Page 28 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)

“Not really. I write stage directions for a living, and I don’t have enough words to describe what the two of you were just doing.”

“I thought you wrote letters for a living,” said Graham. “Do many people write in asking how best to scale walls and navigate rooftops?”

“I didn’t think you really did the roof bit,” Viv said. “I thought that rumor might have been greatly exaggerated.”

“ Un -xaggerated,” said Kuni. “Graham can do tricks you cannot imagine.”

“ Un-xaggerated isn’t a word,” her husband whispered.

“It should be,” she grumbled. “Your language is woefully incomplete.”

“Minimized,” Viv suggested. “Understated. Underreported. Misconstrued. Underestimated. Miscalculated.” She remembered Kuni was Balcovian and switched to Dutch for the next dozen synonyms, since the two languages were close enough to be mutually intelligible.

Kuni and Graham both opened their eyes to stare at her.

“Writer,” she mumbled. “I like words.”

“Apparently.” Graham pushed himself up on his elbows. “Do you know who else likes words?”

“So help me, if you attempt to match-make me to your brother—”

“Sir Gareth Jallow,” Graham finished with satisfaction. “Now, there’s a poet’s poet. I cannot wait for his new book next week.”

“Jacob hates Jallow,” whispered Kuni. “We’re not to mention his name.”

“Not in front of Jacob,” Graham agreed. “But we are allowed to say ‘Sir Gareth Jallow’ in front of Miss Henry.”

“Vivian,” Viv said. “We did the first-name thing yesterday.”

“Do you know what the biggest problem with Jallow is?” asked Graham.

Kuni covered her face with her hands. “Here he goes. If you have any ability at all for running away over rooftops… this is your cue to deploy your emergency evacuation skills.”

Graham threw his arms out wide. “Jallow isn’t a prince! He’s a mere sir .”

“Knights are respectable,” said Kuni. “Baronets are respectable.”

“They’re not royalty,” Graham said. “Just think how much better that poetry would be if it had been written by a king.”

“It would be the same poetry,” Kuni said. “Literally the exact same words in the exact same order. Just by a man with a different name.”

“Precisely,” Graham said dreamily. “So much better.”

“Words should be written by whomever they’re written by,” said Viv. “Man, woman, Black, white. It shouldn’t matter.”

“You’re new here,” said Graham. “Gender and racial equality is definitely not how England works.”

“Or anywhere,” Viv muttered.

“Actually,” began Kuni, her eyes lighting up.

“Now you did it.” Graham pulled his wife to her feet. “You got her started. Prepare for waves of vomit-inducing jealousy.”

“We can all move to Balcovia at any time you want,” Kuni scolded him. “Winter at the Summer Palace, then move back here in time for spring.”

“Winter… in the Summer… Palace?” Viv echoed blankly.

“That’s when the royal family isn’t using it,” Kuni explained, leaving Viv even more confused than before. “I suppose we could take summers in the Winter Palace, but honestly, if you force me to choose—”

“No more choosing,” said Graham. “You already chose the exquisite fairy tale that is England.”

Kuni sent Viv a speaking look. “Something is definitely lost in translation.”

“My cousin would love to winter in the Summer Palace,” Viv said. “He would wear his all-blue ‘Baron Vanderbean’ outfit—”

“Blue?” Kuni recoiled in mock horror. “Any respectable Balcovian aristocrat would never be seen in anything but our national pink.”

“My wife would be happy to loan him a more appropriate frock coat,” Graham told Viv with a grin. “Why aren’t you off with Jacob?”

“Why should I be with Jacob?” she countered, defensive.

“Didn’t you say something along the lines of, ‘I shall be your second shadow until my cousin returns home’?” Graham asked mildly.

Oh. That.

“I perceive how you might draw the conclusion that a shadow would be near its object,” she mumbled. “I tried that. It didn’t go well.”

“Jacob was unfriendly to you?” Graham said in surprise.

“I… might have been unfriendly to him,” she admitted. “I provoked him, and he got upset. Out of sorts enough to allude to something dark in his past, which he refused to elaborate on.”

“Well,” said Graham. “You’re the advice column writer, but if you ask me—”

“I did not ask you.”

“He’s about to tell you anyway,” said Kuni.

Viv tightened her jaw. That was her unwelcome trick. She was starting to see how annoying it could be.

“Whether you ask me or not,” said Graham, “the truth is this: You can’t demand to be in someone’s confidence. You have to deserve it.”

Ouch. Sharp blade, right through the chain mail. Touché.

“You know what?” said Viv. “I think I’ll go and meddle in someone else’s life now.”

