The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels

In the week after the theft of Petunia’s house, the Wisteria Society meets for tea frequently to discuss their plans to respond to Morvath. They go into town at Ottery St. Mary to take tea at the teahouse. Cecilia accompanies the more senior ladies to town, where they run into Anne Brown and the Fairweathers. Anne says that Constantinopla is in the graveyard with a boy named Tom to discuss Mary Shelley, which Cecilia realizes is a euphemism for sex, as Mary Shelley allegedly first had sex with Percy Shelley in a graveyard. Anne does not realize, so Cecilia keeps her realization to herself.

When the ladies arrive at the teahouse, Cecilia is sent outside to avoid her hearing about their plans for Morvath, even though Cecilia keeps a diary under her bed in which she writes her plans to kill her father. While wandering the town, Cecilia watches as pirates take the teahouse and fly it away. Cecilia fights off some of the pirates, shooting them, and instructs the town butcher to heal them, even though the butcher argues he has no medical experience and struggles to even cut cow bones. Cecilia then takes off toward the ladies’ battlehouses.

Ned watches from under a tree as Morvath’s henchmen steal the rest of the Wisteria Society’s battlehouses by sneaking in and starting the flight incantation before the men and servants left at home even realize they are being abducted. Some of the men try to fight off the pirates but fail. Morvath reveals to Ned his plan to marry Cecilia to the Bassingthwaite heir, her cousin Frederick, so that Cecilia can be the master of Starkthorn Castle, the biggest battlehouse in England besides Morvath’s Northrangerland Abbey.

Cilla lived at Starkthorn Castle before her marriage to Morvath; Morvath claims he rescued Cilla from her overbearing mother and grandmother (both of whom were also named Cecilia), but the Wisteria Society claims he kidnapped Cilla against her will. Ned figures the truth is somewhere in the middle, but with Cilla dead it is impossible to know. When they married, Morvath was nothing but a struggling writer with a novel so bad that publishers threatened legal action if he sent them any more of his writing; Cilla likely helped him to become a pirate and to obtain his success and his battlehouse. Now Morvath has most of the battlehouses in England and the ability to fully take over the country if he wants, with Ned at his right hand. 

Ned sees Cecilia running down the lane and greets her. She questions his affiliation with Morvath, and Ned explains how he works for Lady Armitage as Eduardo de Luca, the Italian assassin, for Morvath as Ned Lightbourne, the captain, and for the Queen as Ned Smith, captain of the royal secret service. Morvath wants Cecilia protected, while Lady Armitage and the Queen want her dead, the Queen being concerned about the danger a daughter of Morvath could pose to the realm.

Constantinopla and Tom arrive. Constantinopla reveals that Ned was also her fencing teacher at the piracy school, a job he took as Teddy Luxe in order to find Cecilia, as he assumed she would be at the school. Ned tells Cecilia that to fight against her father, they need to go to Lady Armitage, as she has the last remaining battlehouse that Morvath has not stolen. Cecilia wants to go into Northrangerland Abbey alone, but Ned convinces her that doing so will allow her father to capture her. Ned tells Constantinopla to stay behind, as she is only 16 and too young to join the adventure. Tom is upset that Constantinopla lied about being 19 but agrees to stay behind with her, even though Constantinopla argues that she should be a chaperone for Ned and Cecilia.

Ned and Cecilia bicker about which of them will steal a carriage and head to Lyme Regis. As they leave, Tom tells Constantinopla he must marry her, which she clearly anticipated as she describes the ring that she wants. She then tells him that they will not obey Ned and stay behind.

Cecilia and Ned bicker flirtatiously in the carriage as they drive toward Lyme Regis. Brigands attempt to rob them, but Cecilia and Ned fight them off. Cecilia makes fun of Ned for crashing his house, and Ned tells her that it was pushed deliberately off a cliff. While he flirts with her, Cecilia wonders what it would be like to kiss him. Ned wants to stop and rest for the night, while Cecilia wants to drive through the night to reach Lady Armitage.

Ned tells Cecilia that there is a roadside hotel up the way that they can stop at, and instructs her to change into nicer clothes from the luggage that was in the stolen carriage. Cecilia changes into a silk dress with rose adornments that is a little too small, but she manages to fit. When they arrive at the hotel, Ned leaves the carriage a little bit away so that their lack of driver does not appear suspicious. He finishes buttoning up Cecilia’s dress and steals her earrings, which she then demands back. He tells her she looks beautiful, and they go into the hotel.

Ned and Cecilia pretend to be Lord Albert and Lady Victoria. They eat dinner after claiming the hotel lost their dinner reservation and receive a free bottle of wine as an apology. They talk over dinner and drink the wine, which makes Cecilia quite drunk, as Miss Darlington never allows her to drink.

Ned reveals that Miss Fairweather was the traitor who gave Morvath the necessary information to kidnap the Wisteria Society, which incenses the already-tense Cecilia, who dislikes Jane. As she has more wine, she becomes more open with him and laughs more. Ned likes seeing her more uninhibited, but he has to help her upstairs and to bed as she tries to take her corset and dress off in the elevator. When they reach their room, Cecilia is scandalized that there is only one bed, but Ned explains that married people sleep in the same bed, and they are pretending to be a married noble couple. He helps Cecilia take off her dress and corset and takes the pins out of her hair. He almost has to leave to splash cold water on himself at the sight of her with her long auburn hair unbound.

Ned sleeps on the floor while Cecilia sleeps in the bed. She asks if he will assassinate her in her sleep, and jokes about him strangling her before she falls asleep. Ned contemplates slipping into bed with her and getting out before she wakes, but decides that his honor will not allow it. He makes a bed on the floor that is extremely uncomfortable.

Ned wakes up, and Cecilia is gone. He begins to think about where she may have gone, but before he can plan how to find her again, she returns with coffee and tea for him. She says that she needed to find a book, and the hotel lacks a library, so she went to a ladies’ reading room and managed to find a lone copy of Wuthering Heights. Ned asks why she would want to read a book that motivated her father Morvath, the illegitimate son of Branwell Brontë, who was the brother of the authors Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë. Cecilia tells Ned she does not need a lecture on her paternity. Ned worries that part of Cecilia is still sympathetic to her father, which would mean he needs to neutralize her.

Cecilia tells Ned that she has two horses to steal from the hotel and has packed their saddlebags with food. He asks if she is feeling unwell; she replies that she is. He tells her she is hungover, but instead of explaining it was from drinking too much wine, he says hangovers come from bad seafood, and they had seafood for dinner. He has no hangover, he explains, because he had them when he was younger and is now immune. Cecilia pushes back against his suggestion to continue in the carriage, as they can ride horses faster than the carriage can go. She then throws up on her corset, which is still discarded on the ground. They leave their hotel room, loudly claiming someone else made the mess.

Ned then sees Jacobsen, another of Morvath’s henchmen. He pulls Cecilia into a closet to hide. He tells her not to worry and she doesn’t understand what she’s supposed to not worry about. He then tells her that when he kisses her for the first time, it will be in a nicer place than a closet. She asks why it must be in a nicer place, and he offers to kiss her, which causes her to slap him. Before they leave the closet, he then kisses her passionately. Cecilia tells Ned that his kiss healed her illness. Afterward, they slip out of the closet and sneak toward the horses. As they start to ride away, Jacobsen finds them and begins to shoot.