into the hillside and died; Miss Darlington can finally mourn him properly.
Some of the other Society ladies visit Miss Darlington and invite her to a party, but Miss Darlington rejects the invitation, saying that Cecilia has had enough excitement.
Chapter 22 Summary
Cecilia sits with Miss Darlington in the sitting room of Darlington house, reading her poetry. Miss Darlington attempts to keep Cecilia distracted from the chaos from the aftermath of the battle outside. Anne Brown calls upon Miss Darlington, and she and some other Wisteria ladies bring in Miss Fairweather to address her treason. The ladies all decide that they would also betray each other for money given the right circumstances, so they fine Miss Fairweather for her actions and remind her not to trust men with large flying houses, as they are obviously compensating for something.
After the ladies leave, Frederick and Jane arrive and announce their engagement. Cecilia lets Jane know that the Bassingthwaite fortune is nearly gone, which shocks Jane, but not enough to break the engagement. They leave, and Cecilia attempts to return to the poem again before she is interrupted by the arrival of Queen Victoria and Ned.
The Queen and Miss Darlington banter while Ned asks to retrieve something from upstairs. Miss Darlington demands that he is accompanied so that he cannot steal anything. Pleasance seems afraid, so Cecilia agrees to go upstairs with him while the Queen and Miss Darlington share a knowing look.
Chapter 23 Summary
Upstairs in Miss Darlington’s bedroom, Ned kisses Cecilia. She pushes back, shocked that he would kiss her in her aunt’s bedroom, before pulling him in to kiss him again. Ned wants to be with Cecilia, but she believes herself close to being promoted to full member of the Wisteria Society and thinks that her dalliance with Ned could harm her chances of promotion. Ned tells her that being a pirate means the rules don’t matter, but Cecilia disagrees, even though she loves Ned. He kisses her goodbye, and they go back downstairs to find the Queen and Miss Darlington practicing sword fighting.
The Queen and Miss Darlington ask Ned if he found what he was looking for, but he says it (aka Cecilia’s heart) is not his to take. The Queen and Ned leave, with Ned planning to fly Windsor Castle back to its proper place. Cecilia prepares to fly Darlington house. She talks with Pleasance about her feelings for Ned and Pleasance’s dreams of receiving an education and changing the world.
Chapter 24 Summary
Miss Darlington and Cecilia arrive at Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s Jubilee Banquet. Both Miss Darlington and Cecilia would rather be at home by the fireplace with a cup of tea, but they attend anyway. Cecilia is concerned Ned will be in attendance and hopes to avoid him.
When they arrive, they curtsy to the Queen and see the other ladies of the Wisteria Society mingling with various European royals. Olivia Etterly tells Cecilia that no one has seen or heard from Lady Armitage in the last week, since all of the drama at Northrangerland Abbey. Cecilia bumps into Ned, who asks her to dance as he put in a waltz song request.
As they dance, he reveals that he’s stolen Pleasance, and that both he and Pleasance want Cecilia to marry him and free herself of her self-imposed cage of duty to Miss Darlington. Before she can answer, Captain Morvath cuts in and puts a knife to Cecilia’s throat.
Chapter 25 Summary
Morvath kept a parachute in his escape garden shed, which allowed him to fake his death and jump out before the shed exploded. He managed to get clothes nice enough to infiltrate the Jubilee Banquet with the plan to exact his revenge on Queen Victoria for her womanly reign. However, he is enraged when he sees Miss Darlington dancing and laughing like nothing happened after he stabbed her with all the negative emotions in his heart. He stalks toward Miss Darlington with the intent to kill her, but when he sees Cecilia, he pivots and decides to kill her in front of Miss Darlington. He cuts into her dance with Ned and presses the knife to her throat.
Morvath promises to kill Cecilia if anyone attempts to stop his plan. He berates Miss Darlington for her behavior, though he is chided by some of Queen Victoria’s sons for speaking ill of his own mother. Jacobsen returns, revealing himself as Miss Darlington’s former lover. He had red hair, making him another likely candidate for Morvath’s father, which incenses Morvath. Morvath promises to lift the castle and drop it, killing everyone inside while he and Cecilia escape via the garden shed that he’s landed on the roof. Queen Victoria bashes him over the head with a heavy crown, rendering him unconscious before he can harm Cecilia or anyone else. The guards drag him out of the ballroom, as several Society members “accidentally” kick or step on him. In the excitement, Ned kisses Cecilia in front of everyone.
