“Idle rumors often abound,” Crispin intervened. “Some question your motives. I am afraid that such word has reached our superiors. You understand, surely, they cannot allow for a surfeit of armaments to be put into the hands of forces that cannot be trusted implicitly as allies.
El Corazón Oscuro spat. “Our ravens are hungry for their daily feast of Frenchmen, but perhaps they would like pretty Englishmen just as well.”
“Do you dare to threaten us, vile son of a French whore?” Morgan gritted.
El Corazón Oscuro’s eyes flashed. “You will regret your words, Searle. I will take great pleasure in making you eat them before I let the birds peck out your tongue.” He gave a jerky nod.
A splitting pain crashed through Crispin’s skull in the next moment, and his vision went black.
Chapter One
London, Six Months Later
“Read them aloudonce more if you please, Jacinda. I think I may have inadvertently missed a number, for the sequence has no notable pattern.”
Jacinda glanced up from the carefully transcribed document to her father. He was beloved in the lamp glow, his white hair askew from his familiar habit of running his fingers through the thinned strands whilst in thought. Their deciphering sessions grew increasingly tedious and fraught with blunders. At first, she had suspected his eyesight had grown worse than he wished to admit. Now, she could not help but wonder if something far worse was at work.
Worry lanced her stomach, curdling the modest breakfast she had consumed not an hour before. But, she nevertheless lowered her eyes to the copy of the enciphered dispatch that had been discovered on the body of a French aide-de-camp. “One hundred. Ten. Twenty. One-and-thirty. Three. One hundred and four. Fourteen…”
Painstakingly, she recited the numeric ciphers that had been transcribed for the eighth time. She had been reading aloud the documents that had arrived from the Peninsula, written in precise, small script, because Father could not read them. He recopied each number painstakingly in large scrawl his double spectacles rendered legible.
Father frowned. “I do believe I transposed this fourteen to one-and-forty,” he murmured, bent over his task, nose frightfully near to the paper he scoured. “How many fourteens have you, Jacinda dearest? I have two-and-thirty at most recent count.”
“I do as well,” she said gently, wondering how she could broach the subject with him. How he hated to see his physician, for being the preeminent decipherer in London meant he could afford no weakness of body or mind. “According to my charts, fourteen is the most commonly appearing number in the dispatches written in the new method of enciphering.”
“Yes.” Father raked his wizened hands through his hair without glancing up. “If only we knew what fourteen substitutes. Is it a word or a letter?”
Jacinda’s mind turned to the matter of cracking the new French cipher, one so complicated that Wellington’s field officers could not unravel its mysteries. Like Father, who descended from a line of deciphers and remained one of a small, elite handful that worked for the Crown, she loved the sport of decoding. So much so that after James’ death, aiding Father was all that kept her feeling alive.
“Dispatches number three, seven, eight, and ten all contain a combination of words,” she pointed out, confident they could exploit the weakness in the cipher by using the slipshod methods of the harried soldier who had not bothered to encrypt the entire communication.
“Of course you are correct, as always, Jacinda.” Pride underscored Father’s words. “You are sharper than a rapier, my dear girl. Together, we shall unlock the keys to this and our army will have the advantage it requires against the enemy.”
Tenderness rushed through her. Mama had died when she was quite young, and it had been just the two of them for so long now. She was grateful he had taught her everything he knew, that he prized her mind and encouraged her pursuit of knowledge. Not every gentleman possessed his heart of gold.
“Thank you for always believing in my capabilities,” she said softly, tears pricking at her eyes.
She refused to allow them to fall. She had not wept since the day she learned of James’ death. Nor would she cry now, for she had promised herself nothing could ever hurt worse than the certain knowledge that her soldier would never come home to her.
“You have been blessed with both the intelligence and beauty of your mother,” Father said, smiling forlornly. “Nearly twenty years later, and the ache only grows stronger. How I miss her.”
He had been speaking of her mother with a marked frequency, which added to the misgiving swirling through her. Father was her only family, the strength that carried her through each grim day. The thought of losing him made her chest tighten and her stomach curdle. But before she could respond, a knock sounded at the study door.
Their butler Graves appeared, a fellow who never failed to make an illustration of his surname. “Your guest has arrived, sir,” he announced in his dour accent.
Guest?She and Father seldom entertained, for he was content to confine himself to his studies every bit as much as she. The outside world with its social calls and teas and drawing-room boredom held no appeal for her. Hers was a life that needed purpose, and she found it in the hopes her efforts with Father, in some small fraction of a way, could help to defeat the enemy that had slain her husband.
“Thank you, Graves. See him in, if you please,” Father announced, further startling her with his lack of surprise.
Clearly, their visitor was an expected one.
“I shall excuse myself,” she said, coming to her feet, for she was not dressed to receive company.
“No, Jacinda. You must remain.”
Father’s command, sharpened by an edge she could not define, stayed her. “But Father…”
He sighed, the sound weary, and passed a hand over his cheek. “Forgive me, my dear. I would have denied his request outright, but as it concerns a matter of great import, I could not do so. I have been meaning to speak to you about it ever since I received the missive yesterday, but we have been so consumed by this cipher, I forgot.”
