Barrington lifted his glass. “A fair offering.”
“She replied,” Quinton added, almost carefully. “Through Mrs. Bainbridge. Just a few words to express her gratitudefor the message, and she hoped I was recovering well. Mrs. Bainbridge passed along her note.”
Barrington met his eyes. “She didn’t have to respond at all.”
“No,” Quinton said. “But she did.”
He hadn’t realized how much he needed to hear from her until Mrs. Bainbridge shared Mary-Ann’s words, written in her hand.
The handwriting was still precise, still hers. She’d used his title, but not coldly. And at the end, there had been one phrase, “Take care, always,” a phrase she whispered once on a cliffside before he left for Spain.
He looked down into his glass, then up at the mantel. “It’s not much. But it’s something. A thread, maybe. And after everything… It’s enough.” For now, he added silently.
There was a pause. The fire snapped softly behind them.
“She was with Hamish when the accident happened,” Quinton added. “Kenworth heard the story from the staff. Apparently, she acted fast. Had someone go after Dr. Manning and had the men check all the rigging. But the rigging—”
“I know,” Barrington said. “Word travels fast in port towns. And quietly, if you know how to listen.”
Quinton turned the glass in his hand. “The break in the rope was too clean. Not weathered or frayed. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence.”
“It doesn’t,” Barrington agreed. “But we don’t name shadows until we see what casts them. We wait.”
“No,” Quinton added. “We start looking.”
Barrington studied him for a long moment. “You’re not just staying for her.”
Quinton met Barrington’s steady gaze. “No,” Quinton said. “But she’s the reason I crossed oceans to return. Whatever this is, whatever’s happening, I’m not sitting on the sidelines.”
Barrington reached for his glass. “Good. Because I’ve already begun asking questions.”
Quinton glanced at the message on the mantel. He didn’t reach for it yet. The seal bore the familiar crest of an old Brigade contact. One Edward had once trusted with secrets too dangerous for ink. The paper was cool, untouched, but it hummed with tension. A name, a time, a piece of truth someone had gone to great lengths to bury. Any of these could be inside.
He wasn’t sure what would be worse: finding answers or uncovering more questions. The kind that changed the shape of loyalties. And of lives.
He hadn’t told anyone, not even Barrington, what he’d promised himself that last night in Spain.
Outside, the bells of a passing carriage jingled cheerfully. Inside, beneath the chandelier that still bore a faint dusting of sugar like the aftermath of some genteel skirmish, two former soldiers raised a quiet toast.
Quinton gestured toward the letter. “It reminds me of a phrase Edward once used.‘A clean seal hides the dirtiest truths.’And if Edward had sent this… it isn’t a correspondence. It’s a summons. The kind we can’t ignore.”
Neither knew what the letter held, but whatever it was, it meant their reprieve was at an end. Barrington refreshed their glasses.
“To battles old and new.” Barrington raised his glass.
Quinton clinked his glass gently against Barrington’s. This time, he didn’t drink to the past. He drank to the future, to the questions still waiting, to the woman he could never forget, and to the vow he’d made beneath Spanish skies: that he would return, offer his heart, and accept whatever choice she made.
He’d made it silently, staring up at a ceiling of stars in a broken camp. If he lived, he would return. If she still loved him, he would ask her to marry him. Not out of duty. Out of love.
Chapter Eight
The moon washigh without a cloud in the sky. The stars twinkled and glowed. The house had long since gone quiet, the kind of hush that settled deep into the beams and brick after the last footman had gone to bed and the coals on the hearth had begun to dim. Mary-Ann sat alone in her father’s study. The candle burned low, casting shadows across the polished desk.
Her fingers were smudged with ink again. The ledgers, her father’s official shipping records, and her own private notes were spread in front of her. Her private notes were intended to serve as a learning tool. But lately, it had become something else.
Five crates were listed in one book. Three were reported at the docks.
That had to be wrong. She turned back a page, checked the supplier’s initials, then the weight. Identical. She leafed forward. A different arrival port, a different date, but the same inventory code. Her pulse ticked up.