Halfway through the list. Things were going… well, perhaps not swimmingly, but things were certainly going.

Elizabeth and Stephen’s London residence looked safe enough to the naked eye. However, the moment Viv lifted the ordinary brass knocker, something metallic clicked three times and the doorjamb shattered into pieces.

She jumped backward, only for the wooden pieces to be swept away down a previously hidden channel. The door itself flew upward, as if inhaled to a higher story. Behind it now hung a wall of ceiling-to-floor fringe made of yellow yarn glistening with… oil?

As the dripping liquid pooled onto the floor, Viv gingerly smudged it with the tip of one shoe. Definitely oil. The growing puddle covered the marble entryway three feet wide, inviting anyone who dared cross to slip and break every bone in their body.

“Have you considered simply hiring a butler?” she called into the void.

No one answered.

Were they not at home? Or were they ignoring her?

Viv knew they had other cases. She’d helped plan half a dozen of them. The mother had been reunited with her child, the gambled dowry had been restored to the distraught daughter in time for the wedding, and the church’s landlord had been forced to repatch the roof.

She glared at the yawning darkness. Either Elizabeth and Stephen weren’t home, or the bizarre blanket of oily fringe had muffled Viv’s words. Lord help her. She hadn’t planned to ruin her best bonnet today, but there was no way through except forward.

She found a stick to push the wet fringe aside, and placed a tentative boot onto the slick marble.

Two things happened at once: The fringe jerked to one side, disappearing as though a team of invisible stagehands had yanked the curtain away for the final show. More concerning, however, was that the floor beneath her foot did not stay put. The marble heaved, as though giving a great belch.

Viv windmilled her arms to keep her balance. She barely managed not to tumble arse over teakettle. What had previously seemed solid marble was now a thin checkerboard pattern of tiles, with every other square half an inch shorter than its neighbor. The result was that the oil drained away.

A pulley to her left clacked, drawing Viv’s attention and alarm.

An object that looked like a gigantic fireplace bellows emerged from a panel above the baseboard and gave a great heave, depositing not air but a thin layer of sand over the floor.

Making it as safe to transverse as Viv supposed it was ever going to be.

She crossed with care, narrowly avoiding a gossamer thread poised to launch a chute of overripe plums atop the unsuspecting visitor.

At the other end of the six-foot entryway was an innocuous-looking wooden door. Viv wasn’t certain whether to attempt to knock on this one or simply to fling it open and take her chances.

She settled on flinging it open.

Though she tensed in anticipation of a falling ceiling or the floor vanishing beneath her feet, nothing prevented her from crossing the threshold farther into the house.

There, on the other side, she glimpsed what might have been a huge parlor. Difficult to tell, what with cords and chains and wheels and gears and pulleys covering every inch of the walls and most of the ceiling.

A blank spot in the middle contained a man hanging upside down from his knees on a short trapeze, with a hammer in one hand and a wrench in the other.

A leather helmet covered his head. One eye was hidden behind some sort of telescoping lens, whereas the other was magnified fivefold behind an inch-thick circle of glass.

He grunted toward the ceiling. “This will be ready for deployment within the hour.”

Beneath him on the ground stood a woman free of helmets but wielding a sword in each hand. She danced erratically amongst the disparate items of furniture, fencing wildly against an attacking army of invisible foes.

“Took you long enough,” Elizabeth Wynchester said. Not to her husband. To the unexpected visitor.

Viv blinked. “You didn’t know I was coming.”

Elizabeth jabbed a sword above the sofa, then swung the other blade over her own head, narrowly missing her husband—who carried on with his tinkering without flinching.

“I knew it was you the moment the fringe of death didn’t frighten you off.” Elizabeth hurled a sword toward Viv.

Viv caught the handle reflexively, dropping into a defensive position just in time to parry a dizzying flurry of Elizabeth’s expert thrusts.

The fight, if one could call it that, was over in under thirty seconds. Viv’s hands were palm-up in the air, her temporary rapier lying useless at her oil-stained feet.

“Impressive.” Elizabeth sheathed her sword. “Most people don’t last ten seconds against me.”

“Not even five,” said Stephen from his upside-down perch on the ceiling.

Elizabeth motioned Viv to the sofa, which might or might not have been rigged to murder anyone whose derrière touched the cushion. “Biscuit? Today we have oat, cinnamon raisin, and shortbread.”

Viv decided to risk the sofa. “I’ll take one of each, if you’ve enough to go around.”

“Exactly the combination I would have chosen myself,” Elizabeth said in approval. She piled a plate high with biscuits and passed it to Viv. “How did you enjoy our mechanical butler system?”

“That was a mechanical… butler?”