He had followed orders through war, through captivity. But this one. This silence had never sat right. And now, too late, he saw what it had cost.
The fire snapped. Neither man moved. The silence between them stretched taut.
The door burst open. A gust of wind followed Mrs. Bainbridge in.
She didn’t wait to be invited. She swept in like a storm, skirts snapping, eyes alight with fury. She had warned them. She had begged them to take Mary-Ann seriously. But no. Secrets were safer than trust. Orders were easier than respect. And now? Now they were chasing the consequences of their own arrogance.
“You,” she said to Barrington, “are a pompous, calculating man. And you,” she turned to Quinton, “are a coward.”
They both stared.
“Do you know what she’s done in your silence?” she said, storming into the room. “She’s tracked every ship. She’s copied the ledgers. Confirmed every manifest. She’s confronted her father. And what have you two done?Strategized.”
“Honoria—”
“No, don’t youdare, Honoria me, Reese Barrington.She told me everything. The missing ships. The raven seal. The dock names. Even the recipients. I have them written down, if your clever minds are still catching up.”
Quinton stood slowly. “She found the recipient logs?”
“She foundeverything. And she’s been alone in it because both of you thought keeping her in the dark and at Wilkinson’s mercy was protection.”
Barrington’s voice turned hard. “We couldn’t risk a leak.”
“Sheisn’ta leak. She’s your best chance. She expected to be treated like a partner, not a problem. She’s smarter than both of you and braver than either of you. And now you’ve lost her.”
Quinton’s jaw clenched. “Where is she?”
Mrs. Bainbridge hesitated. “At home. I think I talked her down. She said she was going to the cave, to look for proof.”
Quinton went still.
The room did too.
“She wouldn’t,” Barrington said.
“She would,” Quinton answered, already reaching for his coat. “If she believes there’s proof there, nothing will stop her.”
“You don’t know that—”
“I do,” Quinton said. His voice was low. Unshakable.
“Because I know what she looks like when she’s made up her mind. And I will not let her walk into that place alone.”
He crossed the room in three strides.
“She will get her proof,” he said as he pulled open the door, “and if I have to die to protect her while she does, then so be it.”
He paused at the threshold, turning back to Barrington one last time. His voice dropped to something dangerous, steady.
“If anything happens to her, there won’t be a strategy clever enough to save you from me.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Monday morning, withthe tide turning and shadows thick on the wharf, the records whispered what no one would say aloud.
Mary-Ann sat at her desk, the lamplight trembling over the cloth-bound booklet. She hadn’t meant to linger over it, but her thumb had found the smudge near the margin, a dark streak cutting through the number eight. And just like that, she remembered.
You always missed the eights…She heard his voice. Hamish.Ink on your nose, little miss.
