“My daughter is Jacinda Turnbow, you blackguard,” the older man snarled with a startling amount of vigor. “I demand to see her at once.”
He hissed out a breath of displeasure. “Perhaps this is a dialogue better conducted in private, Sir Robert. Nicholson shall see to your hat and coat. Come with me.”
Crispin wisely refrained from leading his unwanted guest to his decimated study, opting instead for the small salon where his mother had favored receiving callers. He waited for Nicholson to close the doors before gesturing toward a settee. “Please, Sir Robert.”
But Sir Robert stood firm. “I will not sit until I see my daughter. Do not think for a moment I am unaware of your black reputation. If you have harmed her in any way, you will answer to me.”
He had gone all night without sleep and felt as if he had been picked apart by ravens from the inside out. His patience was nonexistent. “And what do you propose to do to me, Sir Robert? Do tell.”
“I shall pummel you with my fists if I must, you scoundrel,” huffed Jacinda’s father, raising his wizened hands as if in warning.
Crispin could not contain the dark mirth at the image Sir Robert’s threat brought to mind. Had she somehow gotten word to her father that she was his impromptu prisoner, he wondered? Surely this could not be a coincidence. Perhaps Sir Robert was a part of the machinations against him.
“If you do not mind, sir, I would far prefer for you to answer some questions before the pummeling commences,” he quipped, careful to keep his tone flippant when inside, he was a maelstrom. “What do you know of her association with the Earl of Kilross?”
The elder gentleman paled. “How much do you know?”
A fresh stab of betrayal sank into his gut. If any part of him had foolishly continued to believe that proof of Jacinda’s innocence might somehow emerge, her father’s words crushed it. “I know she has been here in my household under false pretenses. Whether she had been tasked with planting false evidence against me or discovering it, I cannot yet say, as the lady in question continues to deny knowledge of it.”
“Good God.” Sir Robert ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. “She is not to blame. I am at fault for everything. Please, Your Grace. Allow me to explain, I beg you. Jacinda must not be held accountable for my sins.”
On that point, he would beg to differ, but he would not quibble now when it seemed that some much-needed answers could possibly be at hand. “Go on, Sir Robert.”
“I have lost everything,” Sir Robert revealed, pausing as he seemed to collect his thoughts. “I do not know when the downward slide began or even how, but a few hundred pounds one night and then a few more the next…I kept thinking to win back what I had lost. But the hole became deeper. The Earl of Kilross holds all my vowels. He promised he would forgive my debts in exchange for Jacinda doing as he asked.”
The breath left him. If Sir Robert was to be believed, Kilross had committed extortion against Jacinda. “Go on.”
Sir Robert’s gaze fell to the floor. “Because Kilross works for the Foreign Office, he is familiar with the fact that I am a decipherer. My eyes are no longer what they once were, and I have been relying upon my daughter for assistance in my work. Jacinda is an excellent decipherer in her own right, and Kilross knows it. He arranged for her to become governess here so she might have access to your correspondence, where she could then read any ciphered letters you received from the French and report back to him.”
The very notion he would be receiving ciphers from the enemy made Crispin so bloody angry, he wanted to tear apart his study a second time.Hellfire, but there was only one person who could be intent upon making it look as if he were guilty of treason.
Kilross himself. Not Jacinda. His heart rejoiced. She had been forced to deceive and betray him, and while that did not mean his forgiveness would come easily, it meant there was hope for them yet. That all was not lost. Thatshewas not lost.
That everything they had shared had been as real and true as he had believed.
But there was more to this sordid tale, he could smell it, and he needed to know precisely what faced him.
“There is just one problem with the earl’s misguided pursuit of me,” he drawled, feeling an icy chill settle deep inside him. “I am not guilty of conspiring with the enemy. Nor would I ever do so. I did not dedicate years to being a soldier, risking life and limb, just to assist Boney in his desire to conquer the bloody world.”
Heaving a sigh, Sir Robert met his gaze once more, and though it was distorted behind the lens of his spectacles, the resemblance to Jacinda’s rare eyes once more gave him an uncomfortable jolt. “I am aware of that now, Your Grace. You may be a rakehell and a despoiler of innocents, but you are not a traitor. Nor are you a murderer.”
With a bitter smile, he inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I thank you for the glowing report of my character.”
“There is good news to be had in all of this, however, and it is the reason for my precipitous arrival here,” Sir Robert continued. “Jacinda need not be at the mercy of Kilross any longer, for I have used her notes to break the great cipher we received from the Peninsula.”
Crispin frowned, wondering if the man was a bit mad. “I am afraid I do not follow, sir.”
“Napoleon’s army has been making use of a new, numerical cipher for several months now,” Sir Robert elaborated, and he did not sound mad at all but utterly lucid. “The intelligence officers on the Peninsula have been unable to break the cipher. Dispatches discovered in the possession of captured or killed French soldiers have been sent to me so that I may solve it. Jacinda was aiding me before coming here to you as governess. It was her notes that ultimately led me to decipher them just this morning, and that is how I know beyond a doubt there can have been no conspiracy committed by you to murder the Marquess of Searle. He is very much alive, Your Grace. According to one of the dispatches I read, he is being held prisoner by the French.”
The familiar confines of the salon swirled before him as he struggled with the knowledge that Sir Robert had just imparted. “But that is impossible. Morgan was taken byEl Corazón Oscuroand murdered. I witnessed the aftermath with my own eyes. I saw the pools of his blood, the hand containing his signet ring all that remained.”
“The marquess is alive,” Sir Robert repeated. “He is a captive, and from what I was able to glean, he has been tortured in an effort to gain information about our forces. But the Spaniards did not kill him that day, Whitley, and neither did you conspire to have it done. I know that now, and I shall go to the Foreign Office with the proof myself.”
Incredible. Impossible.
Morgan was… alive.
His brain whirred, calculating and assessing everything Jacinda’s father had just told him. One face struck him. “The cipher you just cracked was numerical, Sir Robert?”