The Queen decrees that now they must marry, but Cecilia still pushes back against the idea. The Wisteria Society ladies tell her that if she refuses marriage, she can be promoted to full member. It was an almost unanimous vote. Miss Darlington tells her that she will be fine without her, and Jacobsen says that he’d like to stay with her and take care of her. Cecilia asks who the dissenting votes for her promotion were: They were Lady Armitage and Miss Darlington, both of whom want her to chart her own path and live her own life. Cecilia and Ned leave holding hands, and the Queen centers the party’s attention back toward herself.
Chapter 26 Summary
Ned and Cecilia walk hand-in-hand out of the castle. Ned wonders if Cilla would have approved of him, and Cecilia tells him that she approves of him, and that’s all that matters.
Ned gives Cecilia a house in the form of a stolen library, a library he stole with the kind help of Pleasance. Cecilia wonders if the town Ned and Pleasance stole the library from will miss it; Ned assures her that they wanted the library gone to expand the cemetery. Ned helps shove her through the door, on account of her large gown, and then takes her ungloved hand in his. Cecilia tells Pleasance about the events of the evening, then takes Ned’s house and walks into the library, into their future.
Chapters 20-26 Analysis
The final chapters wrap up the narrative arc of the novel, culminating in Morvath’s defeat and Cecilia and Ned’s engagement. Cecilia chooses not to join the Wisteria Society and to instead marry Ned and create their own destiny for their lives. This fulfills the theme of The Quest for Independence against Societal Constraints. While Cecilia still adheres to the normative structure of marriage in agreeing to a union with Ned, in a certain way that marriage bucks the social constraints in which she was raised. Miss Darlington never married and even gave Morvath up for adoption, as she did not want to be a mother and preferred the life of a pirate. Though this was normal enough for a pirate lady of the Wisteria Society, that decision goes strongly against the ideas of family values and morality ingrained in Victorian culture. Cecilia, in deciding to marry Ned, thus conforms to traditional norms of her time but pushes back against the norms in which she was raised by Miss Darlington.
Ned and Cecilia’s relationship also ends on a point of equality, reflecting Romance and Partnership Between Equals. Ned procures a library-turned-house for Cecilia, demonstrating the depth of his understanding of her and her interests. With their engagement, Ned also finds the strength to let himself be emotionally vulnerable with Cecilia in the same way that she was emotionally vulnerable with him. He thinks, “She reached out, touching his heart, and he felt a thousand defenses of charm, cunning, carelessness, shattering beneath her gentleness, leaving him at last with the clarity of truth. He loved her. He needed her” (318). Ned finally lets the last of his guard down around Cecilia, trusting in her not to hurt him and finding comfort in the full realization of both his love for her and his need for her. Ned reciprocates the vulnerability Cecilia showed him after facing her father in the breakfast room and in initiating physical intimacy after the battle against Morvath. They thus enter into their marriage on equal footing, in their shared house they can both use for reading or for piracy, having shared both emotional and physical intimacy together.
The theme of The Subversion of Gender Roles also reaches a climax. Queen Victoria is the one who takes Morvath down with her crown. This action is heavily symbolic. Queen Victoria embodies female empowerment, as she holds the most powerful position possible in English society. Morvath seeks to take vengeance on the women of the Wisteria Society for their role in robbing him of Cilla and of his pirate destiny, but he also blames the queen for the way his life has developed, as he calls women “fickle, unfaithful beasts” (307) in his rage at the Wisteria Society at the Jubilee Banquet. Morvath’s misogyny is so appalling that even the other men, namely Queen Victoria’s sons, criticize him for his uncouth and offensive words. When he is silenced from speaking and attempting to kill the attendees of the banquet, it is at the hands of a woman with the physical symbol of her own power.
Instead of ending the novel on that image, Holton gives Cecilia and Ned a happy and romantic ending in a house that represents the possibility of their future adventures, with the door open for guest appearances in the rest of the Dangerous Damsels series of books.
